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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

I hope all you who have the vote in Harringay will remember tonight ( and certainly other nights to come ) and at the next election vote out the incompetent shower responsible for the introduction of the LTN.

My weekly 5-minute journey from Wightman Road to Green Lanes took 45 minutes, including  30 minutes to go the length of Hampden Road. Yes, I know that there was a burst water main. But in happier times traffic would have been distributed across the roads now blocked off and not confined to Green Lanes. Yes, I know that I could have taken a bus to sit in the same traffic jam as I did this evening but in any case there aren't any buses between my house and the bottom of Effingham Road. 

I understand the concerns of those residents living in the LTN who hope that the pollution in their streets will be reduced but don't the residents of Green Lanes, Turnpike Lane and Wightman Road breathe ? don't their children have lungs ?. Where did the Council think the LTN traffic would go ? 

And please don't suggest to this disabled person that I could have cycled.  I couldn't.

Tags for Forum Posts: low traffic neighbourhoods, traffic

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Elizabeth — I’d agree with you about choosing train over car (not least as I don’t drive), but apparently thousands of others don’t. What I’m trying to say is that the bulk of the problem emanates outside Harringay, not inside. LTNs primarily make life difficult, time-consuming and inconvenient for local residents, forcing more traffic onto major roads that are already crowded and sacrificing the wellbeing of those living on so-called “boundary roads” for the benefit of the enclaves within. But the major problem of through traffic starts miles away. Telling Harringay residents to walk or cycle isn’t going to deal with the root causes, so sorting out Green Lanes should be the priority because that will give the most effective help. I don’t have stats for traffic that doesn’t originate in the borough, but I’m sure there are many on here who do; I’ve always read, on various HoL threads, that the biggest throughput in the area is commuter traffic from elsewhere, so isn’t that where to start?

Can you see the carpark in this map, just south of Harringay off Tollington?

That's a school, the carpark is usually full during school hours. Do you think they pay for that parking? There are lots of other examples.

Don, one of the main impacts of an LTN is that it discourages through traffic. The current congestion is caused because traffic passing through the borough can't cut through the LTNs, so they are forced onto the main artery roads. The result of this is that they are (a) discouraged by the car use and choose another, greener mode of transport, which is more likely for local residents (b) independently choose another route to avoid the congestion or (c) are taken another route by their satnavs avoiding the congestion on the snarled up main artery road. This is a logic that few people who are anti-LTN seem to grasp, while showing little respect for the evidence of this proven by established LTNs across the world. You can't stop journeys starting and ending outside of Haringey, but you can do something about it when they get here. 

You constantly say that the public transport isn't good enough for those who live in/near the LTNs but I just don't think that is true.

London has, by far, the best public transport in the UK and pretty frequently rated top ten in the world. There may be certain journeys that are difficult or accessibility issues but, for the majority, it's not as if taking public transport is a great hardship.

I’m originally from the north east and often go back to visit.  The Tyne and Wear metro has about the same coverage as London overground and is less frequent, half or even hourly bus services are common, different operators only accept certain tickets and it costs far more to travel compared to London

Michael would you consider saying a little about changes you've seen in the Tyne and Wear Metro  over the years?.
In the mid 1980's I did some participatory research with a family support team in the poorer West End of Newcastle. As I remember, the "Transfare" system seemed very cheap and convenient.  I recall one journey Bus+metro to Whitley Bay to interview someone. Later seeing some women who'd caught the same bus with kids and pushchairs in the sunshine at the sea front.

It was a fair service until deregulation in the 80s.  From then multiple companies would run on the most lucrative routes.  It was not uncommon to get 3 different companies running the same route and arriving in tandem, each one trying to undercut the other’s fares.  Eventually many went bust and the services not going in and out of city centres, those where there wasn’t much money to be made, never really recovered and those that did were infrequent and ended at 6pm.

Some companies have joined the Nexus conglomerate where a pass is accepted by a number of operators while others have declined to cooperate meaning you sometime need multiple tickets to get to your destination depending which company runs the routes.

The Metro is very Newcastle and Tyneside centred.  The bit that goes to Sunderland shares a line with trains from Hartlepool to Newcastle which restricts how often it runs.  There have been plans for a couple of decades to run it along the route of a colliery line out towards Washington, though this has never materialised.

Exactly why LTNs are necessary…to get these drivers specifically, and more, out of their cars, to walk or use public transport.

This is a good point. Getting people onto public transport, riding pushbikes or walking requires an element of culture change. However, I haven't seen any discussion about why many people prefer to use or are compelled to use cars and why the alternatives don't always appeal or work for them. It's not just because they are lazy or don't care about the environment. 

I moved to the Ladder in 1986 and was there a while - traffic was a problem then. There was never any point getting a bus to or from Manor House for eg. as you could walk faster.

I also don't see why anyone would try and use the Ladder to avoid traffic - even doing a wiggle down Ladder roads to Duckett's Common to avoid the Turnpike Lane crossroads going East hardly saves any time. Where are all the cars supposed to be going?

Elzabeth — Isn’t the very point you make the reason people use the Ladder and Wightman? GL is a nightmare, especially at rush hours (often at weekends, too), so anyone driving between Manor House and the N Circular (or points in between) wants to find any available route around the jams. Buses get slowed and become very unreliable because of the congestion, so public transport isn’t seen as a viable alternative. Haringey need to realse that the railway line and its only two crossing points funnel traffic onto GL, but their only solution to date seems to have been to tacitly promote Wightman as the GL bypass, including re-configuring its junction at Turnpike Lane to give better access to/easier avoidance of the Wood Green chicane on GL. The side roads problem stems from GL being far too narrow for traffic flow it wasn’t designed to carry, while the Ladder geography compounds it by intoducing constant interruptions from traffic turning in or out, so vehicles are always spilling out from GL. But closing the side roads just increases the pressure, because there are then no safety valves and everything clogs up. A comprehensive GL plan to reduce long-distance through traffic at source, plus parking reduction and bus prioritisation, would go a long way to making GL a functional high street serving Harringay residents and giving them access in and out of the area for other things they might want to do (such as getting on a bus to go to work).

except you save 1 or 2 mins max and have to do far more right and left turns. People in traffic need to be less impatient. They are the cause of their own woes. 

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