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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Don't Forget - Wightman Road Closed for 5 months from Next Tuesday (29th March)

In case it's escaped your notice or slipped your mind, Wightman Road will be closed to through traffic for five months starting next Tuesday 29th March.

This will be a significant dislocation to North London traffic movement. So much so that warning notices have been placed as far away as Archway. No doubt it will also have a significant impact on Harringay's traffic.

However, there really is no alternative to at least partial road closure. The railway bridge between Alroy and Wightman roads is being replaced and there will simply be no road for a few months!

One option the Council could have taken would have been to simply reroute the traffic via the Ladder rung roads. It is to their credit, however, they recognised that with over 16,000  vehicles a day using Wightman Road, this would have placed an intolerable burden on our narrow residential roads, already beset by undue traffic volumes.

After consultation with residents, the solution decided upon is to place blocks at regular intervals along Wightman Road, in effect creating clusters of two or three rung roads. Whilst this will retain unfettered access for residents. it will render the whole Ladder, including Wightman, useless as a rat run. You can clearly see the details on the full size pdf map attached below.

Quite what it will mean for traffic in Harringay, Haringey and further afield remains to be seen. Those of us who have been working with the Council on this very much hope that traffic will quickly find other routes. It's fair to say, however, that at very best, we're going to experience some very heavy congestion on Green Lanes for a month or so. 

At the same time, the Harringay traffic study will continue. The coincident timing of this piece of work with the bridge closure may be fortunate in that it will give the consultants an opportunity to study the outcome of diverting traffic away from Harringay. 

A pdf copy of the Wightman Road closure is attached, along with some Council-produced documentation. You can stay up to date with what's happening on the Wightman Road closure on a dedicated page on the council website here.

Tags for Forum Posts: traffic, wightman bridge, wightman bridge closure

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By printing signs that say "No access to Crouch End & Wood Green" they would be giving truth to their lie over the years that the ladder roads are not official rat-runs.

Thanks Hugh.

Also, any chance the gaps could be reduced to stop SMART cars and large motorcycles taking the piss. Surely the road closure should include both cars and motorcycles regardless of size.

Can you sort out a crosswalk at the intersection of Green Lanes and Colina Road before someone gets run over? :)

It's a weird intersection with no crossing, people just kinda stroll out into the path of the cars leaving Colina without realising theres no green man!

Thank you Emina. I would like to say for the record that not suspending parking on Green Lanes during the Wightman Road closure period was the wrong decision in my view. This was suggested at the consultation meetings and I can only imagine that the traders would be the only group who would have opposed doing so.

Actually, proposals were made that parking was suspended on GL, but parking was made available on Ladder rung roads and in the gardens (for free parking (or pay and display, as you please) as used to be the case a few years back). Each road need only offer up 5-6 parking spots for this to work.

I have not had an adequate explanation as to why this suggestion was not taken up.

Most obvious problem is what happens when people wanting to park on Green Lanes turn into a ladder street and find no spaces available. Making people drive up to Wightman and back while becoming increasingly frustrated and impatient doesn't seem like a good idea.

Also, don't most ladder streets already have pay and display spaces at the bottom? So you'd need 5-6 more.

You can juggle these traffic and parking problems all day long. The *only* realistic long term solution is people owning fewer cars and using them less.

And car ownership and usage is dropping but there will always be some traffic. As I've said before I use my car very rarely but still wouldn't be without a car.
Could you please press for an explanation...it seems so obvious

I'll keep trying.

@IanB. I agree, we need less cars, but the reality is that this is not going to happen- so we have to make prevision based on the reality of the situation, of which there are no easy ones.

That's good news if the GL restaurants aren't suffering, though I wasn't expecting them to. I was wondering about La Vina tapas bar at the top of Burgoyne though - not sure how much of their trade was "passing" or customers arrived by car, but it must be a nice quiet place for a meal at the moment. Also The Cabin sandwich bar down by Hampden (who make an excellent halloumi baguette), where it is now bearable to sit outside.

Yes perhaps the cabin could invest in some desk chairs and tables and setup in the road during the day. They're in one of the dead bits where the only traffic is for parking.

The Cabin seem to be doing fine as far as I can tell- much of their trade is actually the railway workers. There are always people in there when I'm passing by.  I wouldn't have thought they would have had much trade from people passing as there's really nowhere to park near them.

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