‘We all breathe dirty air, much of which comes from motor traffic’

• SURELY no topic for your letters column has been more popular than the discussion about
LTNs, low traffic neighbourhoods, PFS, people-friendly streets and, latterly, LNs, liveable neighbourhoods.

As Islington Council declared a climate emergency some years ago, we should have expected that they would take some action.

The programme that was started during the Covid-19 pandemic was only an extension of a policy they have been carrying out for many years. They set up environmental areas and have been filtering streets since the mid-1980s; traffic calming.

Now prime minister Rishi Sunak has announced a review of low traffic neighbourhoods nationally. Motorists will probably feel vindicated; I suppose there’s an outside chance that the review will discover that actually LTNs are quite a good idea!

Perhaps he has deduced that the people who benefit from LTNs and schemes like this will probably not vote Tory.

But for the two-thirds of Islington’s population that don’t own a car, any slowing of the liveable neighbourhoods programme will be regrettable.

We all breathe dirty air, much of which comes from motor traffic. It is my sincere hope that funding will be available for the council to continue its liveable neighbourhoods programme. I hope that this will reduce motor traffic and pollution in the borough.

Some people may not be pleased immediately but when they see the real benefits that less motor traffic brings to everyone, I think they will be very pleased indeed.

As has been written, “you can please some of the people all the time, you can please all of the people some of the time but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

KEITH MACFARLANE
Address supplied