Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
No Right Turn - what if we all got one?
One of the options now being looked at on Hewit Rd instead of changing its direction is to have a No Right Turn out of it on to Green Lanes, so i've wondered a bit about No Right Turns. They seem easier to get done than some other changes and people accept them more readily even though in some places they can have quite a dramatic traffic reduction effect as similar as blocking off a road completely.
There are a few existing ones around Harringay to look at to see how they work, on Willougby Rd, Lothair Rd North and South, and a couple over the tracks at Inderwick Rd and Nelson Rd. The Lothair Rd S one is interesting. it happened relatively recently (2008) and still has documents up on the council website, the consultation and report, which shows us how they got it to happen. They had a meeting between residents and the council in December 2006 asking for it and then it got made in Feb 2008.
So where else in Harringay could use a No Right Turn?
Out of Umfreville to Wightman Rd would stop all the traffic that uses Umfreville to bypass Green Lanes, someone even asked for that in the Green Lanes statutory notification, and it could be made exactly like the Lothair Rd South one.
A No Right Turn from Green Lanes into Falkland would prevent all the traffic it gets from Alfoxton Ave/West Green Rd. That could be done like the Lothair Rd N one and with the new pedestrian crossing going in on Green Lanes by Falkland it would be relatively easy to just extend the central island down a bit to block the right turn. That would be good for the northern Ladder plan too because then we wouldn't need to change the Falkland direction.
Where else? It seems like now might be a good time to be asking, who else wants one?
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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My point was that making it better for some roads will probably make it worse for others, and that the whole area should be considered instead of people shouting for their own street.
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I quite agree. The ladder should be treated as a whole picture rather than piecemeal as is the habit in Haringey
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Permalink Reply by ant on
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What is the "whole" area? Why can't an area be just one street? Or could the area be just the northern Ladder roads? Or the Woodlands Park or Gardens areas? Or why would "The Ladder" be the area and not all of Harringay including all of those other areas? Or including Stroud Green too, their traffic mingles with ours? Or all of north London...?
And the precise area aside, why can't smaller easier cheaper changes be done to improve small parts of the area while we wait for the bigger harder changes to fix the entire thing?Nothing is being done to study or model or fix the whole area. There was that big push back in 2011 to try to get something to happen but it just resulted in this. We can sit around waiting but nothing is happening right now, and it wont unless we continue to pester them with things, like this no right turn.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Anything other than a solution for the whole ladder, including Wightman Rd, will just push traffic onto other residential streets. We need to push it back onto Green Lanes where it belongs, sadly the traders do not want this and they appear to have the louder voice.
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I don't think thats true either. A solution for the whole Ladder would be great but its not happening and seems like it is taking some time coming. In the meantime there are things we can change which would make more people better off than worse off, and, they might help lay the ground work for getting more Ladder wide improvements to happen.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Agree with Ant - time is now to start the process to push for change (with local elections next year). Such things take 2-3 years to come into play if successful. Grab a councillor, put the case fwd for the ladder or if that scrambles peoples brains too much the Republic of North Harringay can push it's agenda fwd. You'll need to have lots of meetings though, reps on each road, arguments, consensus (near to), good contacts with the council, funding ideas at London/national level) etc. Commitment people, not just chat on HOL!
Btw, no one that pushed through the re-development of Fairland Park had to involve the Green Lanes Strategy Group - just thinking of current GLSG involvement with Green Lanes re-development. Just needed a councillor that would listen, with one eye on votes coming up.
Take a look at Brownswood Rd and drop the little yellow guy down for a streetview trip. Change, with the piece and quiet that goes with it can happen.
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Why does HoL not count as a meeting and consensus? Why is it constantly disparaged as mere "chat"? You are just repeating the mantra of the local Labour Party who definitely do not want meetings conducted on here. In fact I believe an ex chairman of the Haringey Labour party referred to us as people who should be having these discussions over the back fence, where they belong. Nice.
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In the previous discussion on the Green Lanes scheme, when Hugh commented that "chipping away at the problem is the ONLY way we'll have a chance of a Ladder-wide solution" to our traffic problems, I initially thought that this was not the way to deal with the rat-running on the Ladder and that a Ladder wide traffic management study was required before any changes are made. I'm now inclined to believe this is wishful thinking and that we will have to tackle this problem bit by bit, street by street – and this might only happen on roads where there are willing participants that work towards making a difference.
