Britain’s roads are becoming a Soviet nightmare

In the dog days of 2021, I spent a grey Sunday afternoon driving around a part of London with a view to an eventual flat move. Why take the car? Because the bus routes didn’t match where I planned to go, I wanted to stay over ground, and I would be able to cover more territory than on foot. It seemed an innocent enough way of spending my time, and the traffic was blissfully light. 

So I was surprised to receive – with remarkable speed – a Penalty Charge Notice for using what was called a prohibited road. The notice was supported by two photos of my car, which I am happy to report was perfectly positioned on said road, not encroaching by so much as a millimetre into the bus lane. 

Mystified as to my offence, I retraced my route (on foot), and concluded that it must have been the right turn I had made at a mini-roundabout, when all other directions were barred, and the only possibility was a nice wide, straight, main-ish road, with a vast construction site on one side. I took photos of the signs as they would appear to the driver, and appealed, on the grounds that no one who was unfamiliar with the area would have had a clue that they were straying on to an unadvertised toll road, costing £130 a go.  

My appeal was allowed, so thank you, Hammersmith and Fulham. But figures just released show that this authority has positively raked in the cash from non-local drivers like me. The south and west Fulham Clean Air Neighbourhoods (often termed Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, or LTNs, elsewhere) took almost £12 million last year from errant drivers, even though the signs are now (somewhat) clearer.

As many city-dwellers, not just Londoners, will know, CANs and LTNs, have become hugely contentious since they proliferated in the wake of the pandemic. When I Googled the arrangements in Fulham to find out possible reasons for my PCN, there were pages of indignation both for, but mostly against, what is also known as the TCPR (Traffic Congestion and Pollution Reduction) scheme – the blizzard of acronyms, by the way, being a hallmark of bureaucracies that like to keep the uninitiated in the dark. 

And the arguments are not dying down. Opponents maintain that the restrictions are a gross imposition on drivers, and that the whole thing is just a green-washed cash cow to plug holes in an ill-advised budget. Supporters argue that the objective of cleaner air outweighs all else, and that exemptions for local residents, emergency vehicles, black cabs and the like make such schemes win-win.  

I have to say I am with the opposition, though not because of that long-ago fine. And I understand those who maintain – though with rather tenuous proof – that the air in the restricted streets is cleaner, even if the rose-tinted view that it will foster a veritable festival of bike-riding, dog-walking and 1950s-style street games remains just that. 

Nor am I as perturbed as perhaps I should be by the questionable stratagems some councils seem to have used to push through their projects, with limited evidence and consultation. Despite a host of objections, a pre-Christmas council meeting passed the latest Fulham CAN into permanence essentially on the nod. 

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There may be exemptions; those needing access, such as carers, visiting family and friends, tradespeople and the like can be registered. But it all makes for additional hassle, and there remain real difficulties for the less mobile or for passengers dropped off far from their front door at night, as drivers fear a fine for entering the restricted streets. 

The point I would make, however, is not about hassle, or access, or even the money made by the council – which it insists is shrinking as drivers learn the rules. Nor is it about whether such restrictions significantly improve the air quality – where, as with the new Ultra-Low Emissions Zones in outer London, the evidence is nowhere near as conclusive as might be supposed, and the effect of congestion on the permitted conduits can be dire. As to whether the schemes have a detrimental effect on shops and other businesses, again, the jury is out, with aggrieved shopkeepers saying yes, and the council, no. 

My central point is a bit different. As a resident and a council tax payer, I may now drive the borough’s streets to my heart’s content. And one of them, as it happens, is that wide, straight – and largely empty – thoroughfare where I was ticketed, This means that, on the rare occasions I use my car locally, I can bypass the huge jams on the two major roads that everyone else – outsiders, that is – must use.

Think about it. This council, like others, is declaring itself a patchwork of effectively gated communities, or no-go zones for through traffic, which is exactly the sort of traffic that needs to get through. These are public roads. They were built, or adapted, for vehicles, to help people get from A to B. But now only locals may use them. If your car is registered elsewhere, and you you stray – however unwittingly – from the permitted routes, you will be slapped with a fine. 

What is happening is that these councils are restricting the use of certain public roads to their own council-tax payers. Once upon a time we paid something called the Road Fund Licence for the right to use public roads. It’s now the Vehicle Excise Duty or car tax, but its function is the same. How come councils can take it upon themselves to close not only small residential streets to wicked alien rat-runners, but restrict access to roads that were clearly built as thoroughfares to connect with other thoroughfares, without going all around the houses? 

And what happens if every council does this? By all means drive around your own immediate streets, they might as well be saying, but beware if you want to drive into other boroughs, unless you are prepared to fill out a whole sheaf of online forms beforehand or risk a large fine. 

Somehow, it reminds me of when the Soviet Union was collapsing and no area or business would sell to any other, because the currency was in flux and no one trusted that they would be paid. So everything was bartered: my steel girders, perhaps, for your crates of sugar-beet. And planes took off with insufficient fuel for their end destination, necessitating an unscheduled stopover for the crew to do a whip-round from passengers to pay for refuelling. The effect, for a while, was a balkanised economy with no common rules and no coordination. 

Is that how we want our cities to work, as a hotchpotch of fiefdoms, where sundry highwaymen jump out brandishing Penalty Charge Notices because you have driven down someone else’s street? Isn’t this the rationale behind postcode street gangs? By all means let’s have children playing hopscotch and cricket in designated residential streets after school, but most streets were built as public roads for people to drive on and get to somewhere else. Try to change that, and you end up with the nose-to-tail misery – and pollution – of London’s Wandsworth Bridge Road.