Safe low-cost movement around London

We want residents to be able to travel within Hackney and beyond affordably, safely, quickly and without stress, and to breathe cleaner air. Our goal is to make every street in Hackney free from road danger.

Yet Hackney ranks as one of the London boroughs with the highest collision rates. And traffic gridlock remains a problem in Hackney whether we’re driving, using buses or relying on deliveries and Ubers. Over 40% of traffic is non-local: vehicles passing through the borough, clogging roads and poisoning the air. 

While intended to reduce car use and improve air quality, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) aren’t working everywhere. Road closures are displacing traffic onto boundary roads, increasing congestion and local pollution. Restricted access is making essential journeys longer and slower.

Local drivers are disproportionately affected, with increased costs through fines and parking costs, while LTNs have had little impact on the amount of traffic passing through the borough. 

As only 35% of Hackney’s households own a car, many households rely on commercial transport for deliveries and essential travel. Taxi and delivery drivers are amongst our lowest earners and are disproportionately from Black and Global Majority backgrounds. Their incomes are reduced and their days extended by longer more congested journeys and by £160 fines for each infringement of Hackney’s constantly changing road closures and time zoning around schools, making their jobs very stressful and uneconomic. 

Some residents, including those needing to travel for essential health appointments (e.g., dialysis/chemotherapy), are experiencing longer, more difficult journeys due to LTNs. Labour has ignored people’s lived experiences of road closures, deepening mistrust of the Council. 

Socialist planning starts from the grassroots

Whether the Council is managing road traffic or redeveloping a housing estate, planning must start from the grassroots – from the needs of workers and residents, using our collective knowledge to create schemes that work for us. 

We’re listening to residents on transport

Knocking on doors and asking residents what matters to them has been the centre of our campaign. Through doing this, we’ve had hundreds of conversations about the impact of road closures on people’s work and family lives. This process of listening to and learning from residents has changed our understanding of LTNs and forms our policy foundation. 

Our councillors are also working directly with residents to address concerns for road safety, for example, supporting a campaign by people living on Victoria Park Road to ban HGVs. If elected to the Council, we will push for a consultation on banning e-bikes from Hackney’s parks.

What we’ll do if we run the council with the Greens after May

Our priority will be to take action on LTNs, specifically we will:

• Push for an immediate roll back of the closure of Chatsworth Road because of the problems with it and to look at other ways of addressing the safety issues that were the reason for it.
• Pause and review all proposed LTNs.
• Review the existing LTNs identified by residents as causing the most concern. This will include an Equality Impact Assessment of travel in Hackney and an analysis of road safety, with the lived experience of residents and small business owners included as evidence.
• Review the exemptions policy and the technology available in order to expand these to more residents.

For cleaner air, we recognise the need to transition away from dependence on cars. Cities have been designed around car use, not active travel, and this can hinder efforts to decrease car use. We will: 

• Install more bike hangars and cycle routes, ensuring our streets remain safe and accessible for everyone: cyclists, pedestrians and wheelchair users
• Campaign to expand and improve public transport and to cut fares
• Devise strategies to improve those areas, such as King’s Park, that have poor access to public transport.
• Consider using the Council’s fleet for community use. For example, using Council transport buses which are free between the morning and evening school runs and during school holidays.
• Support the London Mayor’s 2024 commitment to create a publicly-owned bus company, working with Unite the Union to further this initiative. This would simplify and co-ordinate routes, increase job security for staff, make fares cheaper, increase the frequency and extent of bus routes and allow profits to be re-invested in the bus network.