Anti the anti-car agenda

"It’s hard to believe someone thought that adding artificial blockages to roads would free people from their vehicle-addiction. As if making car trips artificially long, circuitous and inconvenient would teach people to love walking?...
    "The idea of a Low Traffic Network (LTN) sounded so apple-pie. Everyone wants fewer cars on the road. So when pollsters asked deliberately ambiguous questions, people would say “yes” they liked the idea. But living with LTN’s wasn’t much fun when it turned out it was their car the overlords wanted to get rid of. [Popular joke: When polled, 95% of people think that other people should take the bus.] And so the protests and petitions began. Under the cover of darkness, people set bollards on fire, attacked them with chainsaws, and even poured concrete in the anchor holes so it was harder to replace them.
   "But what really seems to have got the attention of politicians is when their own party splits and the renegades win. ... [P]oliticians are backing away quickly now after a couple of safe UK Labour council seats went to Labour rebels who left the party and ran on “pro-motorist” platforms....
    "What seems the most astonishing is that the whole plan worked like organised government-vandalism — the tyrants were Building Back Worse. They weren’t building new infrastructure, they were ruining perfectly good roads. They reduced options, curtailed freedoms, and somehow our lives were supposed to get better? But people could always have walked from point A to B, they just preferred to drive. There were no efficiency gains, no better choices or new rail lines, there was just less.
    "And not surprisingly, longer trips meant more gridlock not less, more emissions, and the costs of extra travel meant even getting a tradie to do a house-call became much more expensive...
    "It’s almost like the aim was never to serve, nor to change the weather, just to keep the riff-raff off the road."

~ Jo Nova, from her post 'Build Back Worse suffers a set-back'