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 Anette on
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I think we should get signs clearly stating the weight limit at the entry points on each ladder road + a narrow exit point to each ladder road. Surely that would not cost the Earth? Most of us did not know about the weight restrictions to begin with, and so it's a fair guess that the lorry drivers don't either.
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Permalink Reply by sparkle on
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I hesitate to depress you, but we have these on the top ladder roads and it has made no difference, other than to mean that the trucks routinely knock over the bollards at the road narrowings and get stuck for periods as they laboriously reverse back and forth in order to get into the street....
I tend to feel that truck drivers just don't even see the restrictions, all they think about is avoiding the traffic. Perhaps I'm being naive, but like John I've been photographing offenders recently and they have all been puzzled rather than guilty looking.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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This morning I was beeped at by a skip truck as I came out of Frobisher Rd to go to the lights at the Queens head. Blood at a suitable temperature I decided to give him the universal sign for "I don't care about you, or your truck" and stopped in the middle of the road outside the Queen's head. He got out of his truck and puffed up his chest. He knew VERY well that Willoughby Rd was NOT a weight limited road and that I had not caught him, quite the lawyer. I yelled at him that I knew he must have come down a restricted road to get to where he was as the entrace to Willoughby at Turnpike Lane is one way. I repeated his registration number to him, told him that he was in a lot of trouble and, he got back in his truck and for all I know headed back to the O'Donovan's depot in Tottenham, I did not look back.
So my point is that they DO know they're not supposed to be in our streets (us people with humps), they just don't care.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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> .... Threaten them with an ASBO or something?
> .... followed by skip hitting the truck crescendo at each speed hump, including the one outside our house - which sets off a mini earthquake.
LOL! John, your letters are certainly entertaining. :)
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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John, can you imagine how the heavy traffic will increase with all the work for Haringey Heartlands and the Wood Green SPD? Have you completed consultation response or can you come to the LCSP meeting tomorrow?
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The point is that they are not supposed to go down weight restricted roads. I have just spoken to a nice Irish lady at O'Donovan's (curse me she was so nice I forgot to ask her name). She will speak to the drivers and tell them not to go down any of our roads. I have told her that I have a nice long list of registration numbers and quoted her my favourite, Y666 MOD. The deal is that if I see another O'Donovan's truck, the list goes to the police. She will call me back once they have been spoken to.
More homes/schools need to be built. We can't get around that. I would not be so pissed off about the skip trucks if it were not for that speed hump.
I'm very interested in the SPD/Heartlands work but more in regard to provision for cyclists and car parking. I had no plans to go to the LCSP meeting but I do intend to submit something to the consultation (not that it looks like there's much point as they have already decided what they are going to do).
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Permalink Reply by Del H on
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Thanks so much for doing this. Have been meaning to phone O'Donovans for a couple of years(!), as I agree they are the worst offenders in Lausanne Road, but never quite got round to it...... No skip lorries for the past few days, so maybe you have had an effect already - lets see if it lasts.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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John, if you get a reply from the good Councillor, you will have done very well indeed. Let us know!
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If John stands at next local elections, can we all vote him in? (Then we'll have a go at him with the old chain mail and mace.)
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6 trucks from 5:45 until 6:15 this morning but I was downstairs so only heard them when they hit the hump outside our house. From upstairs we can hear the quiet ones from the passage and the not so quiet ones from the start of the street... and we have the pen and pad there.
It used to be a pain, now it's just plain taking the mickey.
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OK, so wifey (original poster) managed to follow a skip truck this morning. It went to the railway works at Hornsey station. She accosted the driver about what he had done, did he know about the weight restriction etc and he said that they had been TOLD to use Hampden and Lausanne Rds to access the site. This ties in with my man on the weekend looking for Hampden Rd in his enormous big truck so that he could find the railway station works.
I have half a bottle of gin, several bottles of mucky french wine, last season's cricket bat and an evil sounding angle grinder. Is it me that is going to turn up there at 6am in a drunken and expletive ridden fury to scream at the site manager that he is an absolute %$£&!, curse his children, grind the hinges off his shiny new gate and smash the windows of any skip trucks I find... or is someone from the council or the police going to get there first (or am I not going to wake up in time)?
I have texted the number Glyn posted to ask if someone can have a word with the foreman.
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