Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Can Harringay Ladder residents sue for clean air?
Just spitballing here really. Is there anyone of a legal nature who can answer this? With Finsbury Park to the south and the railway to the west and with every residential street to the north and east now either permanently closed or designated an LTN, can Ladder residents sue the council for discrimination, air quality and the impact life expectancy?
As all through traffic now has no option but to pass through the Ladder, funnelling tens of thousands of cars down our streets, do we have a legal case to demand the cleaner air that so many of our fellow Haringey residents now experience, but which is denied to us?
A succession of councillors have landed over the years, making some great noises and with many promises, none of which were delivered. Clean Streets Haringey fizzled out, do we have any legal recourse to stop the noise and air pollution which has impacted the Ladder for decades?
To be clear, I'm not interested in 'but this would inconvenience me and my car use and I reserve the right to freely pollute your air and impact your quality of life' arguments, as we know that the majority of cars using the Ladder aren't even owned or driven by Haringey residents and the Climate Emergency means everybody needs to use our cars less.
This has been discussed to death elsewhere on this forum. What do we think?
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Spitballing?
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Permalink Reply by Alice B on
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We need a body of action on this. Join Harringay Ladder Healthy Streets. Only as a single large voice can we demand differently
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WE all need healthy streets.
Even ICE-car owners and their families would benefit from healthier streets.
As I see it, the council is conflicted. They try to compromise and to please everyone, but end up pleasing no one, or few. This is due to a lack of leadership and the result is we have the worst of possible worlds:
There are just enough low traffic neighbourhoods to irritate car-owners but not enough to benefit the wider population. The slow late timid roll-out of LTNs is stalled due to fear of further upsetting the minority of the Borough's car-owners.
The local authority political leadership is likely to see LTNs as a toxic issue and there is less concern with toxic emissions.
I'd like to hear from the Council's Director of Public Health about better air quality.
Council employees may have heard or know of warnings not to speak-out-of-turn, or "stay in your lane". Staff may understand the principle of working towards the leader and of self-censorship. Haringey council departments work in separated "silos", with a lack of co-ordinated effort and that is the job of the leadership.
As the relevant Government Minister has said, in order to protect our NHS, there needs to be more action on preventative measures.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Lewis on
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I totally agree - The current situation has been magnified by the closure of St Ann's streets. I have never seen so much through traffic. More people need to get involved and people need to stop feeling like it is an attack on them and their cars - its about through traffic not local traffic. I have a car and I support healthy streets (you can do both, it's allowed). They have currently put traffic measure strips down but have no idea what that is for? the council representative for the healthy streets was Mike Hakata and he did nothing to support this cause and was partly responsible for it's downfall. I think the only was to get buy in for these projects is through TFL and the LTN's - where this has worked the residents and all come out in force and bypassed our useless council
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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Christopher Lewis: You say you support "healthy streets", but you still run a motor-car, with all the pollution that provides? And you blame those of us in the LTN of St Ann's, where most households have no access to motor-cars? Sorry, but if we forego motor-cars, have an LTN, and thus quieter streets and cleaner air, so can those who live in the ladder roads.
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See this is exactly my point! Its not about if people locally have cars are not, we have proven that this traffic is coming from other boroughs. Your made up statement about people not having cars in St Anns which is total nonsense and my point was the LTN not if people have cars! Move past people owning cars that is not going to change! Focus on the traffic volume and how easy it is to pass through the borough. If we made this more difficult people might consider public transport more. Stop throwing accusatory remarks and use your energy to do something about the problem!
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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It’s not a made up statement. The majority of households locally do not own a vehicle. Below is a Census map of car ownership for my street. If you Google Census Car Ownership you can put in your postcode and find the levels of ownership. The majority of us live with the problems caused by vehicle ownership without any of the benefits.
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Thank you for providing some evidence of lower levels of car ownership in the area, Michael. And I agree with what has been said about most of our traffic problems being due to people driving through the area, north to south, people who don't live here.
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....and we still talking about local traffic and this is why nothing moves forward! Missing the point
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I don't think anyone's 'blaming' St Ann's. I'm pleased that they have cleaner, quieter streets. Good for them! I don't think anyone wants to ban cars, either. We just want fewer cars, doing nothing to aid the borough, polluting our streets with particulates, noise and rubbish. Most importantly, to be on a par with all the people who live on the residential streets which surround the Ladder. It's appalling that all my local neighbours appear to have a right to cleaner air and streets, but I don't. Because... it's harder? It feels like the very definition of a post code lottery now.
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If people living on the ladder roads want to have cleaner air, perhaps they should campaign for the removal of all the stoves, fireplaces that people on the ladder roads who like the idea of a "cosy home fire" have, burning logs or wood. Perhaps also all of us who live near Green Lanes should campaign to stop wood, charcoal or coal-burning ovens being used in cafes/restaurants there. I suspect that it is the air pollution from these sources that is having a greater impact on air quality than any additional traffic on the ladder roads which has been displaced from other local roads that are in, for example, LTNs, like the one that covers the St Ann's ward, where we live, and where it has hugely improved our lives, by reducing traffic. Can I ask, Rory, whether you have any clear evidence that "tens of thousands of cars" are being funnelled down the ladder roads? Are you sure that people living on the ladder roads don't have cars? It looks to me, walking along those roads, with cars parked nose-to-tail on both sides of the road all day and night, as if there are a high percentage of households that _do_ have cars; unlike the area where we live, St Ann's, where I think that more than 60% of households have no access at all to a motor-car.
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Let’s all work together on this. I’m happy that you have better air in St Ann’s but we do have a lot of through traffic in the Ladder and it definitely increased after the LTN’s. Any roadworks, accidents etc and we have tailbacks on our road, along with the noise of car stereos and angry shouting. The car ownership in my road is so much less than it used to be and l know that most of the traffic moving through Haringey/Harringay is through traffic. This has been the subject of many surveys over the years! I totally agree about wood burning stoves and indeed many wood fires in people’s homes since electricity/gas prices have gone up. I’ll also include people burning rubbish in their back gardens and polluting wood pits! The restaurant’s on Greenway Lanes also need to up their game on smoke pollution though it seems to be slightly better at the moment. Also in the last couple of years airplane traffic has become very busy and very low. It never used to be this bad. On top of all this we have the dreadful incinerator that burns our rubbish very polluting and the new one will not be much better! Seems like our whole borough needs a lot of help to become a clean air zone!
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