ABOUT 

In summer 2021, areas of Old Bethnal Green Road, Columbia Road and Arnold Circus were redesigned by Tower Hamlets Council to discourage through traffic (known as 'rat running'). The intention was to cut down the number of cars on residential streets.

At that time, Old Bethnal Green Road alone saw more than 8,000 vehicles a day, including lorries and trucks following Sat Nav to find a cut-through and avoid the traffic lights on the main road. The heavy traffic travelled through a very deprived area, passing four schools and posing a danger to pedestrians and cyclists as well as emitting harmful fumes.

In Arnold Circus, residents complained of frequent late-night 'car bars' where groups of people in cars who had been out in nearby Shoreditch would drink alcohol out of hours, play loud music and cause anti-social behaviour into the early hours.

Thanks to the LTN schemes, through traffic across the area was reduced by over 9700 vehicle trips per day and most residents found the area much improved. As far as we know, the car bars have disappeared entirely and the Metropolitan Police have confirmed a significant reduction in anti-social behaviour in the Arnold Circus area.

Benefits of the Tower Hamlets LTNs

The areas around the LTNs are safer, healthier and friendlier than before. Evidence shows:

• Serious road accidents have been virtually eliminated in the area.
• The safety of children at four schools along the LTNs is vastly improved - great news in a borough that has the worst hit-and-run rates in London.
• Anti-social behaviour has significantly improved in areas like Arnold Circus
• More people are walking and cycling, with families, older people and those with disabilities saying they feel safer travelling around.
• The air is cleaner, both inside the LTNs and outside on the boundary roads, and has got cleaner at a faster rate than elsewhere in Tower Hamlets.
• There has been no impact on emergency services response times.
• Congestion on the boundary roads has not worsened over the long term.
• People are spending more time outside making connections. One lifelong resident in his 80s said the LTN had recreated the community atmosphere of his childhood.

Who supports the new layouts?

• Most local residents. Three public consultations have come out in favour of keeping the streets as they are now (with at least 58% of residents within the LTN supporting keeping the schemes and 75%+ of respondents overall supporting keeping them). Over 3,000 people signed a petition asking for them to stay in place.
• Local schools. The headteachers of the five schools in the area of the schemes wrote to the Mayor asking him not to remove the LTNs because they improved schoolchildren's health and safety so much. After the mayor decided to go ahead and remove the LTNs, 86 headteachers from across Tower Hamlets wrote a letter begging him to reconsider.
• Health professionals. NHS Barts Health Trust wrote to the mayor to say that the LTNs helped to address the climate crisis and health inequalities in Tower Hamlets.
• Meanwhile, 65 health workers including local GPs, doctors and nurses, wrote to the mayor, asking him to protect the health and wellbeing of local people by keeping the LTN schemes.
• The Met Police. They urged Tower Hamlets council to retain the LTNs because they reduce anti-social behaviour and improve road safety.
• Transport for London. TfL wrote to the mayor to express serious concerns about Tower Hamlets going against the agreed vision for London, and to say that removing the LTNs would prevent them from putting a bus lane on Hackney Road.

So why would the mayor spend £2.5m to rip out the LTNs?

In 2022 Lutfur Rahman was elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets. He made over 90 promises in his manifesto. One of these was to "reopen the roads", and several others were about promising to listen to the voices of the people.

The council ran two consultations on whether to remove the LTNs and open the roads back up to heavy traffic. Each time, a majority said they wanted the LTNs to stay.

Some locals who saw huge improvements in their area were dismayed by the idea of removing the LTNs. Instead of spending £2.5m of public money to bulldoze the schemes that had already cost well over a million pounds to put in, after only a short time, they wanted to discuss ways of adapting them to suit everyone. But all their attempts to talk to the council failed and in September 2023, the mayor announced his decision to completely remove the LTN schemes.

Campaigners think this would be a tragedy for the neighbourhood. It would mean wiping out all the progress on clean air, road safety, healthy active travel and friendly community and would cost a huge amount of money badly needed for other things.

There is an ongoing legal battle to try and save the LTNs, but the best hope is for local people to show the mayor how much they want the LTNs to stay.

In April 2025 the Mayor of Tower Hamlets launched a new draft Transport Strategy in which he proposes to introduce lower traffic areas and routes to make cycling safer. These would allow cycles and local traffic to use the roads but stop other vehicles. Given that he is suggesting this as an approach for the borough, why wouldn't he look at keeping schemes that are already doing this in the Bethnal Green and Brick Lane areas?

What do the people of Tower Hamlets want?

This Sustrans walking and cycling report commissioned by Tower Hamlets council in 2023 shows widespread support in the borough for safer street schemes and initiatives to help people walk and cycle. Around half wanted to walk, wheel and cycle more, and around two thirds wanted to see more government spending locally on active travel.

Why do we need safer, healthier streets that make walking, wheeling, cycling and using public transport easier?

• Our roads are some of the most dangerous in London. We have the highest rates of hit and runs in London.
• Air pollution is associated with a wide range of physical and mental health conditions, including stroke, asthma and dementia. Tower Hamlets has the fifth worst air quality in London and we know this is driving ill-health in the borough. In Tower Hamlets, 7% of deaths in 2021 could be attributed to particulate matter pollution, and the largest source of this was road transport.
• In the borough over half of 11 year old children are overweight or obese more than the London average and adults in Tower Hamlets are also at higher risk of early death from stroke and heart disease than other Londoners.

Recent road safety info on schools and children is very powerful. Specifically, in Tower Hamlets:

• Despite the number of collisions involving children falling, the number of children killed or seriously injured has increased since 2019, with most of these casualties occurring near schools. (page 5 from the Draft Road Safety Plan)
• Of child KSIs, more than 50% occur near schools, demonstrating a significant need for targeted efforts in these areas (page 21)
• Analysis of casualty data on local roads highlights northwest Tower Hamlets as a key incident hotspot, accounting for 47% of all KSIs in the borough (page 18 Road Safety Strategy)
• A few key roads account for most pedestrian KSIs, notably near key town centres – these include Bethnal Green Road, Cambridge Heath Road, Hackney Road, and Vallance Road. (page 23)
• Bethnal Green Road and Cambridge Heath Road also feature prominently in cyclist KSI data and may need a design review to identify opportunities for improvement on these key commuter routes into central London (page 23). These areas form the boundary of the current LTN which provides safer routes for vulnerable road users.