Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Wightman road - surely 6 lane junction at north end creates extra traffic?
There's a lot of ongoing discussions on this site regarding local traffic issues, with the volume of traffic on Wightman road a key issue, both making Wightman road unpleasant (even with the poorly signposted 20 zone), and creating more traffic on the ladder.
Given this, I was amazed a couple of weeks ago to see the design of the junction of Wightman road & Turnpike line, which basically tells drivers 'come on in, this is a big through road'...
Wightman road at this junction has an amazing 6 lanes, in strong contrast to the one each way further south.
Maybe traffic volumes would reduce if there was a redesign of this junction, narrowing down & making Wightman Road much less attractive to through traffic?
If you don't see the junction often (I was on a passing bus), then the google street view of the junction is here (if the very long URL survives...):
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocod...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by juliet solomon on
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There is a history to why the Wightman Road junction is as it is, and it has to do with the old GLC plans for "motorway boxes" and Ringways One, Two and Three. Wood Green was implicated in this; if you look carefully, up the buildings, I am reliably informed that you can still see what would have been part of the concrete supports to a massive flyover. If you look through all the old plans you will see what the logic was behind Wightman Road; and the engineer who designed it took the utmost care (and was very proud of it). Then all the other policies changed. . . . .
The trouble is with projects like this junction is that they have a long lead time, and often by the time the construction is more or less finished, the original idea is effectively out of date. (Sometimes, as in the case of the Wood Green gyratory that, mercifully, never saw the light of day, the long lag saves the day, though).
The way to get round this is wholesale demolition etc., - not a solution many Londoners would welcome - I think most people would rather muddle through trying to improve things as far as possible.
Juliet Solomon (Cllr).
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That fits with the weird design for that north junction on Wightman....
Here's a detailed site on the plan for Ringways 1-3 (including one further in from here):
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/
It looks like the direct link with Wightman might be the 'Possible North London Radial', which is of slightly uncertain alignment:
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/northern/pnlr.shtml
On this google map view it is marked as being to the West of the East Coast Mainline, but given the uncertainty of the route then maybe it was also being looked at on the East? This would have meant demolition of Wightman:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http...
There's a another look at the Ringways (and earlier plans) here:
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I recommend checking out some of the junctions on the google map!!
There's a great motorway junction on top of Camden, and massive one in the centre of Dalston! They seemed keen to use railways lines as routes - the North London Line & the East Coast Mainline around here.
Those planners.... I remember hearing that the public reaction to the elevated section of the Westway was a key element in killing off most urban motorway plans in London:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westway_(London)
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