• THE latest update from the council on Arlington Road Area Low Traffic Neighbourhood seems pleased with the hail of negative feedback they received online from the post event consultation… so pleased that they are expanding its remit with further restrictions.

A “helpful” pictorial justification sheet starts with pointing out that speeding is the main cause of road death… road deaths in the whole of Camden for the past 10 years have been between two and six a year.

Every death is obviously horrible but taking this small corner of Camden into account and the ensuing traffic tunnels due to this scheme’s restrictions are we really sure that we are not more likely to increase casualties? Tried crossing Parkway recently?

There follows statistically non-valid numbers on BAME children’s casualties (base population, relative percentages, time period, relevance to Arlington LTN?); “deprivation” unspecified; and spurious suppositions about all people switching to car travel (some chance); and then a bogus statistic comparing bike traffic in the Covid-19 year with previous normal conditions.

We go on… pollution is much worse in Parkway (noise and fumes) post the initial institution of these changes… a major food destination… (less so now I think)… and, yes, the leaflet tells us air pollution is bad for us…

May I suggest that a focus on converting utility, TfL, and council vehicles to electricity/hydrogen might make a bigger dent than this deckchair shuffling.

Then to top it all the sheet argues against itself on the same page. On one section, apparently, Camden traffic is going up due to Covid-19 and then, at the base of the page, it is apparently down 53 per cent.

I can tell councillors that it is certainly down substantially on pre-Covid times and if you think the jams on Parkway are bad now, wait until normality returns. If I was running a business in Parkway I’d be ditching my lease right now and moving on.

As it is I only live nearby and obviously we all would like a bit less traffic outside where we live. But this scheme shoves the problem onto others while causing inconvenience to residents; not to mention the cost of signposting, monitoring and enforcing all this nonsense.

MARK JENKINS
Address supplied