After a 10-month trial period, Newcastle City Council have confirmed that the bollards have provoked mixed reviews and will therefore be removed.
The bollards were installed on several streets between Osborne Road and Cradlewell in March 2023 and the scheme was planned to run until September.
The decision to remove them was based on feedback regarding longer journey times, increased congestion and negative impacts on businesses, shares the council.
They also shared that the aim of the scheme was to make "residential areas safer and less polluted for pedestrians and cyclists” but the result of a meeting on whether the LTN should be permanent concluded with 77% against and a petition of 5,000 signatures called to have them removed.
Janet Stansfield, a 52 year old who has lived in Jesmond since 1976, said that the scheme had been “horrendous and divisive” and that “all it did was increase traffic on the arterial routes. It affected the swimming pool, it affected businesses.”
Labour councillor Marion Williams has also said: "The streets involved in the scheme have seen significant reductions in traffic and have achieved many of the objectives of the project", "however, anything we introduce needs to work for the local people and it is clear that some aspects of this scheme have failed to do that."
The owner of Batch bakery on Clayton Road, Fran Eadon-Walker, said that she was “so happy I could cry” when told about the removal of the bollards.
However, David Hardman, a former Labour councillor and a resident of Akenside Terrace, claimed that the removal of the bollards demonstrated a “complete lack of leadership” from the council which he believes has “destroyed its credibility”. He said that “they have decided that a small increase in the time it takes to drive down Jesmond Road is justification for running all of that extra traffic through residential streets."