Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Proposed Safety and Accessibility Improvements for Wightman Road and Alroy Road Public Consultation
The changes to Wightman following the Harringay Traffic study have been revived out of the blue.
The main benefits of this should be slightly slowed traffic and less cluttered pavements.
The downsides will be:
- the loss of real pedestriancrossing points - gthe replacement of traffic islands with "informal pedestrian crossings", which many fear will be laregely ignored
- probably significant increase on parking pressure through the loss of parking places on Wightman road with the expectation that additional cars can be accommodated on the Ladder rung roads. This is set against the backdrop of wildly inaccurate parking space usage calculations. For example the Council calculate that my road has an overnight spare parking space capacity of 30%. Ask anyone who ives here and they'll tell you it's more like 0%.
The thread about these particular changes from the start of the year can be read here. (The full set of threads around the traffic study can be accessed by clicking the tag at the bottom of this discussion).
Please answer the consultation and give your views. Once it's done. it'l be too late to change for many years. Full set of documents attached.
Tags for Forum Posts: harringay traffic study, ladder parking changes, wightman road improvements
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gabriel on
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I'm a cyclist myself - they don't cause me terror as I just take the lane. I'm afraid I'm more concerned about crossing the road with my toddler.
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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The "pedestrian refuge islands" create pinch points for cyclists, many cyclists don't "take the lane" and many motorists don't realise that cyclists are supposed to. Motorists typically speed up dangerously to overtake cyclists in between the refuges. It's a very hostile environment for cyclists.
Pavement parking makes it unattractive for pedestrians currently, and removing the refuge islands will make it more dangerous for them to cross.
I can think of two solutions 1) put a zebra or signalled controlled pedestrian crossing at the top of every rung or 2) make the road safe for shared use by reducing traffic to less than 1000 vehicles per day. Option (2) is cheapest and would improve air quality.
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Permalink Reply by 28ogtudbe7sc1 on
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"I'm afraid I'm more concerned about crossing the road with my toddler."
I can't argue with you there.
But I don't feel good about taking the lane either especially as the Wightman portion of my commute is mostly uphill and so I can only hit like 8 MPH on the ascent! In a number of US states there are often signs "Bicycles May Use Full Lane". It would be nice to see those here.
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Permalink Reply by Malc B on
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Agreed, I'm going to respond making the point about the general uselessness of informal crossings. I can't recall a single time when a driver/cyclist has slowed down to let me cross at the one on Endymion, I suspect because they don't know what they are. However, I have seen too many near misses with drivers racing to pass cyclists at the pinch points - so I think more formal crossings rather than retaining the islands is the answer.
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth on
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For those who have concerns please can I encourage you to share them with the council as well as on here.
You can contact the council on this issue by emailing: frontline.consultation@haringey.gov.uk (put Wightman and Alroy Road N8 as email title)
There are also two drop in events to meet officers and find out more about the proposals.
Wednesday 18 July 6:45 - 8:45pm at the St Paul's Parish Hall, Wightman Road (at the top of Cavendish)
Saturday 21 July 12 - 2pm at the Turkish Cypriot Community Association 628-630 Green Lanes, N8 0SD
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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All contacts and meeting details are also in the attachment to the original post.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Taking the lane as a cyclist on Wightman takes guts, impatient drives driving on your tail and zooming past you at break neck speed to beat you to the traffic islands. Yesterday morning I was taking the lane approaching one, I could hear a car accelerating behind me, making no attempt to slow down, I realised I was going to be rear ended and had to pull as close into the kerb as I could as I when through the pinch point. Imagine my horror as this idiot simply took the island on the wrong side of the road.
Haringey needs to rethink how pedestrians cross Wightman, informal crossings won’t work while it takes so much traffic but I for one will be glad to see the traffic islands gone - they are absolutely lethal. And its not much fun standing on one waiting to cross as traffic whizzs past in both sides!
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Permalink Reply by TTTH on
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I take your point on the effect of traffic islands on cyclists now when previously I thought we would lose these safe places to cross as pedestrians. As mentioned above the "anti skid/ informal crossing points" are completely ignored at the Alroy junction so these will equally be ignored along busy Wightman Road. I dont see the point of these crossings at the top of quieter roads off Wightman either, such as Lothair Road South or Atterbury Road. Money for these works would be better spent on more build outs/ trees and cycle lanes. Who will look after "the planting area " opp Denmark Road? Is is a local community project? Will the existing raised tables be improved? They all seem defunct
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Can I please draw attention to the photos which Clive Carter has taken which attempt to show some of the problems from walkers' and cyclists' viewpoints. These are posted on his Flickr pages. He has added some brief commentary, several helpful maps, aerial photos, and other useful data using tools available with the latest version of Google Earth.
