This blog entry had been on my agenda for such a long time. I will dedicate it to communicate my view on the implementation of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs), specifically in Oxford. One of these schemes affect Littlemore, which is a deprived area and it is where I live. The key objectives of creating LTNs is to reduce through traffic, a.k.a. “rat runs” encourage different forms of active travel (i.e., particularly cycling and walking) and improve road safety via reducing probability of accidents by reducing the number of vehicles on the road.

In Littlemore, the first LTN trial went ahead during one of the Covid lockdowns, roughly around March 2020. This trial was rushed to comply with the time frame for which the government funding was available and subsequently made permanent despite continuous and consistent objections from the community, the most frequent objection being blocking a historic road which connects Littlemore to Cowley where the most of amenities are located in East Oxford. The supporters of LTNs often refer to these schemes as key infrastructure or schemes that aim to improve general public health, particularly targeting respiratory issues associated with emissions from motor traffic. However, the way LTN trials have been implemented is far away from how clinical trials in other domains are conducted (I am writing this as a person who works in clinical trials). There were no concrete predetermined objectives to set the success criteria for LTN trials, which gave Oxford County Council (OCC) infinite room for arbitrary interpretations and eventually to make them permanent despite the absence of conclusive evidence in favour (the overall evidence remain to be against, e.g. decreases in air quality in boundary roads and negligible increase in walking/cycling so not meeting any reasonable cost-to-benefit criteria). The bollards blocking the roads are frequently being removed by unknown members of the community demonstrating opposition.

One side-effect of LTNs is that they increase motor traffic on boundary roads and therefore air-quality readings taken from those roads substantially deteriorate. This is why I personally think LTNs are essentially a postcode lottery in which there are clear winners and losers. For the losers, what the council offers is a symptomatic treatment, for example if one boundary road suffers from excessive congestion, they can put an additional bus gate to curb that and to improve public transport efficiency and if that leads to further negative effects downstream, they might address that with another measure. However, if we compare this to other public health trials, the bundling symptomatic treatments is dominantly regarded as unacceptable. For example, if Covid 19 vaccine causes blood clotting and fails to meet its primary outcome measure of success, we cannot simply augment its overall cost-to-benefit by administering anticoagulants (a type of medication that reduces blood clotting) and other supporting medication and continue business as usual. The treatments should work as standalone. Here, ideology simply cannot have the upper hand, i.e. “these are all being done to reduce the effect of vehicle emissions and tackle global warming or improve road safety” so any measure is justifiable. Similarly, it is not possible to roll out a vaccine without successful clinical trials in the name of combating a disease in good faith. Furthermore, schemes which seem to work in one city should not be implemented elsewhere without adequate trialing with stringent criteria, just like we had so many vaccine trials around the world to assess the efficacy of Covid 19 jabs.

One of the other reasons why LTNs implemented in Oxford became a postcode lottery is that often the beneficiaries are middle/upper-class neighbourhoods and negative effects are confined to deprived areas which are already crippled by poor infrastructure and struggling to cope with the cost of living crisis. Currently, it remains to be seen how rapidly affluent areas of Oxford will implement equally restricting LTNs, but the roadmap ahead from the OCC seems to preserve these neighbourhoods from imposing car mobility restrictions (I am writing this as driver with roughly 2500 annual miles, so not interested in driving “everywhere” whatsoever). I think my carbon footprint is also much smaller than many proponents of LTNs, ie. no wood-burners, minimal international travel, driving with net-zero carbon offsetting scheme etc. It is remarkable how prominent advocates of LTNs live in affluent parts of the city and campaign to enforce these measures onto deprived areas, raising concerns for a “class war”. Locally, I know that many residents have meaningful suggestions to improve infrastructure that can serve as traffic calming, all of which is ignored by the local authority. Furthermore, people’s opposition via consultations is also ignored by the local authority. Taken together, it does start to look like a white-privileged, imperial mindset who knows it all, and dictates how people should be living.

Here, I would like to communicate my thoughts on some more imaginative schemes which do not discriminate between neighbourhoods, and ideas that can be implemented countrywide and reasonably quickly overnight. After all, all members of the society should shoulder responsibility of tackling global warming effects equally. Personally, I found the reframing of LTNs as 21^st-century infrastructure rather delusional (maybe due to having lived in a high-tech society like Japan for 2 years) as wooden boxes, bollards (that negatively affect emergency service response times), and blanket blocking of roads that eventually lead to poor public transport sound rather [hidden] austerity to me. Local Labour support to these schemes is also worthwhile to highlight. These are incredibly crude and uninspiring tools to curb motor vehicle emissions and simply do not reflect our technological or scientific advancement in the 21^st century. Considering that motor traffic emissions are not confined to specific neighbourhoods, it would be much wiser and inclusive to target these at the national level through policy setting by the central government.

