Reducing traffic - what is possible? A campaigner's perspective on reducing road mileage

Leo Murray

Possible have been at the frontier of the traffic reduction debate since 2020, starting two major projects on slashing car use in cities just as the Covid pandemic struck, and the government launched its Emergency Active Travel Fund that suddenly saw more activity in this space happen over the following months than we'd seen in the previous decade.

Our Care Free Cities programme worked with communities in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol to reimagine some of their most traffic blighted streets as people and future-friendly public realm fit for the 21st century, as well as supporting grassroots advocacy on the ground for traffic reduction and road space reallocation schemes. Our Car Free Megacities project with partners in New York and Paris sought to leverage the historic rivalry between these iconic world cities to raise ambition and accelerate action to design cars out of the dense urban centre that cannot accommodate them.

We ran car-free challenges and visioning workshops with diverse participants, and developed a detailed alternative proposal for the future of Hammersmith Bridge. Working with the Active Travel Academy, we built the evidence base for interventions like low-traffic neighbourhoods and cargo bike logistics, and became one of the leading voices speaking out in support of measures to reduce the harms of excess urban traffic as these became increasingly politicised and sucked into the culture wars that are dividing British society. In this talk we'll share some of the key insights that have emerged from riding this storm over the past three and a half years.