By Emma Griffin, vice-chair, London Living Streets

Low-traffic neighbourhoods can be life-changing for the residents who live in them. Since the neighbourhood improvements in Walthamstow Village in 2015, people are walking and cycling more, children play out, air pollution has improved and life expectancy increased.

More information on what low-traffic neighbourhoods are and how they work is available here.

But bold traffic plans such as this are often introduced amid concern and opposition. This series of blogs explores these questions and presents research that helps fill missing gaps and tackles any misunderstandings.

Here we examine concerns that low-traffic neighbourhoods may divert traffic onto main roads leading to increased congestion and air pollution.

Traffic evaporation 

Experience reveals that predictions of traffic problems caused by low-traffic neighbourhoods almost always fail to materialise, and that significant reductions in overall traffic levels across an area can happen as a result of people making…