Sadiq Khan’s Officials Suppressed Report Showing LTNs Don’t Cut Car Use

Sadiq Khan’s officials suppressed taxpayer-funded research that showed low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) do not reduce car use after the London Mayor spent five years baselessly claiming LTNs are good for the planet. The Times has the story.

Transport for London, which is under the Mayor’s control, chose not to publish the Travel and Places study after it found the traffic relocation schemes helped to increase cycling but failed to encourage people to drive less or walk more.

Over the past five years, Khan has repeatedly claimed that LTNs help to reduce traffic and are therefore good for the planet. The University of Westminster’s research, obtained by the Times, found otherwise.

Emails between Transport for London (TfL) and the university show that officials were concerned about the report’s results coming out.

They discussed how they might present the findings in the most positive light before a decision was made not to publish. In one email, an official reminded others that “all of this stuff is FoI-able” (available under freedom of information laws) before reassuring them that no one outside TfL yet knew about the study.

Funding for the completion of the project was withdrawn in June last year. TfL’s internal “completion statement” explained that the data had failed to offer sufficient new insights. This is despite the groundbreaking finding that LTNs do not reduce car use.

The statement explained that the interim results had not been published because the report was “highly technical”, “full of jargon” and therefore “not accessible to the general public”. Yet in the emails, seen by the Times, officials stated that the report was “easy to follow” and “very well structured and written”.

TfL documents show it initially agreed to pay £82,095 for the three-year study although it is unclear how much was eventually paid because it was curtailed after two years.

The research asked more than 4,500 residents about their travel over the previous week and cross-referenced their responses against the percentage of roads that were within LTNs.

It found that people in areas with more LTNs had cycled more but that “none of the models show a significant association between the proportion of LTN roads and minutes of past-week car use”. LTNs had no statistically significant effect on walking.

The study was led by Professor Rachel Aldred, Director of Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy. Aldred used to be a trustee of the London Cycling Campaign, a charity that lobbies councils to introduce LTNs.

Over the past five years, Aldred has published at least seven academic papers about LTNs, all but one of which were funded by TfL. Each of these seven papers has been positive about LTNs overall and her research is often cited by public bodies, such as TfL and campaign groups, such as the London Cycling Campaign, to justify the introduction of more of the schemes.

In the emails between TfL and the university, one of the researchers said that the conclusions of the study “may be a bit underwhelming to merit much fanfare”. It is unclear whether the email was sent by Aldred or one of her team because the name is redacted. However, whoever sent the email offered to create a “suitably contextualised and caveated summary” that TfL could publish.

Critics suspect the report was buried because officials did not want to admit that LTNs have no impact on car use.

Worth reading in full.