Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cyclists and Wightman Road
Hi all,
Is it just me or has Wightman Road now become an absolute death trap for us cyclists with the jutty out bits that enrage car drivers who swerve into us to avoid oncoming cars...?
Thinking a cycle track on part of pavement could be an answer... We don't take up as much space as a car parking half way across the pavement as it used to be...
Nemone
Tags for Forum Posts: cycling, cycling safety, harringay traffic study, traffic, wightman road improvements
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Laura on
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Are you suggesting corruption? "mates on the council" seems a bit suspect to me. Care to explain?
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Permalink Reply by Penguin on
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I hope you're not accusing me of saying they're corrupt?
Some traders sit on the council and the ones who are not are well connected to people on the council.
It's the way local politics works.
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And when public consultations come round, they'll present a united front, probably professionally orchestrated (which is entirely legal, btw). This makes them a very powerful lobby.
In fairness, they pay the council a fortune in rates so they do have a say.
But to dismiss changes because the shop owners feel like the evidence presented is wrong is utter tripe.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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Historically the Harringay Traders have always been a powerful lobby. They have robustly defended the right to maintain the parking on Green Lanes saying business would suffer if it was reduced. At times in the past (when I was on the council as cllr for Harringay) there were certainly some powerful links with council members inc cabinet members. For the most part this was a positive thing but it did afford the traders powerful allies against any form of change.
@LivingWightman had a spirited campaign off the back of the Wightman Road closure for the bridge works to lobby for “filtering” of Wightman, like someone suggested earlier in this thread, two or three physical barriers with traffic looping through ladder roads, road kept open just not a through road end to end as it currently is.
Anything that made the road safer and less polluted for residents was blocked not just by the traders (who incidently paid for their own little traffic survey in order to spike what residents wanted) but also the Wightman Road Mosque and the Greek Orthodox church who wanted no change to Wightman as it would affect their worshippers attending services (mostly coming by car). Because Haringey Council hasn’t the b******ks (apologies Hugh, am I allowed to say that on here?) to stand up to these groups we have ended up with this complete disaster on Wightman now
I spent 8 years as cllr for Harringay, i remain as passionate about it as ever. Very happy to become involve with Living Streets to campaign for real beneficial change.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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As to powerful links, as I said in my comment above, creating strong personal relationships with key players in the elected member and officer corps of the Council does seem to be the way to influence outcomes. It takes time, commitment and patience, but it is as open to resident groups as it is to trader ones.
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You must all be wrong, Haringey has just been blowing its own trumpet about its commitment to cycling and walking.
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Permalink Reply by Rich on
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It's a real interesting choice to make Crouch End the route for cycling. There is a proposed Quietway (10) which also runs though Crouch End. The park after Finsbury Park makes perfect sense (especially with some of the road changes around the Arsenal Stadium, which has made cycling it better). But the route though Crouch End puts riders onto at one point a 13% incline. I'm a fairly experienced cyclist, but I'm pretty sure that's not something I'd want to do every day, I expect for less experienced cyclists it would be completely off putting. (For reference I the worst it is on Wightman is 7%)
Edit: Proposed Route https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6936872
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Yes, I think there was a lot of disquiet about this from the cycling lobby when it was first announced. The obvious route is Wightman.....but that's reserved for use as part of the Wood Green Bypass.
I think Haringey also made a strange choice in Crouch End for the investment of £114M for its Liveable Neighbourho.... It's not like Crouch End isn't already pretty 'liveable'. You'd have thought that somewhere in the east of the borough might be in more need of this.
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Hugh, the figure you quote is the whole pot for London. Crouch End gets a still not-inconsiderable chunk of it, £4.8 million. As for the destination of choice within Haringey, I'm with you on that one.
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Well Haringey's wording of their puff about it that you've previously posted suggests to me a bit of 'constructive ambiguity', very popular at the moment!
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