Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Rise in number of Lorries and other heavy vehicles ignoring the 7.5t weight limit on Ladder roads
I live in Lausanne Road and have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of lorries, concrete trucks and other large vehicles using our road and the nearby roads- particularly Hampden Road.
This is really making me worry - it's a fact of life that people in cars will use the ladder roads as a cut through, but the heavy vehicles are making quite an impact on my personal quality of life, and I'm sure many other local residents as well.
The specific problems with Heavy vehicles using my and other ladder roads(I'm not sure how many others have weight restrictions as well) are:
1. Weight(obviously)- road humps and heavy vehicles are certainly causing the earth to move in our road! Humour aside the impact from loaded trucks hitting the speed humps is so noticeable that it MUST be causing damage to the nearby houses. We have a 3 storey house and it can be felt strongly on all floors, even though we are not directly opposite the road hump. In our road so far as i'm aware the terraces do not have deep foundations but sit on the good old london clay which I hear anecdotally tends to make them more prone to cracking etc from this sort of impact.
2. Noise - the heavy vehicles are particularly noisy - especially skip trucks with their lovely chain percussion. In our road they start coming through in convoy between 6 am and 6.30am.
3. Speed- The trucks also nearly always break the 20 mph speed limit.
4. Damage- Road surfaces are noticeably breaking down. Hampden road seems to gain a new pothole every day and it hardly seems that long ago that it was repaired. There's damage to nearby houses- see point 1, and also , ironically also damage to the signs at the end of the streets indicating that the trucks should not be entering and bollards knocked over/down at the street entrances....
5. Safety - they're huge, and they speed and they're just downright dangerous. Removing small children from a car with a speeding loaded lorry bearing down on you in a narrow road is not fun.
6. Size of the vehicles-. Ok they're big, sometimes very big. and they get stuck sometimes. It is pretty annoying having to wait around to get into your own street because some truck is trying to illegally enter and has got stuck in/on the specially designed narrow street entrance designed to keep them out...
Anyway, I guess everyone gets the picture here.
So what to do?
I've reported the damaged weight restriction sign at the entrance of Hampden Road to the council- reference C58317 for any Hampden road residents or others interested.
I've spent an entertaining 40 minutes calling around Haringey council , who actually have a 'moving vehicle enforcement' department but apparently don't deal with this issue -enforcing other signs yes, but not weight restrictions. So, actually it is the Police Safer Neighbourhoods or Traffic teams who will (hopefully) deal with this.
I spoke to Kate at the above mentioned Police , and she was very helpful and has logged the issue. I've spoken to a few people in person about this and they have also seemed concerned. Perhaps it is more specific to Lausanne/Hampden roads or is the same thing happening elsewhere on the ladder?
I would really like anyone else who has a problem with this to also report to the police on 0208 808 1212 and quote ref: CAD3030/16 May . The police are also interested in details of registration etc of any vehicles which we notice breaking the law in this manner.
Now- a little word. I am not some sort of control freak who imagines that all trucks with from now onwards will be banished from the ladder roads, but this is a volume problem in part and I really really feel that we are on a slippery slope if these restrictions are not enforced. The ladder is the obvious cut through and with building work at Hornsey station (which is where I've seen the concrete trucks come out and go straight down Hampden rd) and New River Village and endless other trucks going east/west particularly to access the industrial park on tottenham lane it doesn't look like it will go away. Not to get too *woo ooo* about it but isn't there also going to be a concrete factory over the other side of the railway sometime soon?
I am around at many different times of the day and evening and feel I'm pretty well placed to make a judgment about whether there are more trucks using my/Hampden rd. It is serious folks... there really is an increase in volume.
I'd love some feedback from others on this as I really can't believe I'd be the only one to have noticed....
Oh , another point on action- Kate at the police has suggested any I/we contact some of the companies involved directly to alert them to the fact that it has been reported to the police and perhaps they might like to have their drivers use alternative(legal) routes to avoid penalties.
The 3 that spring to mind at the moment are:
O'Donovans, Murphys and I'm not sure who to contact specifically but whomever is in charge of the work going on at Hornsey station on the Mosque side.
I've just spent the morning on this, so will have to update later about possible further calls...
*phew*
I'm off for a cuppa I think....
