Forum topic: Local Elections 2026 warm-up

Arriving before Christmas cards are leaflets preparing us for next year’s local election. Labour’s proposal to crush the cars of people who dump rubbish was most likely a cut and paste editing error rather than proposed policy, but it may gain support. More jarring was the conservative leaflet and its lead to remove LTN’s. LTN’s installed over many years cover a very substantive part of the borough so I’m guessing locally this is more Fox Lane centric, neatly bypassing the Broomfield Road LTN, put in place some years back to stop the 6 to 10,000 vehicles per day which plagued residents of that street and beyond. Also, would Devonshire Square be unwound and reset as a bypass? We should be told about both.

But mostly I was intrigued by the accompanying photo. In it, one direction is totally clear of traffic, whereas the other direction has a totally free bus lane, one motor bike excepted. Between these two vehicles are nose to tail, moving smoothly perhaps or possibly they’re stationary.



What might a reader conclude? For starters that it doesn’t appear to be taken locally. (Just maybe it’s taken from the north Circular looking up Green Lanes towards PG, but hardly LTN territory if so.)  Secondly that there’s no problem at all for traffic wanting to go in one direction, so maybe it’s a seasonal (time of day) trend. Alternatively, maybe there’s road works just out of the picture, or an accident, or … Who knows. It’s certainly easy to imagine all the people in all the visible cars fitting into one bus, which could then scoot down the empty bus lane.

But I imagine the intent is to have a reader think, wow, all those cars stuck on a main road. Far better they could route down residential streets. We could then have a main route free in both directions.

As we were able to read, transport in Enfield is heading south ( Enfield Dispatch 6 November, “Enfield has gone backwards on sustainable transport”) – fewer journeys being made by foot, cycle or public transport and near record traffic miles being covered.  

 I’ve visited four cities in the last couple of months: Bradford, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Lille. Each has or is extending existing significant car control / exclusion spaces. Other major cities are well highlighted in doing similar, Oxford Street being a prime example. There’s method in such madness, and strategies behind it. I think some hard, big world, conservative strategy rather than a simple “this will be good for some drivers” wouldn’t go amiss.  To lead often means making the hard choice, popularism in all its forms invariably doesn’t cut it in the end.