Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
What if the council banned overtaking on Wightman Rd?
I wonder what people would think if the council experimented with completely banning overtaking on Wightman Rd as a step towards giving us a more liveable urban environment without offending the motorists of Crouch End and Enfield too much? The 20mph limit is set by the council and this ban would also be in their remit. Although speed limit is mostly enforced using road humps I challenge you go and visit another English town without 20mph limits in areas like Harringay, it's frightening.
The idea would be that in rush hour, maximum speeds would be enforced by cyclists and that cycling down there would be a much nicer experience. There is already precious little room or incentive (I'll get to that) for vehicles to overtake anyway.
At rush hour there are queues at either end of Wightman Rd, quite big queues, that make it nonsensical to over take anyway. We have seen video footage on here of dangerous overtaking on Wightman Rd and it has to be done at much more than the 20mph limit because of oncoming traffic and the pedestrian islands.
Thoughts?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I think taking away their entitlement to overtake would actually help a lot on that road, it's already bloody hard to overtake as I've said. There are some very hard core "law abiders" that do this without even thinking how pointless it is already.
As the world moves from cars to e-bikes the cycle lanes we're building won't be enough and the nonsense the council are pushing with their extension of the Enfield cycleway through Crouch End will come back to bite them, those hills are amongst the steepest and biggest in London.
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Get an e-bike. They're the future. In London they'll essentially iron out the hills and make it easier for cyclists to maintain a position in traffic without being overtaken.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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First, get the Council to enforce the 20 mph speed limit. They can't even do that.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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The Council? I thought that was a police job?
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So did I. However the 20mph change is being done in London by councils and overtaking bans are too!
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Visit another town in England without the 20mph limits. The difference is astonishing and the change in behaviour of MOST drivers since they were introduced on Wightman Rd has been slow but has happened.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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An excellent idea. The street is too narrow (and at points has hills and curves) to allow for safe overtaking anyway. As you say, all overtaking achieves is to get to the queue to exit Wightman anyway so as well as being dangerous it’s a pointless exercise. It would also be nice for pedestrians to not have to look out for cars driving on the wrong side of the road as they frequently do in a futile attempt to get ahead of the traffic.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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My understanding of enforcing 20mph in Haringey is 20mph is recognised differently from the national 30mph and is down to local police forces to enforce. There has to be a local agreement with the local authority (who can insist) but Haringey has chosen not to do so.
I will be attending the Police Ward Panel for Harringay ward this week. I will bring it up with the police again.
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Permalink Reply by Burgoyne Bec on
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Yes please do Karen. I don't understand why there is no enforcement when the road is so clearly dangerous. If the council can't devote the resource then why can't they put in cameras at the beginning and end to take cars average speed? It would be a nice money earner too.
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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The problem with detecting average speed with a camera at the beginning and the end is that the majority of vehicles using Wightman Road don't actually travel the full length - they are only using Wightman to facilitate a rat run down one of the Ladder rungs.
A possible solution to this could be a third camera in the middle somewhere, possibly randomly moved around so that drivers couldn't be sure where it was. I think I heard this suggestion from someone on the LCSP. It might work, but it might only serve to increase ratrunning on the whichever rungs are immediately prior to the camera
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One of the issues here is enforcement of the 20 miles per hour speed limit. I would be interested to know if there has been even one single prosecution resulting from exceeding the 20 miles per hour limit in Haringey
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As I've said, the 20mph limit seems to be sort of working (thanks Karen for that in 2010!) and the enforcement at the moment is via speed humps. I think that signs along Wightman (as much as I hate them) could do the trick for enforcing the no overtaking as it's really hard to do anyway and people are only doing it because they think they need to (perhaps selflessly thinking of vehicles behind them).
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