Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay Ladder traffic 'project' timelines
Last Thursday, there was a video meeting between Mike Hakata, Haringey's traffic boss, and local people. Sadly, I was on a flight back from a short break and was unable to attend. I've asked for the slides they used and will share those when I get them. In the meantime, Jim Leedham of Harringay Ladder Healthy Streets (HLHS), has sent out a copy of the timeline slide. I share that below. If anyone else attended the virtual meeting and can offer some comment, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how it went.
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Tags for Forum Posts: hlhs, low traffic neighbourhoods, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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The ladder is now surrounded by not just the railway and a major park, but everybody else's traffic calming measures. North of Turnpike Lane is not a through route because of measures taken to stop traffic making progress through all the residential streets, apart from Hornsey Park Road, which filters through traffic off of and onto Wightman. To the right only West Green Road, Belmont Road, Woodlands Park Road and St Ann's Road allow through traffic. Then of course we are down to the gardens closure from 2006, which was done to garner FIVE votes from Labour members in the gardens at a selection meeting.
South of that, Hermitage is closed off and further south Wood Berry Grove is closed to through traffic and there is no right hand turn heading north on Green Lanes into Seven Sisters which filters more traffic down Green Lanes until it can turn right at St Ann's.
We're then at the park and the two railway lines. Nineteen streets averaging 420m long are wide open to through traffic cutting between Wightman and Green Lanes. Some of it is supposedly banned HGV traffic that does not want to use the North Circular north of the ladder because it is messy there.
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Permalink Reply by Don on
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John McM — This exactly backs up the points I and Pacific Flower made earlier. Harringay already suffers from the impact of other people’s road closures, and if the oft-reiterated complaint about the Gardens is to be believed, the effects on neighbouring areas of LTNs are long-term and continuous.
LTN proponents generally take a narrow, individualistic view: get the traffic out of my street and assume it’ll somehow either go elsewhere or magically “evaporate”. There’s no consideration for the extended necessary journeys some people have to make around the exclusion zone, adding miles and pollution to journeys, or the impact on those who live on boundary roads or major arteries. Doesn’t anyone actually live on Green Lanes or West Green Road? What about their right to lower pollution?
To add to your list, the east side of GL will be impenetrable from Hermitage to Wood Green, and if the Ladder/Wightman are closed, it looks as though Harringay might as well be declared “closed” at Manor House for good.
What irks me most is that there’s no sign of Haringey council (or any others) taking the lead in reducing pollution by committing to electrifying all their fleet vehicles and insisting that all utility and delivery vehicles across London must be electric; after all, this is the rule for black cabs now, so why not BT, DPD, Royal Mail, Veolia, et al? At a time when TfL is scrapping or amalgamating bus routes and reducing services, it’s individuals who are told to bear the brunt of road closures and inconvenience instead — not what you’d hope elected representatives would support; but, then, plant pots and barriers are cheaper than doing anything involving strategic thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I’d be interested in what you think should be done. I’ve lived with traffic pollution and noise for 38 years on Warham Road (an ordinary 100% residential street) and am getting a tad impatient for change
PS. We’ve had 38 years of promises that “something” would be done
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Permalink Reply by Pacific_Flower on
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Hello, I'm definitely in support of reducing traffic pollution for the whole neighbourhood and to make it more enjoyable to walk along Wightman and Greenlanes without a lung full of carbon monoxide.
The proposals look good, I'd just like to learn more about any traffic flow modelling that's been done and what it reveals in terms of the impact on Greenlanes and the change of traffic levels on individual Ladder Roads. Transparency on this is important. I live on a relatively quiet Ladder Road and as to be expected, I wouldn't want to see a sudden increase in traffic, even if it's local, residents just trying to access their streets.
And I sympathise, it must be frustrating on Warham Road to have traffic lights, which seemingly encourage through traffic from St Ann's Road.
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My suggestions, Michael?
Invest more in public transport — unless it improves first, why would people give up their cars? Frequent, safe, reliable buses, tubes and Overground are essential if people are to get to work, shops, friends and leisure activities. At present, TFL is going in the opposite direction, giving progressively less and less incentive to use it and increasing the need for cars and taxis.
Filter the GL/N Circular junction to stop GL being such an arterial route — maybe prevent traffic turning from one road to the other in morning and evening peaks (ie keep access to/from Palmers Green and along the N Circ, but no turning off).
