Professor Rachel Aldred, Professor of Transport, was interviewed by BBC Radio Oxford about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in Oxford and across the UK.
In the interview, Professor Aldred spoke about her findings from her research investigating the effectiveness of LTNs, and said: “One of the really important findings is that both the older LTNs and the newer ones are associated with a substantial increase in active travel, that’s walking and cycling, and mostly walking. We’re talking about an hour or two hours more walking among people who live in LTNs compared to other areas which I think is quite a substantial increase and has big impacts on health because a lot of us do not get enough physical activity day to day.”
Talking about the divide in opinions on LTN amongst local residents, she added: “These things work partly by disruption because routines need to change, so I think any kind of intervention or scheme that disrupts people’s routines are going to be controversial in the short term…we have also looked at emergency vehicle response times and we did not find any negative impact.”
Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds.
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