LTNs, parking fees, and traffic are driving away customers
Islington residents have branded the council’s “anti-car” policies “absolutely ludicrous” because major arteries face long delays and local high streets are left deserted.
Though designed to reduce traffic, locals have said the borough’s flagship low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) only divert flow, leaving some areas clogged as businesses in others are deprived of customers.
Sir John Tusa, journalist and former BBC Newsnight presenter, said his ward’s two LTNs, Canonbury West and Canonbury East, had been implemented “because they [the council] are ideologues”.
Department for Transport (DfT) data has revealed Islington remains one of London’s most congested boroughs, with motorists facing a 10-minute delay for an average three-mile journey. This doubles the otherwise 11-minute journey from Angel to Archway.
According to the DfT, cars driving on the area’s A roads will experience typically the fourth lengthiest delays in the capital, out of its 32 local authorities, and for every mile travelled get stuck a minute longer than motorists in Hackney.
With the biggest annual rise occurring between 2020 and 2021 (18 per cent), protesters point out the borough’s elevated delay times coincide with the council’s LTN experiment.
Five of Islington’s seven LTNs were established in 2020, and they were joined by two further schemes in 2021 and 2022.
Jo Michaelides, founder of the campaign group Save Lungs on Liverpool Road, and a 20-year resident of the street which is bordered by two of the low-traffic zones, said she was “not surprised by these figures”.
“Since the introduction of LTNs and the removal of Highbury Corner roundabout in 2019, short local car journeys that used to take five to 10 mins now can easily take over half an hour,” she added.
Seconds spent in standstill on England’s main roads, on average, dropped 1.4 per cent from 2020 to 2024, the Department for Transport (DfT) revealed last Thursday.
But in the same period, the DfT has found Islington drivers saw a 34 per cent increase in the time they spend in traffic. This is the eighth largest jump in the capital, and 11 per cent more than the combined Greater London total. By comparison, the figure for all English urban A roads rose four per cent.
With borough residents the fourth least likely in London to own a car according to the Mayor of London, the congestion figures suggest Islington attracts drivers from other areas.
Critics of low-traffic neighbourhoods have said they only divert vehicles and concentrate traffic in the roads at their boundaries.
Local resident and campaigner Jo Michaelides said: “Simply squeezing all the traffic into long slow queues on a few unlucky roads while other roads are completely deserted doesn’t make sense to me.”
Several of the roads that border Islington’s LTNs are the same ones the DfT analysed for travel times and delays.
Nick Collin, from the anti-LTN pressure group Keep Islington Moving (KIM), said the situation was not only “bad for people who come in from outside. It’s bad for the people in Islington as well.”
The Clerkenwell Road, or A401, forming the southern border of the Clerkenwell LTN, at 290.3 seconds of delay per vehicle per mile, is the eighth slowest road of its type in the country. This means that 4,590 English roads are faster to travel on.
Mr Collin added: “The DfT statistics merely confirm what Islington residents can see for themselves.”
Chris Barker, from the independent campaign group Future Transport London, which campaigns for sustainable improvements to the capital’s transport system, disagrees. His organisation forms part of the Healthy Streets coalition which awarded Islington the overall winner of the 2024 London Healthy Streets Scorecard.
The judges said they were impressed by the borough’s air quality, road safety, and its promotion of active travel.
Mr Barker said it was the point of LTNs and similar policies to make “travel by car more time consuming”.
Speaking on behalf of his anti-LTN group (KIM), Mr Collin said he was “not into this sort of sneaky manner” of tackling congestion “by just making it difficult to drive so you eventually give up”.
But Mr Barker said that out of the factors behind Islington’s delayed travel times, “it is unlikely that having more LTNs than neighbouring boroughs is one of them.”
He added: “the aim is to reduce their use [of cars] and encourage… sustainable means of transport.”
Air quality, according to data released last Friday from the Mayor of London, has been steadily improving in Islington. Concentrations of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide, at the Holloway Road and Arsenal monitoring sites have dropped 63% in Islington since 2010.
But figures from the council’s forthcoming annual public health report have fine particulate matter levels, which officials have identified as posing significant health issues, at 4.6% higher than the London average.
Jonathan O’Sullivan, Islington’s director of public health, said at a meeting this Tuesday “this [is the] kind of stuff that gets deep in your lungs” and is “associated with an increased risk of dementia”.
Canonbury goes quiet
Canonbury is Islington’s only ward entirely covered by LTNs, making the enclave eerily quiet.
It is also surrounded on its southern and western boundaries by three other low traffic zones.
With one trader having said they had “lost 50 per cent of business now because of LTNs”, four of Canonbury Place’s six businesses have raised concerns about the fall in passing trade owing to restrictions on driving.
Sunil Amin, owner of Shriji News, said he was also sceptical of any benefits: “They said it is improving health, but I do not think it is improving anything.”
Three doors down, Rodica Virtosu at The Place café, said business would be improved if cars were allowed to travel freely through the ward.
Aysha Colak, owner of the dry cleaners next door, said she had lost out from people no longer being able to drive their heavier items to her shop, and that the LTN was “killing small businesses”.
Ms Colak’s concerns were not only about business, but safety as well. She said residents were “picking up their partners from the station because it is so quiet, and they do not want to walk down”.
Opposite Ms Colak’s shop, the Canonbury Tavern’s general manager Ross Dickson was also not keen on Canonbury’s car prohibition. The Tavern, he said, was missing “passing customers [that] would make it busier”.
Sky-high parking costs
Islington has the highest parking charges in the country – charging £19 an hour for some diesel cars. For petrol cars it can cost £12.50 an hour.
This comes as a poll by Direct Line insurance showed that two-thirds of drivers put off visiting their local high street because of expensive parking.
Selim Ataoglu from the Angel Inn, near the St Peter’s LTN, said the scheme “affects businesses a lot”.
Mr Ataoglu added: “And when Islington is more expensive than other places, they [customers] just do not come.”
Adrian Serrano, who runs the La Real Paella stall in Angel’s Chapel Market, is sure the local LTN has dented trade: “I’ve been here three years. It definitely has a massive impact on our business… We’ve lost a lot of customers.”
“They do not think about small businesses at all.”
Another stall holder, who did not want to be named, said the council failed to consult people. He said: “They won’t listen to us.”
Mark Summerville, SME product Manager at Direct Line Business insurance said: “Increasing parking charges may be a double-edged sword [for councils].”
Despite businesspeople like Mr Serrano having said high parking fees are because “the council just think about money”, Mr Summerville said that council revenues could actually be boosted by lowering parking fees as this would encourage local business.
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Finlay is our Canonbury reporter. Their words have appeared in various student publications at Warwick University. They are always open to new stories and leads.
Araminta Plumptre is a student journalist at City University with a specific focus on her reporting beat, Finsbury Park. Araminta has by-lines at ELLE magazine and experience at The Daily Telegraph she is interested in arts and culture writing alongside international journalism.
MA Newspaper Journalism student from the City University. Love talking to people and particularly interested in community stories, cultural topics, films and good food - contact me if you know anything interesting!