Unless Frederick Guy's campaign gets off the ground to close Wightman Road to through traffic (which I broadly support), one which was proposed several years ago and appears to have had no traction with the council, I am inclined to believe we have to begin campaigning at a micro level, street by street, to bring some positive change to our traffic woes.
As Ant has commented, a no right turn from Green Lanes into Falkland Road would be perfect for our street. I would loosely estimate that 80% of the traffic on this road originates from West Green Road taking a short cut to Wightman Road to head southbound toward Finsbury Park (and possibly to return to Green Lanes further south) when this traffic should remain on Green Lanes.
It might cause inconvenience to some residents of Falkland Road who drive (myself included) but this should be weighed up against the improvement this would lead to - after all this road has the main entrance to North Harringay Primary School and has Fairland Park at it's western end. It should be a quiet and peaceful road, but it's far from it; the number of vans, lorries, cabs and general traffic is ridiculous.
What do other Falkland Road residents think?
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Permalink Reply by Paul Harvey on
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I'm not a big fan of pushing problems other people's way, as this would inevitably do - in this instance all of the traffic would be pushed towards the next available route to Wightman Road, which is Effingham Road. I'm not sure how willing the residents of Effingham road would be to this proposal. You'd effectively create another round of 'them and us' that we saw between Hewit Road residents and others when that proposal was being discussed. Not pleasant pitching residents of one road against another.
If that were successful though, then you'd get Effingham Road residents campaigning to have the same 'no right turn' imposed at the bottom of their road, thus pushing the traffic towards Allison Road. Same situation would occur, with Allison residents going directly against Effingham Road residents to keep their roads traffic free (ish). Doesn't bode well for a neighbourly atmosphere in the area.
One thing I do agree on though is that we should do all we can to keep traffic away from roads with schools and public parks on, where there is a much higher number of local children walking up and down and crossing roads etc.
It strikes me that there are enough people on this site who feel strongly about these traffic issues to carry out a decent consultation with residents in the area. By this you'd need to be prepared to design a questionnaire or consultation document and go round knocking on doors canvassing opinion. Only then will you get a real feel for what people around here think. As much as HoL is useful for discussing issues and getting a sense for what some folk think - it's not necessarily representative of what a broader ladder population is thinking, that's ultimately why the council won't take discussions on this site too seriously. I think if some of these proposals being muted were backed up by some serious support, then the Council would be much more likely to pay attention.
Might be worth asking the powers that be if a large consultation of this nature carried out by knocking on all doors in the area would get the attention of decision-makers, and if not - what they would want to see in terms of 'public opinion' before they were willing to take more notice.
I work as a researcher, so would be happy to help people design some questions and an approach to conducting an exercise of this nature. Isn't going to be complicated - but would need a good number of people willing to put some time in.
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I don't think we should use phrases like "all of the traffic would..." even profesional traffic planners with proper traffic counts can't make such definitive predictions. Some of the traffic might go to Effingham but it would only be a portion of the existing Falkland traffic.
Agree about the rest of what you said though, in fact, i asked the council the other day about us doing a resident survey or consultation, seems everyone is away on holiday at the moment though so we need to wait a week or two to hear back from them about it.
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Yep - by "all of the traffic" I was referring to the portion of the traffic that typically uses the road purely as a short-cut to Wightman to head south rather than stick on Green Lanes..
As it gets pushed farther south before being allowed to cut up to Wightman Road, then increasing amounts will probably just stick with Green Lanes I suppose... impossible to predict I agree.
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Personally I imagine a load of water rushing downhill through the streets from South Tottenham towards Harringay and myself sat about 50m above Green Lanes watching it all. It's not a valid model at all but it is free and a useful tool for thinking, traffic does behave like water in some respects. My point is that no, not all of the traffic that would have turned right into Falkland will go into Effingham but enough would. And in fact if you stand at the 29 bus stop in the morning and watch, most people take Falkland but a few move down to Effingham to make their right hand turn.
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