Active travel was always quite good in most parts of London as the road network was less developed and not conducive to the scale of auto-dominance found in North American cities. Many high-pedestrian routes are already pedestrianised. With that said, the emergence of satellite navigation systems and then map apps on smartphones, there has been an increase in private vehicles using residential/side roads to bypass traffic which has caused problems.
The response to that was the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN’s), the first of which was introduced into my north-east London neighbourhood a decade ago. LTN’s are a combination of measures (e.g. modal filters, road closures, bus gates, removal of bidirectional roads, raised pedestrian crossings, chicanes, reduction of parking spaces, more on-street secure and accessible cycle racks/sheds, pocket parks, seating, etc) to restrict the ability of private vehicles to traverse across a neighbourhood freely.
Some Google StreetView examples of my neighbourhood:
here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The outline for the Walthamstow Village LTN.
Source: Waltham Forest, https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/sit...%20%282%29.pdf
Other areas in London and across the UK have followed suit with their own LTN’s to actively encourage more active travel.
In the below map (check the source below, it is well worth a look as it covers the entire UK) you’ll see that there are a lot of impediments to just driving all over the borough. The only through-roads are those identified as grey (main roads), red (local road), or brown (local road but with traffic calming). More and more roads are being change to reduced access as LTN’s and modal filters are rolled out.
Source: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: https://www.lowtrafficneighbourhoods...1.553/-0.06692
Linear Mode