It is widely acknowledged that different types of road pricing (e.g., congestion charge, higher parking rates for cars that have higher emissions etc.) are effective in modulating driving behaviour. I argue that all of our fight in reducing the effects of global warming due to motor vehicle emissions should be governed by soft[er] nudges and principles of “behavioural economics”, which essentially posits that human decision-makers will naturally move towards options which provide better value for money.

One easy legislation that can be implemented at the national government level is tweaking the road tax that vehicles are paying every year to DVLA. Currently, road taxation is based on average emissions alone. However, if we consider road spacing, wear and tear on tarmac and other key factors such as mileage, logically the annual road tax should be a function of:

= average emissions + annual mileage (can be recorded annually from MOT to MOT) + vehicle weight + vehicle size (length x width)

With each component having their coefficients (as in a multiple linear regression model) such that, for example, a family car driving 8000 miles per year (acceptable mileage for any new car lease agreement) should pay the same rate as it is now. Drivers who choose to drive larger vehicles such as SUVs or heavier vehicles like large EVs should contribute to road tax accordingly as per occupying larger road space or causing higher wear and tear due weight on the tarmac. A scientifically inspired approach such as this one would immediately make LTNs obsolete as driver behaviour can be modulated across the whole nation in a fairly distributed fashion by tweaking the contribution of each coefficient. Then every UK resident would be doing their share in fighting global warming in a fairly distributed way. This would also address our craze for SUVs which are commonly regarded as the most profitable segment for car manufacturers. If the weight and size of the vehicle contributes towards general road tax, it would incentivise car manufacturers to produce smaller and lighter cars more suitable and sustainable for our cities. Another benefit could be that, by focusing on mileage as a tax determinant it could be possible to get rid of SORN applications and indirectly improve government efficiency (by allocating staff who would otherwise process these applications) as cars not driven (let’s say less than 50 miles a year) would not need to be taxed. This could be especially friendly to UK’s classic car drivers who contribute by preserving the country’s heritage.

Here, I would also argue that SUV craze is fueled by local governments’ negligence in looking after road quality. Because our roads are ridden with potholes and surface imperfections (here, I have also great resentment to Material Sciences Division at the University of Oxford that local issues do not seem to be within their scope of applied research, otherwise potholes in key Headington roads would not be there for 6 years), I guess it must be incredibly easy for car salesmen promoting SUVs to potential customers. In effect, what is actually a race to the bottom (terrible road quality > SUVs to cope with it > higher wear and tear > worsening road quality in an infinite negative spiral to the bottom) looks like a win-win scenario from both the seller’s and the buyer’s perspective, as one is selling products from their most profitable segment (I had many instances where I had been offered an SUV as a courtesy vehicle to test how it feels), the other is buying a comfortable ride that can make you forget about the council’s incompetence in road maintenance. It might also be worthwhile to highlight that if we have 100 cars queueing in traffic, the queue of SUVs would be approximately 60 meters longer than the one with city cars, for example something like a Fiat 500. We seriously need to think about road spacing in our cities.

Finally, I want to write about a wild idea that could be considered as another domain to consider while setting a composite road taxation system based on multiple vehicle features. It is well-established that global warming increases the speed with which the polar ice cap melts. One key feature of the polar ice cap is to reflect UV radiation back to outer space (essentially working as a giant mirror) and while doing so cooling the atmosphere by reducing the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean. What if we also consider the colour of our vehicles? I am writing this as someone who owns a black car. I am sure it would make a massive difference if all the cars in the world were black versus if all of them were white which would reflect more of the UV radiation, while keeping the car cooler in the summertime and reducing the need for turning on the air conditioner which inevitably increase fuel consumption therefore emissions. According to a crude Google search there are 33 million cars on UK roads. If on average a car has 6m² surface area, that would almost be 50000 acres of shiny white metal, equivalent of the size of Liverpool when put together side by side. Pursuing (or at least testing the effects of) such scientifically inspired methods may be much more productive and easier to get people on board than implementing LTNs which inevitably discriminate certain areas while creating desirable neighbourhoods for the select few. I am well aware that having all vehicles in white may be targeted by some as a Communist ideology, but I want to re-emphasise that what I proposed here is a taxing coefficient which incentivises options that are pro-environment. If implemented, I would be on the losing side as a black car owner, but that is what behavioural economics is about. Even if it bites a small amount, when it bites continuously over the years, I am sure it will give me enough food for thought to go with something else if I ever choose to replace my car (which is mostly unlikely due to it being a future classic and to some of my other environmental concerns related to the overall impact of new manufacturing). A similar understanding could extend to white glazed roofing tiles, where applicable (e.g. preserving slate tiles in Grade listed properties).

I know these suggestions are not perfect, but I think it’s a good starting point to put us on to a scientifically sound, fair and inclusive road towards net-zero.