... can surely be closed to through traffic in the future, as it currently is during the bridge works. If the planners can deal with the re-routing of all those buses and taxi journeys away from Oxford Street for the pedestrianisation plans, it must be possible to do this for Wightman Road as well.
Living Wightman would do well to have a chat with the new Mayor's office.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic, wightman bridge closure
The Gardens were closed to through traffic with one set of bollards and one gate. How do you propose to apply this solution to the ladder?
Quite. The poor residents and workers on Turnpike Lane for one, who must have it worse than GL, given it's the only route across now.
What about the residents in other areas (Crouch End for one) that have closed off their residential roads to through traffic. The bleating on the Crouch End facebook group truly was astonishing nimbyism.
Natasha - I'm with you on this one. I have great sympathy for Wightman/ladder residents who obviously suffer from pollution and traffic noise (though Antoinette, for one, on here seems to be almost a lone voice in saying that she will welcome the Wightman reopening even as a ladder resident), but failure to acknowledge the knock-on effect of closure on the rest of the area seems self-centred at best.
Human nature is that everyone thinks the problem is always "other people". I have asked on several threads a) for a definition of the "local traffic" that vocal closure supporters want to restrict access to, b) how people define the majority of Wightman traffic as "through" traffic and not "local" (since even Turnpike Lane to Endymion could be classed as a "through" journey) and c) if the same people can swear that they have never, ever, used a residential road in London as a short-cut - or "rat-run" as locals would no doubt call it.
Nobody has defined "local" and, unsurprisingly, nobody has sworn that they've never cut through somebody else's residential area - in London, it's impossible not to.
Of course instinct suggests that many Wightman journeys are by people who don't live in Harringay, but nobody actually knows because there hasn't been any research into journey start and end points. I count myself as a “local” because I live off Green Lanes, use local shops and work mostly at home. As a non-driver I sometimes take a cab from the cab office by the GL/St Ann's junction to Kentish Town or Gospel Oak, which uses Allison, Wightman and Endymion; by some definitions, this is a “through” journey, even though it starts barely 50 metres from the foot of a ladder road. So how wide an area would a restriction to “local” traffic cover?
As you say, expedient closure of Wightman creates major problems in Green Lanes, which both you and I are suffering from. Any solution has to consider the whole Harringay/Turnpike Lane/Wood Green area, not just one bit in isolation.
I completely disagree. I was never bothered about the pollution on my ladder road. I don't actually spend more than a couple of minutes a day walking on my own road, I spend a considerably greater amount of time on Green Lanes inhaling fumes for a greatly increased period of time and at much higher volumes.
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