Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay Traffic meeting Outcome
Exactly three weeks ago today, I added a post on HoL pointing out the failure to convene a traffic meeting about Harringay's traffic. Just over a week later, a meeting seems to have been hurriedly arranged at rather short notice. I'm sure the two events were linked only by coincidence.
That meeting was last night at Alexandra House on Station Road in Wood Green. I was expecting to see a handful of the locals who normally turn up for these things. However, I was surprised to find a large room with about 50 - 100 people, all apparently eager to hear of progress.
We were graciously met at the building's reception desk by traffic boss, Cllr, Mike Hakata. Joking with Mike and looking about his person, I asked him where he was hiding his magic wand. His coy and slightly embarrassed reaction rather set the tone for the evening.
The meeting began with a long and very detailed explanation about why it had taken so long to get yesterday's meeting set up. The room was then given a clear message. In a nutshell, we were given the standard explanation of the past twenty years, that doing anything about traffic on the Ladder is too difficult and that all possibilities had been deemed impractical. Cllr Hakata didn't discount that one day the Council would magically find the solution that has been so stubbornly been evading them all these decades, but for the time being the focus was moving away from reducing traffic volume and on to safety - and away from Wightman and the Ladder rung roads and on to Green Lanes. More on that in just a minute.
Below is a copy of the slide Mike showed to explain the decision to abandon traffic calming on the Ladder.
There was plenty of disgruntled reaction to the slide but surprisingly little direct dissection of it. Having said that, whilst I think most people understand the issue raised in the first point and few have any appetite for clogging up Green Lanes, one person did make the point that once again the Ladder seems to have come at the end of the queue and the bowl is empty. The resident pointed out that with all other through routes already closed off by LTNs or other traffic control blockages, of course options are now limited because traffic is now so concentrated on Green Lanes and Wightman Road.
With regards to the second point on the slide, which essentially indicates technical reasons why filtering won't work on the Ladder, I asked Mike how the filtering currently works for the two school streets. He confirmed what I thought - APNR, but he hurried to add some explanation that now eludes me about why that couldn't work on the Ladder as a whole. I didn't want to get into a pointless disagreement with Mike about that, but as I understand it the LTNs at Hammersmith and Fulham work very effectively100% by APNR, where residents' cars are registered and are excepted from penalties. Clearly it would need more research, but having rechecked my facts this morning, here's what Google AI tells us:
How They Work
Enforcement: ANPR cameras record vehicle registration numbers. Drivers without valid permits who use restricted roads as shortcuts receive fines, which can range from £60 to £130.
Access: The schemes aim to stop out-of-borough traffic from cutting through residential streets, but they do not prevent access to any location within the borough.
Permits and Exemptions:Borough Residents can travel freely through the camera points if their vehicle is registered in the borough.
Visitors to residents can be registered for access using the RingGo app or website.
Carers can apply for free exemptions if they look after residents within the zone.
Some services like Uber have a technical solution to automatically exempt their drivers during a pickup or dropoff in the zone.
Mike swept away further concerns about traffic volumes with a reassurance that those same Ladder School Streets schemes that operate so successfully with APNR are lowering not only the traffic of the streets themselves, they are also having a knock-on effect on the neighbouring streets. The message seemed almost to be that we'll have to content ourselves with that for now.
As to Green Lanes, there are some plans. Mike was at pains to underline how very expensive these plans would be and how many millions each part of the plan would cost. There was no detail on exactly what the treatment would be, but the aim is to target the safety record of the road, which Mike explained is very much the worst in the borough. What we were able to find out is that the plans would see four (or was it five) junctions being somehow remodelled to improve safety. There was no slide to show the details, but from memory, going from North to South, I think those junctions were Turnpike Lane, Frobisher/Alfoxton, Colina Road and Endymion Road.
Quite a number of people suggested that the best solution for Harringay's Green Lanes, costing a fraction of the proposed plans, would be to remove parking from the road entirely, but the room was told that there are no immediate plans to do this. It seems, for some reason he didn't explain, that whilst reducing traffic volume is seen as the key to safety elsewhere in the borough, in Harringay magic roundabouts (or was it junctions) are the trick. Cllr Hakata also seemed unable to give any reassurance that the Green Lanes plans would ensure that traffic wasn't simply displaced on the the Ladder.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the meeting ended in quite a fractious mood with Mike Hakata appearing to be rather testily batting away an unwelcome swarm of autumn bees.
Was I or anyone else at all reassured by last night? No, I don't think so. If anything, I left with heightened concerns about the future for our neighbourhood. This in the year before local elections tells us that they see Harringay as in the bag already, I guess.
I conclude with the cartoon I used for my recent post on this issue and somewhat retract the apologies I gave at the end of that post for my uncharacteristic pessimism.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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Great data. Thanks for adding. It’s no surprise to me to see Enfield right at the bottom of that table. It always feels like the car capital of London. Drive around any residential road and you’re very likely to see enlarged driveways stuffed with multiple vehicles.
Would it be cheeky of me to wonder whether it’s neighbouring boroughs like Enfield that create so much of our through traffic?
