Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Oxford Street to be pedestrianised by 2020 ... so Wightman Rd ...
... 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
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on
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And 75% of drivers that use it, which may be in the hundreds of thousands will probably say they wouldn't like it closed.
The people friendly London idea needs to be joined up and ultimately help the majority of people and look at the big picture or it will come to nothing at all.
Haringey should propose trialing a borough wide idea which is centrally planned, well researched and which learns from its mistakes.
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Permalink Reply by Natasha * on
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75% of who? The wight man road residents? I highly doubt that figure includes residents of surrounding areas, or is in fact independent verifield.
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Permalink Reply by Anna Maria Dipino on
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So what.
We are not in Italy.
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Permalink Reply by Toni Ramon Gallo on
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Brava Anna
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Speaking as one of the (apparently) few on HoL living on the wrong side of the tracks - well, Green Lanes, actually, as I'm in Glenwood - and as a totally-frustrated bus user, who doesn't drive and has shonky knees which mean I don't cycle and can't walk as much as I'd like, so therefore also use taxis from time to time (except at present, as a significant local road seems to be closed and is playing hell with the traffic flow in the vicinity)…. I would support the long-term closure of Wightman Road if all those on here urging it would agree to have their own cars fitted with a device that prevents them EVER driving down a residential road anywhere in London that isn't an A road and using clever "short cuts" - or "rat runs" as their residents no doubt call them - to get from Harringay to anywhere else.
Seriously: The railway's an impenetrable barrier on the west; the Gardens are blocked on the east; so Green Lanes, which was always bad, is now often impassable. Yes, it'd be lovely if everyone cycled, walked or jogged but - as Antoinette and others have said - life can't always be like that. I'd happily pay more tax if it guaranteed cheaper, more frequent public transport (bring back trams) and I'd rather not use a car, even as a passenger, but that's a long-term objective and increased taxation isn't exactly a vote-winner either. In the short term, other than building a new railway bridge from Harringay to Hornsey, we're stuck with the geography as it is. Any solution has to look at the whole area, preferably from the North Circular down to Seven Sisters Road, because we have Victorian streets and too much traffic of all kinds. Expedient solutions just shift the problem to the next-nearest road.
Now: hands up all those in Wightman and the Ladder who cheered when Gardens residents - so often stigmatised on here for allegedly having undue influence on the council/councillors - got barriers and bollards on their roads, pushing more traffic onto Green Lanes and (is it possible?) onto Ladder roads as well….
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Don, you're not one of the few on HoL from East of Green Lanes. Neither are you one of the few from East of Green Lanes who post. On the traffic topic, I think you'll find at least as many comments speaking our against the closure of Wightman Road as for it.
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Thanks, Hugh; it was Friday evening after a long, hot week and it can sometimes seem on this and the many other Wightman closure threads that the views of those living elsewhere in Harringay don't always register as strongly - though of course it's a big issue for those living on or adjacent to it, which is what this thread's all about. And yes, not all comments are in favour of long-term closure.
I was hoping to (perhaps not lightly enough) suggest that inevitably everyone thinks they're not the problem - it's always "someone else" who causes it. This is human nature, not a criticism of anyone specifically, but it is a factor in the current debate. I wish I had a viable solution to suggest that would help Ladder residents without making things worse elsewhere in the area, but I haven't. Traffic problems are linked in to many other problems: lack of affordable inner-city housing, long commutes, poor and expensive public transport (imagine living anywhere on the Southern rail franchise at present), London's expanding population… They all need long-term solutions but I'm not convinced local tinkering necessarily contributes - hence also my final point about the knock-on effect of the Gardens closure.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Don, hopefully the consultants will come up with some suggestions that work for the area as a whole. Traffic jams work for no one. Those trams you'd like back were ripped out initially in California in the 50s when car companies bought the tram companies, closed them down and dismantled the networks. The trams were in the way, literally, of expanding their car ownership ambitions.
I had the pleasure of cycling in Beijing in 1990 with 1000s of other local cyclists. There were practically no cars. Now of course they have something like 5 ring roads, traffic gridlock, pollution that causes alerts to stay inside and even local environmental groups. Is that progress? And of course a good slice of each individual's income goes into running and maintaining that car. As you say, there are other ways of getting from A to B.
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Matt - No, of course the Chinese experience isn't a good example and Beijing's pollution is legendarily awful. I'm no die-hard defender of internal combustion engines; give me bikes, electric cars, trams and railways anyday. As I've just said in a response to Hugh, London's problems stem from multiple factors, including lack of affordable inner-city housing, long commutes, poor and expensive public transport and the expanding population. They need an integrated response that persuades people of the greater good, but it's an uphill struggle - look at the anti-tram campaign mounted by Ealing residents when Ken Livingstone proposed a line from Shepherd's Bush - and there are far too many vested interests (your car company example, house-builders, property developers, etc) fighting for their own profits. But, in our area, I don't think a short-term fix for one space will help the overall problem. Maybe the consultants will come up with a holistic solution - we shall see.
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