• WE heard last week of welcome changes in Highbury to prevent motorists using the area as a cut-through, a problem that has always existed but has increased hugely in the last decade.

The miles driven on London roads annually has increased by 3.6 billion since 2009, an 18.6 per cent increase to 22.6 billion miles.

On residential roads the increase was 3.9 billion miles, that is, the full London increase and more driving down the roads where most of us live.

Cheap car finance, real-terms cuts in fuel duty, Uber et al, online retail and, significantly, apps such as Waze directing drivers via our residential roads have all driven this massive increase.

Alongside the rise in motor traffic has been a ballooning in child obesity with a third of London children leaving primary school overweight or obese.

Inactivity is part of the reason: a generation ago 70 per cent of London children walked to school while the figure now is 47 per cent.

In 2017 the London Assembly noted that our London road network cannot cope with this level of traffic and we know from the Department for Transport that eight out of 10 people support measures to reduce driving, while two-thirds want a rebalancing to active travel.

In boroughs such as Islington, where 70 per cent have no access to a car, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change attitudes and for more people to walk and cycle as part of their daily life, to have cleaner air and streets safe for our children to play out.

We know that the minority who drive can be very vocal and recent vandalism of our new road filters shows what anger any restriction on driving can provoke.

However, what the past decade of changes for the worse on our streets has shown is that doing nothing is a terrible choice, especially for our children’s sake.

K FALLON, N1