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Permalink Reply by Don
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Hugh: You’d be absolutely right. Our erstwhile St Ann’s councillor, the late Julie Davies, told me that Haringey’s Bounds Green residents were up in arms when Enfield created an LTN on their side of the borough boundary, because it just shunted all their traffic across the border. Haringey’s Bounds Green LTN was a direct tit-for-tat response, and it seems clear from Mike Hakata’s slide that you copied above that he also now agrees that LTNs simply displace traffic to other areas and give them problems, rather than being a solution.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Williams
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Are they? The graph shows that a majority of adults in Haringey do not walk (or cycle) somewhere for more than 20 minutes daily. I think that's pretty dire for an urban area. Ok, we're doing way better than somewhere like Enfield, but it's not exactly a benchmark worth celebrating either.
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Plus. As we are well aware, the issue is that the majority of traffic in Haringey begins and ends outside of the borough. This is a classic example of statistics being totally counterintuitive. The residents of Haringey may be walking and cycling, but they are walking and cycling past thousands of cars and vans provided by drivers from other boroughs!
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Camden council is launching Liveable Neighbourhoods - https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-mind-blowingly-good-plans-f...
Why can't Haringey council do the same?
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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THE Cabinet could, but they choose not to. The Council Cabinet are unable or unwilling to bring their Highways Team to heel. The delinquent Council is content to maintain some Neighbourhoods as less-liveable.
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Clive: If I’m understanding you correctly, your overall complaints are that:
Councillors are allegedly in thrall to pro-car Officers and thus prioritise cars over other forms of transport in making planning decisions
The Council is apparently under the influence of local businesses and traders who oppose restrictions on parking or on car access in Green Lanes
The Council is committing to expenditure on its role as a forthcoming borough of culture, a concept to which you are opposed.
So have you, then, got any practical proposals for dealing with the problems of traffic and pollution in Green Lanes and/or a potential solution to the complaints from Ladder residents about excess traffic in their roads (the subjects of this thread)?
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Don, thanks for your reply and constructive challenge.
- (I've made this revised response mainly to correct the year of the Haringey Cycling Action Plan, below)
I fear you haven't interpreted all my comments entirely correctly. Taking your description of my overall complaints in turn:
- First, the Cabinet is by law the Decision-making organ of the council. This is basic. I have previously pointed out that non-Cabinet councillors (back-bench or ordinary) are powerless in transport policy—whatever their views may be—and impotent in much else besides.
"in thrall" could be one description of the Cabinet's relationship with the Highways Department and not least, the Cabinet Member for Highways.
Council departments work in separate silos (or lanes). If one Department drifts from their lane, then they're likely to be told, in effect by traffic in adjacent lanes to stay in your lane. You may think that Highways & Planning are the same or significantly overlap. They aren't and don't:
20 years ago, the council published the excellent Haringey Cycling Action Plan. Unless there were forward-thinking officers in Highways (unlikely) then it was probably written in the Planning Department. Such a sensible paper was unlikely to be produced by the backwoodsmen of the Highways Department. The council have since deleted their 2004 (!) action plan. It now serves only to illustrate chronic backwardness in Haringey Council transport policy.
Public Health (undervalued) is in another separate, sealed-off silo. The Cabinet ought to be able to reconcile or arbitrate between competing goals. But they don't. This is the responsibility of leadership.
The real pre-occupations are to not rock-the-boat and advancement within Kier Starmer's Party. - I am not the only contributor to this thread to remark upon the pro-car, pro-parking, no-change influence of the businesses lining Green Lanes. I invite you to consider making your own enquiries!
- I am sorry if I gave the impression that I am opposed to the concept of London Borough of Culture 2027. I am not opposed to the concept.
If our council's coffers were crammed full, I might be in favour. I am unsupportive of it at a time when the council’s finances are in a terrible, shocking and un-auditable state. Yet the three top culture officers are currently paid around a third of a million pounds annually, between them. Our council is closer than ever to bankruptcy and may soon be on the point of extreme measures, including the uplifting of the Government’s emergency financial package (which would be bad news).
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I welcome your interest in, practical proposals for dealing with the problems of traffic and pollution in Green Lanes and/or a potential solution to the complaints from Ladder residents about excess traffic in their roads.
None of this is rocket science, but the Highways team only talk of keeping the status quo or of impossibility. The traffic problem is man-made and the solutions can be man-made.
You may have noticed I haven’t always lavished praise on Highways, the council's most reactionary department. The solution needs to be much bigger than the piecemeal actions and token-tinkering which it seems is all that Highways can offer.
No solution can come or will come from the current crew. We need a new generation of Highways Engineers (I was reassured on this point by the former Hackney Council Environment Cabinet Member, at least one Labour politician I respect).
The solution can only start with the current personnel in this department. The Highways Cabinet Member and the rest of the Cabinet are unwilling or unable to grasp this nettle. Thus, for the foreseeable future, there is unfortunately no solution in the Ladder, in Harringay or for transport action in Haringey.
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Permalink Reply by Declan
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📣🌳🚌 *Make the Green Lanes cleaner, safer and more welcoming* 🌳🚌📣
The Green Lanes could be so much better - easier to walk, quicker by bus, safer to cross, and a more inviting place to spend time. *Removing parking on both sides from Harringay Green Lanes Station to Turnpike Lane would open the street up* creating clearer views, smoother journeys, and a greener, more attractive high street.
Following on from the public meeting last week, we want to show the Council that we care.
📋Please add your name to this petition for a brighter, safer and more vibrant Green Lanes.
https://www.change.org/p/make-green-lanes-safe-clean-and-welcoming-...
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