Traffic figures used to justify controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) were incorrect, the Department for Transport (DfT) has admitted.
A flurry of new LTNs, which limit driving in residential streets, were introduced in 2020 with £225 million in emergency funding allocated by the Government for councils to encourage walking and cycling.
These have proved controversial, with residents and businesses in some areas successfully pushing for the schemes to be removed because of concerns about their impact on emergency service response times and traffic levels on surrounding main roads.
This week, a review of the Government’s Minor Road Traffic Estimates’ report, whose findings were frequently used to justify the schemes, found that the DfT had significantly over-counted the rise in traffic on residential streets between 2009 and 2019.
In London, where figures suggesting an almost 60 per cent rise in minor road traffic and a 72 per cent rise on the smallest roads had been widely cited, there had in fact been no increase at all over the decade, the new data show.
A previously published increase from 6.6 billion vehicle miles in 2009 to 10.4 billion in 2019 has been revised to eight billion in both years.
As Hayek pointed out the centre simply never does gain the information necessary to be able to plan anything in any detail. Therefore detailed planning will not work.
Does anyone really know? It should be possible from all the cameras to answer the following questions but I suspect They don’t want to tell us the answers. Has the Congestion Charge worked or not? Has it reduced traffic levels in central London? Have cycling lanes increased traffic congestion? Has the tax take decreased, as it should as a result? I wonder if anyone will ever tell us that it was just a cynical exercise in increasing tax levels.
Incorrect, or just plain deliberate lies?
“the DfT had significantly over-counted”
Did they get confused at 11 and forget to take their socks off?
Come think of it – “A previously published increase from 6.6 billion vehicle miles in 2009 to 10.4 billion in 2019 has been revised to eight billion in both years.” – what the fuck does this mean?
That they initially fucked up the 2009 number by being too low by almost a bloody third, then fucked up the 2019 number by being almost a quarter too high, completely reversing the error, and have now decided that the was no increase at all over a ten year period?
Assuming they were surveying MOT results, plus the V5 numbers when vehicles changed hands, just how the fucking fuckitty fuck do you actually manage to do that?
Of course, the DVLA database could be completely fucked. It certainly had problems in the past.
The figures were used to deliver the policy the compilers wanted, the money was allocated and presumably spent in their interests, if it didn’t end up in the pockets of their mates. Job done. Next?
Ducky, they more than likely did a survey of a few roads and noted cars that took the journey, the multiplied it up by the total number of cars thought to be on the road (non-SORN). Way simpler than analysing some database, plus they get paid to spend some time doing very little for the survey which would only be a few hours.
Traffic numbers were incorrect, or were they lies – to enable ‘environmentally friendly’ curbs on the fossil fuel devil-machines that are killing the Planet?
We live in malevolent times with evil misanthropists running things.
“Has the Congestion Charge worked …?”
In the sense of punishing Londoners and London commuters, yes. It would be greedy to ask for more.
“A previously published increase from 6.6 billion vehicle miles in 2009 to 10.4 billion in 2019 has been revised to eight billion in both years.”
How did no-one do a sanity check on sales of petrol and diesel? Total UK petrol and diesel use in the UK slightly fell between 2009 and 2019. I’m not saying there’s a direct correlation, but you wouldn’t expect a 50% increase in miles without fuel consumption rising, would you?
If the first count was in school holidays, and the second in term time; then those figures sound about right.