‘Traffic filters will create more liveable neighbourhoods’

Each day the need to tackle the climate crisis grows more apparent. Fundamentally, we need to significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.

Bristol has set an ambitious target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, but to meet this means reducing emissions by 88 per cent.

Transport emissions alone make up 32 per cent of Bristol’s emissions, and private cars are the biggest single source within that. The Cabot Institute says that in order to meet our carbon neutral ambitions, we need to more than half the percentage of commuter journeys taken by car (from 55 per cent to 20 per cent).

The first thing you may be thinking here is that we can continue to use cars, but just decarbonise them – in other words, replace them all with electric vehicles. And while this will be the general trend over the next 10 to 20 years for new cars, this doesn’t take the existing internal combustion engine cars off the road or discourage their use quickly enough for our purposes.

For that, we will need to reorganise our cities towards low-carbon modes of transport by rapidly giving more road and pavement space to walking, cycling, scooting, buses, trams and trains to encourage their use. This, in turn, discourages shorter journeys being made by car. At the moment, 20 per cent of journeys in Britain made by car are under one mile and 55 per cent are under five miles. We need to create streets where urban car journeys are the exception, not the rule.

A parklet on Woodchester Road. Credit: Rob Bryher.

So how do we do this? Let’s make the task simpler by breaking it down, looking first at major roads and then at minor roads.

We know that our major roads are congested and polluted. This is where far-reaching, long-term measures like clean air zones, road pricing, workplace parking levies, and giving road space over to cycle and bus lanes play their part. These are all critical goals for decarbonising Bristol. The good news is we are seeing more city leaders implement policies like these, even if we need to see more come to fruition in the West of England region.

For our minor roads, we as individuals and communities have even more control. These are roads that weren’t built for large volumes of traffic, yet because of the rise of satnavs and Google Maps in the last decade, too much traffic has been diverted here.

Low cost, community-generated ideas for reducing through traffic, or “shortcutting”, on minor roads are becoming a much more accepted and significant method of reducing traffic, thereby shifting more journeys over to sustainable and active transport.

The barrier to new schemes is the continual difficulty of showing the huge benefits before they are implemented. Often there is some scepticism that motor traffic will simply be shifted to a different street. This may happen in the first weeks of a scheme, but over time there is widespread evidence that reducing road space somewhere most often leads to travel habits changing and motor traffic disappearing altogether.

A pop-up parklet on Upton Road. Photo by Martin Booth.

More generally, the barrier is us – human beings are creatures of habit, we don’t like change, particularly when we aren’t involved from the outset in redesigning our spaces. But often when change does occur, we adapt and eventually come around to love it – and now we have the evidence to show that.

This summer, I coordinated a citizen science survey across four cities, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and London, for the climate charity Possible. We spoke to 272 households in a variety of areas in these cities and we went specifically to those streets that have had traffic filters – which block cars passing through the entirety of a street, but not walkers and cyclists – installed for a long period of time.

The result? 85 per cent of people want to keep the traffic filter on their street, with 76 per cent perceiving their streets as being more safe than unsafe and 71 per cent reporting that they have seen people playing or socialising out on the street.

We can conclusively state that introducing traffic filters to reduce through-traffic is a popular move among those most directly affected and that people feel safer as their streets become more able to be used for children to play and everyone to socialise.

So what next?

Firstly, let’s ask our local councillors to get on it. Possible has made this as easy as can be with this form. We want councillors themselves to push for more traffic filters and liveable neighbourhoods in the communities they represent, and we also want city leaders (the mayor and cabinet members) to take on board how popular these changes are to inform their future strategic decision-making.

Secondly, why not think about setting up a liveable neighbourhood co-design workshop in your community? Sustrans has produced a useful guide to figuring out where street changes might be best in your neighbourhood. Have a read and have a go.

Over the last few weeks, I have had a crack at drawing up designs for Easton, Lawrence Hill, Filton, Hillfields and Totterdown and I’ve been surprised at how subtle and non-intrusive the changes might be for those areas, while still being focused on significantly reducing through traffic.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, talk to your friends, family and neighbours about the need for these changes in the context of climate action. Polls regularly show that the majority of people want the UK to lead on climate change, but too often we unlink the small scale, localised changes to our streets from the wider discussion. “Removing through-traffic is a climate action.” It’s a simple phrase, and one we need to learn quickly and repeat often.

Rob Bryher is Car Free Bristol campaigner for the climate action charity Possible. This article is the second in a series on Car Free Cities over the coming months.

Main photo: Rob Bryher

Read more: Pop-up ‘parklet’ replaces two parking spaces for the day

Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: