Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Campaign against Wightman Road closure

Spotted in a local shop window..

Tags for Forum Posts: harringay traffic study, traffic

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Permalink Reply by andy h on May 9, 2017 at 21:29

Hey joe, as the song goes.
I'm catching up on bits n bobs
Read your post on Sunday about numbers of HGV's on Wightman.
I don't really recognise 1000 articulated lorries on Wightman every day of the week, so was wondering what the definition was of an HGV for the proposes of the study.?

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Permalink Reply by John D on May 9, 2017 at 22:17

Nobody is suggesting Wightman Rd is a rat run. What they are saying is there is far too much traffic on it.

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Permalink Reply by JoeW on May 9, 2017 at 23:27

The key word being "worst". Wightman carries more traffic (16,000 vehicle per day) than 9 of the list of "major roads" identified in Haringey's transport strategy:

So why doesn't Haringey reclassify Wightman as an A-road, even better ban parking and make it a red route? Because it's residential!

Interestingly during the Wightman bridgeworks one of the council's FAQs was "Q. Why can’t the adjacent roads that are closed to traffic e.g. Hermitage Road and Vale Road be open to allow free flow of traffic? This would displace traffic onto other residential streets that are neither designed nor suitable to carry significantly increased volumes of traffic." Hermitage and Vale are of course the same width as Wightman...

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Stillman on May 9, 2017 at 22:27

collins defines a rat run as 'a minor (often residential) road or route used by drivers hoping to avoid congestion on major roads nearby'. i can understand why some people may well consider wightman road as a rat run. the fact that its been designated a b road is arguably just be grist to the rat run mill. perhaps a compromise term might be 'officially sanctioned rat run'

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Stillman on May 9, 2017 at 22:56

yes its a b road. its an officially sanctioned rat-run. its not wider than any ladder road or gardens road and the only way it can take the traffic that uses it is by having the cars park on the pavement. its being a b road doesn't preclude it being a rat-run. it just means that at some point in the past an official designated it as an official rat run. is your standpoint always to agree with what a government does and never to question it? im a bit different. if i think somethings wrong i question it. i question the decades old classification of wightman road as a b road which helped to make it into a rat run.

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Permalink Reply by JoeW on May 9, 2017 at 23:39

PSS - B road classification implies precisely nothing about the capacity of a road to handle any given volume of traffic.

The majority of traffic on Wightman is not using it as a distributor i.e. not driving from an A-road to a minor road or vice versa. It is being used to cut through (aka rat-run) from an A-road (Turnpike Lane) to an A-road (Green Lanes) (or in some cases GL to Endymion). Via a Ladder "rung" (a minor residential road) (and Wightman is exactly the same width as the minor road, exactly the same unsuitability for carrying 16,000 vehicles per day).

Haringey have the power to declassify Wightman, we don't need to take it up with the DoT.

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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on May 10, 2017 at 9:47

The junction with Tunrpike Lane and Hornsey Park Rd was reconfigured by the council to make them meet as the western part of the Wood Green bypass which would have been one way. The railway line from Seven Sisters to Alexandra Palace which was ripped up would have constituted the eastern path going the other direction. Lots of people have old OS maps of Harringay in their houses and they all show Wightman Rd ending as it does at Endymion (narrow) and right against the shops on the eastern side.

If they've given up on their bypass idea (which I don't think they have) then perhaps they'll reclassify it but, I doubt it.

Yes you can just cover your ears to all the arguments and say "B road!" if that works for you but the situation is far more nuanced than that and there's a lot of history behind it.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on May 10, 2017 at 10:58

Here are the plans Stephen shared with us all some time back.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on May 10, 2017 at 11:03

Does it matter what classification it is? Surely the question should be - is it right that a road with these characteristics (narrow and overwhelmingly residential) carries the amount of traffic it does? And is it right that over the years it has been the focus of traffic management schemes (changes to junctions, signage that explicitly directs traffic to it, surrounding traffic reduction schemes, moving parked cars on to the pavement) that force or allow more and more traffic on to it?

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Permalink Reply by Nick on May 9, 2017 at 22:31

By this definition, St Anns Road, Endymion Road, Upper Tollington Park, Black Boy Lane, Hornsey Lane and countless other roads in the area are also rat runs.