Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has been urged to “come clean” over whether he was involved in suppressing taxpayer-funded research into Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and their effect on car use.
Transport for London (TfL) decided not to publish the Travel and Places study after it found that LTNs did not encourage commuters to drive less, it emerged this week.
The schemes, backed by the Mayor of London on numerous occasions, have led to an increase in cycling, according to the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy (ATA), which is based at New Cavendish Street in Fitzrovia.
But the research failed to show a “significant association between the proportion of LTN roads” and a reduction in car use.
“While there is evidence that respondents living in areas with more LTN roads do use a car less frequently, there is only weak evidence that this could be driven by the LTN itself,” concluded the research report.
“Once other area level and infrastructural characteristics are accounted for, there is not a significant effect associated with car use. This suggests that the lower car use in areas with more LTN roads is the result of the other area-level and infrastructural characteristics rather than the LTN.”
TfL also said there was a “marked slowdown in the delivery of LTNs in London, which prevented achieving a sufficient sample size to undertake the main longitudinal analysis of the impact of LTNs on London residents’ travel behaviour”.
Emails between TfL and the ATA, first revealed by The Times, saw one researcher saying the findings were “a bit underwhelming” and offered to create a “suitably contextualised and caveated summary” that TfL could publish.
On Wednesday TfL said the data “didn’t offer sufficient new insights to justify further investment in continuing the survey”.
However, the ATA will complete the work to date and it will be published in “peer-reviewed publications primarily focused on the analytical methods they developed (for example, the computation of an improved and London-specific ‘cyclability’ score), which are of academic interest”, stated a TfL report.
As the chair of the TfL Board, Khan has now been asked to reveal whether he was involved in suppressing the research.
City Hall Conservatives transport spokesman Keith Prince told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “Sadiq Khan has spent years telling us LTNs cut traffic use and now it turns out covered-up data suggests otherwise. He needs to correct the record, immediately.
“The Mayor is the Chair of the TfL Board. He needs to come clean on whether he ordered this cover-up. If he did not then he must pledge a full investigation so he can tell Londoners exactly who did. If it was, in fact, his decision then Londoners will rightly see that as an utter disgrace.”
Neil Garratt, his fellow Tory London Assembly Member, said: “LTNs don’t reduce car use. That’s what TfL research found, so they quietly deleted it.
“TfL paid University of Westminster £82,000 to research the impact of LTNs on car use. But when they didn’t like the results, asked them to stop work and refused to publish the report. 4,500 Londoners spent time answering a survey about their travel habits but their efforts were thrown away because the results weren’t what TfL or the Mayor wanted to hear.”
In 2023, the Mayor said LTNs are a “longstanding tool to reduce through traffic in neighbourhoods and provide a better environment for walking and cycling, to reduce traffic and road danger, tackle the climate crisis and improve air quality”.
A year later, he confirmed he was “supportive of the important benefits that LTNs provide, including safer streets, enabling people to walk or cycle more, reducing car use and reducing crime”.
In March 2024 Sir Sadiq spoke out against an LTN for the first time, saying one in Streatham Wells was “causing huge problems”.
He added: “I was in touch with Lambeth Council to see what my team can do to resolve the issue and so we’ve asked the council to look at it urgently in relation to the consequences of a very well-intentioned LTN.”
A spokesperson for TfL said: “We are committed to supporting high-quality research that helps us understand how our policies and programmes are working. This particular study was initially funded to explore the impacts of LTNs but following a review of the second year’s findings, we concluded that the data didn’t offer sufficient new insights to justify further investment in continuing the survey.
“We remain confident that LTNs can reduce traffic levels in the area, making streets safer and enabling more walking and cycling.”
The Mayor’s office was contacted for comment but had not responded at the time of publication. The Times newspaper contacted the Active Travel Academy for comment but did not receive a response.
Additional reporting by Linus Rees.
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