Yesterday the first planters for the Fox Lane area’s Quieter Neighbourhood were put in place, starting with The Mall and Selborne Road N14, as shown in the tweets below.

The Mall is part of the most heavily used rat run through the area, with thousands of cars going through every day – in our traffic counts we found more than one car every ten seconds at peak hours. So it was not a surprise to hear reports of a traffic jam this morning as rush hour traffic encountered the planters for the first time.

It will be interesting to see the effects over the next few days and weeks – will drivers start using a different route to avoid potential jams on The Mall, leaving the street with less traffic…? The council have just carried out a ‘before’ speed and volume survey on this road in order to compare with the ‘after’ in a few months’ time.

Another update is that the final version of the Quieter Neighbourhood map has reinstated the planters at the Aldermans Hill end of the four roads from Lakeside to Devonshire.

The final version of the map shows the position of all the planters – click for a larger image.