Banish or severely reduce car parking in GL from Endymion to the Salisbury; add a northbound bus lane and prioritise buses. Enforce specific loading and delivery hours for shops, with wardens, cameras and fines (how many tickets do Tesco -- admittedly just beyond the Salisbury — currently factor into their running costs with impunity?).
Combine with all other boroughs and the Mayor’s office to ban service vehicles (BT, DPD, British Gas, Post Office, et al), council vehicles and their contractors such as Veolia from using anything other than electric vehicles.
Locally, install electric charging points on every Haringey road, either as stand-alone hubs or on lamp-posts, since the government has already announced the end of the road for petrol and diesel vehicle manufacture.
Tackling noise and pollution needs to be London-wide; at present, individual councils (cf Enfield, referred to above) create piecemeal “solutions” that just make their problem somebody else’s headache. Haringey’s current road closure plan simply shifts the traffic from one side of GL to the other; if what I read here is to be believed, at least part of your problem in Warham was caused by closure of the Gardens, so blocking lots of other roads doesn’t sound as though it’ll make it any better!
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Permalink Reply by PeterPiper on
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"At present, TFL is going in the opposite direction,..."
This seems to be a deliberate policy dreamt up and driven from 10 Downing Street, not City Hall. All was going well for TfL prior to the Covid pandemic, and Downing Street knew it. Instead of supporting TfL in the same manner that mainline rail services were, the govement waited until TfL was nearly bankrupt before taking any supportive action which has been linked and conditioned to redundancies & cuts.
Its the same old playbook of profits before people, promoting active travel without supplying and providing public transport at affordable prices.
Probably the best means of getting more people using public transport is the current high price of fuel resulting in more people leaving their cars behind. Now that the weather is getting warmer active travel becomes more appealing.
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Another dodgy link to a blog for you that shows how traffic has significantly increased on London's residential roads since the widespread use of sat-navs.
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I find no fault with any of those suggestions but how many more years do I wait before I can open my front windows? I’m really tired of being at the back of the queue for improvements to the Ladder that will stop it being a drive though for motorists.
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Permalink Reply by Claudia Matthews on
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wow. I have read everything you said and i agree with you entirely! Close one road and apparently do not worry about anyone else... the people in LTN's are equallu dissatisfied because they have added extra miles and time on their commutes.
The council's that once boosted of these LTN's are now taking them down after spending tax payers money, inconviniencing residents and unnecessarily charging road users in fines! I really hope the people of haringey take head from these failed projects and seek rather for other more practical alternatives.
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Permalink Reply by Barrie Birch on
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There was an air of positivity at this webinar to get proper consultation and negotiated solutions from Haringey councillors and professionals. However ,i reserve judgement. I cannot trust Haringey to source traffic issues after they devised such a pig's ear of a cock up in the recent Wightnan Rd "improvement". I question the competance all staff and politicians who devised this scheme. What a mess. I hope the change it but am sceptical as it would be an admission of failure.
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Peter Piper - (Can't reply directly under your comment because of the limit on comments per post) Yes, TfL is being mecilessly pounded by the government, with constant short-term and inadequate funding tranches arriving only just in time to prevent bankruptcy. It's obviously a deliberate policy that started when Boris Johnson, as Mayor, did an unscrupulous deal with then-Chancellor George Osborne to completely remove central government funding for TfL, making it entirely reliant on fares and commercial income; with the collapse of public transport in the pandemic, TfL's revenue almost completely vanished, so the Treasury is now calling the shots - hence restrictions on Freedom Passes and lots of other cuts. It contrasts starkly with the billions handed out to privatised rail companies, which get idealogically-driven support while publicly-owned services such as TfL are hammered. But no doubt a calculation has been made in Downing Street that those who rely on public transport in London don't vote Tory anyway.
Having said that, the rot had also set in before Covid struck: in 2018 and 19 TfL made many major cuts to central London bus routes, abolishing them, amalgamating them or reducing services, partly on the basis of a disputed survey that claimed to show bus use falling. Ironically, some of the most serious cuts were the scrapping of routes along Oxford Street on environmental grounds (to reduce pollution), probably underpinned by the thwarted expectation of Crossrail opening to take up the excess passengers. This looks like unintended (or ignored) consequences: take action to improve air quality with one hand but make life harder and more inconvenient for the people it's supposed to benefit with the other. Maybe Haringey council could consider this before closing roads willy-nilly in LTNs.
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