Car-bloat and the council

LIKE some of their owners, cars have put on weight over recent years.

The phenomenon of carspreading likely began a couple of decades ago in the US with sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Bigger vehicles allowed bigger prices and bigger bigger profits to auto makers. This trend was then picked up by European car manufacturers.

Bigger vehicles offer more protection in a crash and may be fine on motorways (although high slab-sides are more vulnerable to side-winds and rollover). However in built-up areas like Haringey, they also offer more danger for pedestrians and cyclists and take up more room on our largely Victorian-era roads.

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Haringey Council—for transport policy and practice—is surely one of the most backward authorities in London.

Their Highways team is ill-equipped to respond to the evidence of more and more cars and more bigger and heavier vehicles. If highways department staff have noticed this trend then—given their lack of imagination—they may be thinking in terms of lengthening and/or widening parking spaces to accommodate Haringey's minority of car owners.

It's equivalent to a fat person loosening their belt, rather than going on a diet and taking exercise.

Apart from making tiny, tinkering tweaks to junctions and carriageways, the Highwaymens' goal is to enable as much parking as possible for the car-owning minority and preserving official pavement parking on more than 100 roads.

Each extra parking space tends to increase council parking income but each such space adds to Borough congestion and pollution for residents. The council's decision-making organ (the cabinet) has always been unable to reconcile these features.

There is no prospect of improvement. Via social media, the Cabinet Member for Highways has repeatedly heaped praise on her team. There is net zero political will. In practice, the cabinet is content with the status quo. 

The cabinet's attitude is and has always been, leave it to the experts!