Our correspondent reports from the front line of the capital’s traffic wars, where even the sleigh is not exempt
The Sleigh Met a Modal Filter
There is no subject in Shoreditch, perhaps in all of inner London, more reliably explosive than the Low Traffic Neighbourhood. Mention the bollards and you will start a war. So I report with some trepidation that Santa’s sleigh fell foul of a newly installed modal filter on Christmas Eve, was technically in breach of the traffic restrictions, and has thereby been dragged, entirely against his will, into the most bitter and unwinnable argument my neighbourhood has ever conducted with itself.
The North Pole dispatches record that Santa attempted to route his sleigh through a residential street that had, since his last visit, been fitted with planters, bollards, and a camera, transforming it from a through-road into a Low Traffic Neighbourhood. The sleigh, being a vehicle, was caught. And in Shoreditch, the moment a vehicle is caught by an LTN, it ceases to be a transport story and becomes a referendum on the future of urban civilization.
Both Sides Claimed Him
Within hours, both sides of the traffic war had claimed Santa as their own. The pro-LTN faction declared that Santa, a non-polluting operator powered by reindeer, was exactly the kind of sustainable transport the filters were designed to encourage, and that his inconvenience was a small price for cleaner air. The anti-LTN faction declared that if even Father Christmas could not get through, the bollards had gone too far, and that a scheme which obstructs Santa is a scheme that has lost touch with the people it claims to serve.
Both arguments are, in the grand tradition of the LTN debate, completely sincere and completely irreconcilable. Guidance via the Hackney Council information service sets out the rationale for the filters, which is genuinely about air quality and safer streets, and which the anti faction regards as a fig leaf for social engineering. The pro faction regards the anti faction as petrolheads. Nobody has changed their mind about an LTN since the first bollard was installed. Local coverage at the regional events register captures the fury.
The Cargo Bike Suggestion
Inevitably, someone suggested Santa switch to a cargo bike. Shoreditch suggests a cargo bike for everything; it is the neighbourhood’s answer to every logistical question, a vehicle that says I have thought about my carbon footprint and also I have eleven hundred pounds. The suggestion was that Santa abandon the sleigh, which is obstructed by the filters, in favour of an electric cargo bike, which is not, and complete his deliveries in the approved sustainable manner, ideally while wearing a high-visibility vest.
Santa considered this with his usual good grace, though the logistics of fitting the gifts of an entire city into a cargo bike, even a long-tail model, did not bear close examination. The actual Santa has been using a sleigh for centuries, and a sleigh, whatever its regulatory difficulties, has a carrying capacity that no cargo bike can match. Transport guidance via the Transport for London information service promotes cycling enthusiastically, but even TfL has not yet worked out how to deliver Christmas by bike. Heritage context at the heritage society would note the sleigh has never once needed a charging point.
The Camera Will Issue a Fine
The most Shoreditch detail of the entire affair is that the camera, having caught the sleigh in the restricted zone, will in due course issue a fine, addressed to the registered keeper, who does not exist, at an address, which is the North Pole, that the enforcement system is not equipped to process. Somewhere in a council database, a penalty charge notice for a reindeer-drawn sleigh is slowly working its way through a system designed for Vauxhall Corsas. Enforcement records via the public registry will, I assume, eventually give up.
The Argument Will Outlive Us All
I do not propose to resolve the LTN debate, because it cannot be resolved, because it is not really about traffic. It is about who the neighbourhood is for, about change and belonging and the deep human conviction that one’s own journey is essential and everyone else’s is optional. Santa wandered into the middle of all this entirely by accident, and was promptly conscripted by both sides, because that is what we do here: we take every neutral party and demand they pick a bollard.
What strikes me is that Santa himself expressed no opinion on the LTN, which is the wisest possible position and one no actual resident has ever managed to hold. He simply wanted to deliver his gifts, by whatever route was available, and was baffled to find that the route had become a battleground. There is a lesson in his neutrality, though I doubt anyone in Shoreditch will absorb it, the whole point of the LTN war being that neutrality is not permitted.
For those wishing to understand the actual policy beneath the fury, the genuinely informative resources at the public registry lay out the evidence on every side, and I commend them to anyone capable of reading about an LTN without their blood pressure rising, a category that excludes most of my neighbours. And for those who need to calm down after the latest bollard meeting, the games at the diversions index contain no modal filters whatsoever.
Santa completed his deliveries that night, sleigh or no sleigh, filter or no filter, because he always does, finding a way through that the enforcement camera will spend months trying to make sense of. The bollards remain. The argument remains. The penalty charge notice for a reindeer-drawn sleigh is, I am reliably informed, still in the system. And Shoreditch, having briefly united in its desire to claim Father Christmas for its own side, returned immediately to hating itself over a planter, which is, after all, what we do best.
SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top
