Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

For those of you who are active on HoL, you'll be very much aware of Haringey Council's transport study. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for all Harringay's residents to have their say on how best to reduce our excessive traffic burden. To that end, we want to ensure that all residents are FULLY informed on the options available.

Unlike Haringey Council, we do not have a juggernaut PR system pushing our message, or the money to pay for it. So we are asking for your help. We want to raise money to fund a print run of leaflets for Wightman and all the Ladder roads, plus other events to raise awareness.

If you'd like to help us raise funds for the second phase of our campaign; to create a safer, healthier, happier Harringay for everyone, then please click the link below which will take you to our Just Giving page.

Thank you.

Yes, I would like to help raise £700 to fund leaflets If you'd like more information, or get involved, please check out our Living Wightman Blog or Facebook Page.

Tags for Forum Posts: harringay traffic study, traffic

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John: I haven't read the book you've linked to but did look at the summary, so I've got your point, I think! My comment to Knavel was that Harringay is residential across the whole area, and I'd suggest that this needs to be borne in mind. Antoinette made the point about buses; isn't it better to accommodate 50 - 60 people in the road space that roughly two cars would otherwise take up? If side roads are "made so aggravating" that cars all try to use Green Lanes - also a residential road - instead, it seriously interferes with public transport, which isn't in anyone's interests. (Yes, I'll take another look at the TfL bus flow charts when I've time.)

@Antoinette - No. It's just something else to be addressed. A dedicated bus lane for instance.

@Don - The other roads you mention have the high amount of traffic flow priced into them. I readily concede that Wightman Road owners also benefit from such pricing, ~25% lower than eg., on the Ladder.  I have talked about the economics a number of times in different discussions on this topic.  

I wanted the bollards along the Harringay Passage for this reason but that is no longer on offer from the council. So I support the filtering knowing that if the council chooses it, the price of a house on WR will jump £200k that second. 

But that's fine by me as there is a need for a cycling route north south that is something under horrifically dangerous, which is how I feel on Green Lanes and Wightman Road as a bicyclist.

Put in your offer for a flat on WR now if you think filtering will carry with the council :)

Don, Green Lanes is partially residential but it's also an A road designed underneath for the heavy traffic that it takes. As Wightman has become more of a rat run for large commercial vehicles avoiding this A route it has become necessary to almost continually fix gas leaks and water leaks on it. Indeed during the bridge closure an opportunity was taken to try to fix the problem once and for all but I notice they're now doing this work on Hornsey Park Rd too (also residential).

When people say that a road is residential they mean that it was not designed for large amounts of traffic. Green Lanes used to have trams running along it. It doesn't get more commercial than that.

Nick: here's a chart showing the vehicles per hour on each of the westbound rungs on 6th Jan 2016:

You can see that 4 of them exceed 100 vehicles per hour for several hours each day.

& here is the eastbound rungs on 6th Jan:

In this case, 6 or 7 rungs exceeding 100 vehicles per hour.

And here is the same chart with all rungs, plus the four points at which Wightman traffic was measured:

Click the picture for full size view. Remember that Wightman is exactly the same width as the rungs, the same residential character, the same distance from your living room window to the traffic outside (actually closer thanks to pavement parking).

Clearly it's an area wide problem, the Harringay Ladder is a rat-runner's paradise, the faintest hint of a queue on Wightman or GL and you just cut-through the next rung.

And needs an area-wide solution viz. filtering Wightman.

Knavel: You've lost me... I wasn't talking about property prices, which are a separate issue altogether, but the fact that the roads that would have to cope with fallout from the "aggravation" you want are themselves also residential. Yes, Green Lanes has commercial property, but it isn't the M25 and it wasn't only "developed to carry traffic from point A to point B"; it's a major shopping street for people right across the area, it's where many of them live - and it also wasn't designed for the volume of traffic it currently has, let alone any more. I think the many residents of GL and other non-Ladder roads who would be seriously affected by Wightman closure are too often overlooked in the discussions here. (And no, I'm not planning to move to try and take advantage of possible rising property prices.)

John: I understand your point about road engineering but I think the water/gas/LX infrastructure's so knackered problems break out anywhere; I remember GL being closed by burst mains successively over a few months at Wood Green, Turnpike Lane and the junction of St Ann's some years ago. If the Wightman problem's primarily heavy lorries, wouldn't your chicane solution fit the bill nicely? It can't be hard to leave a space wide enough for an Iceland van to get through while stopping Jewson artics, but without closing the road completely; it already happens on Woodlands Park. (I'd also bring back the trams on GL, by the way, but I don't see that as an option on the Haringey consultation.)

Joe, my point was about the ladder rungs. You frequently claim they are used for rat running, but the average traffic flow is low. Before the closure, did you not estimate 90% of the traffic on the ladder rungs was due to rat runners? And the actual figure - around 50%?

A few outliers aside (Warham), traffic is fairly evenly distributed. 

As for Wightman - many 'B' roads are narrow - Black Boy lane is one of them, and carries two bus routes as well as substantial traffic. Would you propose filtering here as well?

Don, the "aggravation" point you have seized upon is a shorthand version for the public policy that has been missing from this discussion--the policy being to reduce vehicles on the road even if it takes coercive means. A good example of this is the Mayor's £24 congestion tax on diesel vehicles.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4378412/Diesel-drivers-face...

Isn't a good way to describe £24/day to who has to pay as an "aggravation"?

Look, I actually don't care what arguments anyone has here because they are all specious and self-centred. There is no way to justify for the 10 vehicles at a time--many very large and heavy--that use my street as a cut through every two minutes.  It needs to stop as a matter of deference to residents and adherence to public policy to discourage the use of private vehicles. End of.

And finally, Antoinette, I look forward to meeting you in person as you wait for vehicles to pass so you can cross my street to get to the continuation of the Passage on the other side.  That day will come, mark my words.  I'm the guy who rolls out his bike from the garden door on the Passage. Do say hello!

Tris, there were many beneficiaries of the closure of the Gardens outside of the Gardens. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the figure for rat-running in the gardens was 600 cars a day down some roads? These cars disappeared from the bottom of the ladder only to reappear at the top north of Seymour.

I would also mention that it ended the career of the politician who implemented it against his colleagues wishes just to show he could.

Knavel: I wouldn’t disagree with you about overall public policy and I’d support a diesel tax, which probably would indeed cause “aggravation”. But the public policy point is why I suggested that closing Wightman isn’t an answer, because it just shifts the problem sideways, and said earlier that I believe area traffic planning has to start at the North Circular and Seven Sisters at the very least. In the short term, it’s why I think John McMullan’s chicane proposal - limiting the largest vehicles, allowing smaller ones through - would be a far more practical solution to Wightman traffic than closure. In an ideal world, I’d massively improve public transport to encourage people not to drive, including reinstatement of a London tram network (Ken Livingstone’s plans were strongly opposed in west London by people who disliked the potential traffic disruption on “their” streets) and it’s why I wrote about the benefits of the Overground. Trams in GL, far fewer parking places and big restrictions on heavy lorries? Now that would be radical.

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