Link here
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Looking back at the traffic surveys, Wightman Road often gets 400 vehicles in 15 minutes during rush hour, that's one every 2.25 seconds on average. Attempting to cross the road when that is happening without any proper crossing will be very difficult to say the least.
The refusal to put in proper crossing points is clearly all about maintaining the traffic flow at the expense of pedestrians. If they actually thought the "informal crossing points" would work then they wouldn't install them (or they'd install actual crossing points) as they wouldn't want to risk slowing the traffic down. It is very clearly a fudge so that the council can pretend that they have done something and blame the problem on drivers not stopping rather than their own traffic design.
As others have said, the traffic islands make Wightman Road incredibly dangerous for cyclists (there is a reason why most, myself included, still opt to brave Green Lanes rather than risk Wightman Road). Any design that maintains those traffic islands would be an absolute failure from a cycling point of view.
Even taking the lane and cycling in the middle is no guarantee of safety. I'm a reasonably strong cyclist and ride at a decent pace but plenty of journeys along Wightman will involve a car gunning past me and then swerving back in before the next traffic island. Sometimes they've passed me before they swerve back in, fairly often they've misjudged the speed and swerve back in on me because it's that or hit the traffic island and obviously it's better to risk my life than theirs. (A reasonable number of times they'll just carry on and pass on the right of the traffic island.)
If the council really want to improve Wightman then they need to install proper crossings (in the absence of something more radical such as modal filtering), there isn't really any other option.
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On a 15 minute web trawl, I found the following about informal crossings:
1. They are not mentioned at all in the Highway Code.
2. Highways England's Design Manual for Roads and Bridges includes the following:
At informal at-grade crossings, where NMUs (Non-Motorised Users) are expected to cross without special provision, the difficulty of crossing depends primarily on the width of road to be crossed and the availability of gaps in traffic. As traffic flows increase, the availability of adequate gaps decreases sharply. If delays between gaps become too high, users are likely to either take risks or be discouraged from using the crossing at all.
Table 6/1 provides additional criteria to assist in determining whether informal at-grade crossing facilities are appropriate, based upon Average Annual Daily Traffic flows (AADT). However, these criteria should be seen as a general guide and local factors will also influence the decision.
I'm assuming that Wightman would be classified as a single carriageway. During last year's Haringey Council run traffic survey, Wightman Road carried an average of 16,300 cars a day. This puts it well beyond the recommended AADT for using informal crossings......unless of course Haringey have identified 'local factors which have influenced their decision'.
3. TfL's London Cycling Design Standards publication includes the following:
These facilities do not confer any priority on the user seeking to cross, but can have a positive influence on driver behaviour.
The consultation draft of this publication referred to infomral crossings, perhaps more appropriately, as " ‘Suggested’ crossing places ".
4. 'Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors' is a multi-disciplinary consortium, supported by a wide range of partners in industry, government and advocacy. The researchers are based in Edinburgh, Warwick and Salford, but engage in fieldwork throughout the UK and beyond. Their research includes the following:
Most participants (90%) prefer a crossing where they have control over the traffic in the form of using a signalised crossing.
Least preferred are informal crossings and uncontrolled crossings, footbridges and underpasses. Typical comments from participants are:
“These are risky and confusing because of the uncertainty of who has got right of way”
“A nightmare – you can’t control it at all”5. On the website of Clackmannashire Council:
The simplest type of pedestrian crossing is the informal crossing point, which may include dropped kerbs, tactile paving and a traffic island if road width permits. These are generally used in areas where a formal (controlled) pedestrian crossing cannot be justified.
Drivers are not required to stop at an uncontrolled crossing point. The pedestrian must wait at the kerb until there is a suitable gap in traffic to allow them to cross and should only then cross with due care and attention.
This all seems like a pretty damning case for the prosecution. Now there may be a case for the defence yet to be heard, and I might have jumped too eagerly to conclusions, but on the basis of a rudimentary lay reading of what I found in just 15 minutes, I fail to understand why informal crossings would even be floated as an option, let alone be in the final plan put out for consultation.
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