Sent: 19 August 2023 08:02
To: "Councillor X"
Subject: Re: Invitation to Arsenal ward resident meeting on transport & traffic in the ward

Dear "X",

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Just read "Y's" excellent letter to you, full of good points.

As far as Keep Highbury Moving is concerned, I think the Council misreads the group. It gets caricatured as a group of ruthless drivers. It is mainly a group of worried women with busy lives (like "Y" and me) who care deeply about all the community, including the businesses, the elderly, disabled people, and those living on the boundary roads. Many of us have worked for years on community issues, long before LTNs came along, even if we did not choose to stand as councillors. We note:

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• that many aspects of LTNs have proved to be ableist, ageist, and sexist; 

• those specific problems (e.g., the knock-on from the redesign of Highbury Corner) affected specific areas (Highbury) and that a more nuanced approach to problem solving at specific junctions and on specific roads was required rather than the blanket goal of getting 70% of Islington into LTNs.

• that the Council consistently fails to understand that impacts on boundary roads are cumulative as more and more LTNs are created; we are very worried now about our own boundary roads (Holloway Road, Seven Sisters Road, Blackstock Road and Highbury Grove/Highbury Corner which are more and more frequently gridlocked even before roadworks/water works /concerts in Finsbury Park come along.

• that the negative impact this now causes for bus times has had a big impact on Islington's less wealthy citizens, for whom walking and taking a bus are the main forms of transport: so, there is a classist aspect to LTNs as well.

• that Islington, as an inner London borough, daily hosts a lot of traffic which is passing through from elsewhere and on its way elsewhere, the council behaves as if all the traffic on its roads is made up of locals who ought to be walking or cycling and utterly fails to recognise its duty to think about impacts on the through routes which Keep London Moving and which will probably always be needed. We note too that its close advisers on this are limited to (mainly male) cyclists, not transport planners (or time-poor women juggling roles as parents, daughters, household managers and professionals......)

• that the council also fails to factor in the multi-borough effect of LTNs across all North London. House prices have forced a lot of Islington's armies of plumbers, electricians, builders etc to move to more affordable outer London suburbs such as Enfield and Edmonton and out into Essex and Hertfordshire., But - thank goodness - they still do come in to work for us here and we would be really stuck without them. However, the cumulative effect of LTNs and their associated congested boundary roads all the way along their drive-in routes makes for very frustrating journeys. (One of builders I know - who moved out from Highbury to Hoddesdon - says that if he does not set off at 5.00am the journey takes for ever).  Again, a lack of broader transport planning, where councils communicate with one another and are helped to plan by professionals, is sadly lacking as far as we can see.

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So, we feel that we have thought longer and harder about these issues than many councillors have, and probably have more detailed and complex local knowledge than they do. It is infuriating to be so often dismissed as The Enemy instead of worked with as a resource!

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Gill