THREAD: I’ve done a lot of interviews about low traffic neighbourhoods over the past few weeks.

The most common question I get asked is how do you know this will work? How do you know this won’t make traffic worse on other roads?

Here’s the truth: I don’t know.

But what I do know is that the status quo isn’t working.

I know BAME people are half as likely as white people to have access to a car.

I know children from the lowest socioeconomic group are 28 times more likely to be killed on the roads than people from the highest.

I know one in every eight deaths in Europe can be linked to air pollution.

I know over half of British drivers speed in residential areas.

I know greenhouse gas emissions from road vehicles make up a fifth of our total emissions.

I know that the UK is addicted to cars, and if we don’t kick that addiction, it’ll kill us.

That’s why we’ve got to try something. LTNs are just a part of the puzzle. We might find in some areas they work more effectively than others.

But one thing is clear: we can’t sit around and wait for the perfect solution to car dependency. We don’t have the time.

We have to experiment. We have to be nimble and innovative. We have to do whatever we can to reduce car use in this country.

We can’t say for certain that LTNs will work. But we *can* say for certain that doing nothing won’t.

And we’ve got to try.