On 22 July 2025, at the Dunston Activity Centre in Gateshead, the NE Mayor and the NECA Cabinet agreed the draft map for a new Key Route Network for the NE region.
From early 2026, when the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill comes into force, the Mayor will gain a “Power of Direction” over the roads that make up the Key Route Network.
This will give the Mayor and her Cabinet substantial powers over local roads in Newcastle. These include Gosforth High Street, A191 (Salters Road, Church Road and Station Road) and A189 (Grandstand Road, Jesmond Dene Road, Matthew Bank and Haddricks Mill Road).
Key Route Network – Newcastle upon Tyne. KRN = pink; Strategic RN (A1/A69) = orange; blue = supporting routes
According to the NE Local Transport Plan (NE LTP), the Key Route Network (KRN) is to be made up of the roads that “support the movement of people and goods, provide direct connections to major transport interchanges and to proposed new development sites”. It will also “consider which roads in the region are most important for regional road-based freight movements.”
The NE LTP stated that the “Key Route Network (KRN) should have a built-in resilience. For example, there should be high standards of drainage, lighting, highway surface materials and road conditions.”
Key Route Network – Gosforth area
Local Destinations – roads aren’t just for moving
Gosforth High Street isn’t the only local centre on the new Key Route Network. West Road, Chillingham Road and Shields Road are also on the draft KRN, as are various roads in Newcastle City Centre.
We weren’t expecting these roads would form part of the KRN as they are listed in the Council’s road hierarchy as secondary distributors. According to the Council’s definition, these secondary distributors “carry significantly lower volumes of traffic with fewer HGV’s” than primary distributors like the Central Motorway or the Coast Road, and that “local traffic will predominate”.
The NE LTP also says little about local destinations. Despite shopping being the most common reason for travelling (151 trips per year on average vs 119 commuting trips), the word “shop” only appears once in the whole document in “Transport is a means to an end, a way of being able to do the things that make up our lives. We travel to education, to work, to shops, to care for others, and to socialise with friends…”
More hopefully it does say “Infrastructure that enables people to walk, wheel, or cycle should be central to the transport network and should link to public transport for longer journeys” and that “It should be safer and easier to walk, wheel, and cycle to and from key local destinations.”
We hope that the Council’s “phase 2” proposals for Gosforth High Street will help achieve this.
Traffic Reduction Targets?
The accompanying guidance for the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill says that “Mayors will also be given a legal power to set Traffic Reduction Targets on the Key Route Network. This could be aimed at addressing environmental concerns caused by excessive road traffic, reducing road congestion and promoting sustainable transport strategies.” It also states that constituent Councils, like Newcastle, will be required to implement the NE Local Transport Plan,
While the Mayor declined to include traffic reduction targets in the NE LTP, the plan does say that “communities should not be impacted negatively by vehicular traffic, with volumes, speeds, and any resultant air pollution being kept to a minimum. This includes ensuring heavy goods vehicles avoid residential areas where possible.”
Reducing overall traffic levels would help the Mayor achieve the Network Performance Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in the NE LTP, as well as other KPIs on road safety, air pollution and carbon emissions.
NE LTP – Network Performance KPI
The most effective ways to reduce traffic in cities are listed at the end of this blog.
Air Pollution
The draft KRN includes many roads in Newcastle with the highest levels of pollution including Percy Street and Stephenson Road, both of which exceeded the legal limit for air pollution in 2024.
While the Clean Air Zone remains the responsibility of Newcastle and Gateshead Councils, this potentially will give the Mayor the power to direct Newcastle to implement changes to improve air pollution, or to tell Newcastle not to implement changes that could make pollution worse.
Urgent action is needed. Based on current plans, the Government has recently stated that Newcastle will be the “last city [in England] to become compliant” with legal limits, with an estimated compliance date of 2045. This is despite a 2016 UK High Court order stating that “the Secretary of State must aim to achieve compliance must be achieved “by the soonest date possible”.
e-Scooters and Cycle Hire
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will also allow the Mayor “to regulate on-street micromobility schemes through a licensing regime. Micromobility operations include a range of small, lightweight vehicles like bicycles and e-bikes, typically used for short trips. Initially, this regulatory power will be limited to shared cycle services (where people can hire bicycles for short journeys or to explore a certain area)”, which means that the Mayor will not have the power to regulate shared e-scooter schemes, even though Newcastle already has Neuron e-scooters. However, the guidance does state that other micromobility operations can be added “if these begin to have an impacts on shared street space (e.g. blocking pavements)” and that this could mean “expanding to include shared e-scooter schemes or pavement delivery devices”.
Docked cycle hire in Leeds
Next Steps
According to the NECA Cabinet report, “Agreeing a draft map of the KRN will enable the North East CA to move at pace to formally adopt the KRN once the enabling legislation is in place, whilst also providing a strategic direction of travel to enable the North East CA to better coordinate its activities in the immediate term.”
You can see the full draft NE Key Route Network in the July 2025 NECA Cabinet Minutes – see agenda pack page 10 onwards.
Key for the Key Route Network maps
Note on Reducing Traffic in Cities
As we said above, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill says that “Mayors will also be given a legal power to set Traffic Reduction Targets on the Key Route Network.”
The diagram below summarises research by Kuss and Nicholas in their 2022 paper “A dozen effective interventions to reduce car use in European cities: Lessons learned from a meta-analysis and transition management”.
They found that the most effective ways to reduce overall car use were Congestion Charges, Parking & Traffic Control, and Limited Traffic Zones. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, are a type of Limited Traffic Zone.
A different analysis by Cairns, Atkins and Goodwin in their paper “Disappearing traffic? The story so far” found that reallocating road space from general traffic to improve conditions for pedestrians, cyclists or buses can lead to “significant reductions in overall traffic levels”.
If the Mayor did choose to set a Traffic Reduction Target, these would be the most effective ways to achieve a reduction.
A dozen effective interventions to reduce car use in European cities: Lessons learned from a meta-analysis and transition management – Paula Kuss, Kimberly A. Nicholas
Diagram by Emma Li Johansson.