Tags for Forum Posts: 7.5t, Ladder traffic solutions, Lorries on the Ladder, Wightman Road, concrete factory, hampden road, heavy lorries, heavy lorry, hgv, lausanne road, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Harringay SNT on
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Rachael,
If you cant see a company name get the registration number and call us on 07920 233 786, or E-mail our Safer Neighbourhood Team and we`ll call the company for you. We do this for Adam who is also on this site.
Be aware though that there are a lot of these vehicles that have been built to be just under the HGV weight.
A lot that we get to check have been in this catagory
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Permalink Reply by empyrean_aisles on
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I'm concerned about heavy trucks going over speed humps too fast too. In the back room of our house the windows rattle quite loudly every time a truck goes past. I'm also worried about what it's doing to the foundations of the house.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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This is outta control on Frobisher & Falkland rds too. It is damned annoying for all the points you mention. Expecting people to take down plate nos. is laughable because it would mean standing around outside waiting for them to come along. And there's no time to pop outside because by that time they've gone. I have other things to do and are not paid to do this. Someone else is.
This weight restriction needs to be enforced by those given the powers to do so.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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We can hear them coming from the bottom of the street. I'm starting my list of registration numbers now.
I'm a bit worried about what Glyn said though... I bet a skip truck is just under 7.5t. Not sure what a skip weighs but some of them are carrying two and I bet the roads that go in the other direction have the full skips...
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Permalink Reply by Adam on
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It is my understanding that all skip trucks are over 7.5 tonnes. It is very hard to prove that skip trucks are not picking up/dropping off from the road where they are using - there are loads of skips on Ladder Roads at the moment. Something like a cement lorry is much easier to prove - i suspect very few renovation projects on our roads use cement in the volumes that are carried by cement lorries. On Fairfax our main problem is HGVs that have dropped off at Medlocks Electrical wholesalers on Effingham Road (the poor residents of E'ham have to endure these monsters several times a day, and it is no coincidence that their road is riddled with potholes!) and then use Fairfax to get back onto Green Lanes. If I hear one coming down the road and get a chance to see the name of the company on the side and the numberplate, i do contact the fleet manager and make a complaint.
I think we should compile a list of rogue companies and the fleet managers' details and if we complain enough they should get the message. John, could we have a shared spreadsheet on this system that anyone could amend?
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Permalink Reply by Pip on
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Wow,I didn't realise they weren't supposed to come up and down the ladder roads, so many of them do! They are definitely using Falkland Road too, will try and note down the company the next time one of the skips 'bounces' my flat and give them a ring... *thinks* maybe that's why the soot is being dislodged from the chimney and onto the carpet...
Thanks for looking into this, looks like you've done a lot of the painful legwork already.
A thought on the 7.5 weight thing, surely, even if they are technically allowed to do it, the builders might ask them to go the long way round if they get enough pressure about it, loads of builders have 'considerate builder' policies these days and like to project that sort of image,might be worth a try?
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Pip, you suggest that with enough pressure, and in the light of 'considerate builder' policies, those heavyweights could be persuaded to "go the long way round". You mean via Wightman Road? We too are a Ladder road, with more traffic problems than we wish to add to. The occasional mixer or skip truck skipping down one or other of the one-way rung roads can be a happy relief to residents of Wightman Road N4, or indeed to those of WRN8 in the case of northbound trucks. No, we need more holistic solutions to whole Ladder problems.
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Permalink Reply by Anette on
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Eddie I agree with you, but I have to point out that the ladder roads have speed humps, and Wighman Road does not. That really adds to the potential damage done to foundations etc. with these skipping heavyweights.
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Anette I see the extra problem with the humps on the rung roads. Fact is, though, if so many of these trucks are over the 7.5T limit then they shouldn't be on Wightman Road either. The limit for the railway bridge (Alroy/Wightman) is 8.0T or 6.0T axle weight. I would guess the same limit applies to the point where the New River underruns Wightman. Indeed this weight limit was one of our objections to the Cement Factory two years ago. All the more reason to press for bigger solutions, I think.
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lets not publicise this too widely (!!!) but the weight limit on the bridge on wightman road, close to finsbury park is no longer valid - the bridge has been strengthened, but the signs remain
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Thanks Adam. We'll polish up those signs and make them look nice and new.
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Permalink Reply by GK/OD on
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HGV`s are only supposed to use Green Lanes, T`pike Lane and Endymion Rd
....Wightman Road also has weight restrictions for HGV`s.
However the sign that is supposed to be at the T`pike La end of Wightman wasnt there up to a couple of months ago
....Does anyone know if it has been put up now?
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