| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Andrew OSullivan | |
| Date/Time: | 25/02/20 07:39:00 |
These figures look wrong to me. Overall in London there are about 60,000 car commuting journeys each day compared to over a million on public transport. There is every reason why Hackney would have a lower than average level of commuting by car e.g. geography, demographics so I very much doubt a fifth of Hackney residents commute by car. This is not to deny there has been a rise in bike use and improved cycling infrastructure will have helped but gentrification will also have been a factor. There was a fall of over 10% in car use in the period you mention in Hackney according to DfT figures and this has continued up to 2018. As this sort of fall isn't happening in other London Boroughs the primary reason is probably demographic. The younger more prosperous people who have taken up residence in the last two decades are much less likely to own a car than the previous residents. It is right that investment is made in cycling to accommodate them and this will reinforce the positive trend but wouldn't be sufficient on its own to continue the decline in car use and Hounslow wouldn't be able to achieve these sort of traffic reduction in the absence of similar population profile changes. To the extent that demographic change is driving the reduction in car journeys, the traffic isn't evaporating, it is just moving elsewhere. The other figure that needs to be treated with caution is the claim that 9,000 daily journeys have 'evaporated' because of the closure of Hammersmith Bridge. This figure is calculated by counting the number of vehicles crossing the other bridges and, fantastically, is being used to claim that the bridge closure is a positive. Any sensible person would recognise that the claim of 9,000 journeys disappearing is spurious. People in Hammersmith and Barnes now ordering takeaways from their side of the river will account for a good portion and many bus routes just gave up serving north and south of the Thames but the main changes will have come in delivery routes and supply chains which have been reorganised to avoid a river crossing. There probably has been some reduction overall in journeys overall but the number will be a fraction of 9.000 and the decline will be offset by longer travel times which probably mean there are more cars on west London roads at any given time than there were before the bridge closure. Try telling the people of Putney, Wandsworth, Barnes and Kew how amazing traffic evaporation is and you will get pretty short shrift. It is a dangerous and ill-founded theory that will lead to bad policy decisions if it is given any credence. |