Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Green Lanes Area Transport Study - consultation
http://www.haringey.gov.uk/transport/green-lanes-area-transport-study
Tags for Forum Posts: consultation, harringay traffic study, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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That's right the consultation documents also confirm this - an overall "evaporation" of 8% of traffic. I'm sure an even larger percentage is achievable is some of the package options are implemented (a few random examples being emissions based parking charges, promotion of car clubs, extending bus lane hours, reviewing parking), but the main benefits come from filtering Wightman.
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Permalink Reply by DanielJ on
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Absolutely agree with this. You can't view the decision to filter Wightman in isolation, it has to be part of a package that meet some strategic aims. Also, I'd add, measures to promote alternative transport options, namely walking and cycling. The goal ultimately is for people to get around, and currently the barriers to cycling in particular and walking also (think lack of pedestrian crossing, broken pavements, aggressive driving, narrow pavements) locally are extremely large. There seems no recognition of this in the council, and certainly not in either the Wood Green local plan or the Green Lanes traffic study.
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When I was a kid they built the Westway to prevent the daily traffic jam in Acton...... It just moved it to Marylebone Rd. So your right. Perfect argument, I'd have thought for penalizing those who drive into London and benefit from the higher wages in town. Congestion charge the arse out of the b..'..'s if they cross the M25 and again if the cross the Noff circ.
The goals of all those who live inside the north and south circular are the same, it seems to me.
Wightman doesn't have to close. It need pressure on the Mayor and councils to restrict entry to London by road.
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If anyone wants a reminder of the two sets of traffic counts, they are on this map https://batchgeo.com/map/dffd78475ca0d105236f9860a0555b49
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Living on Wightman, I personally benefitted from the closure ( when did it become " filtering " ? - I suppose that's a more acceptable word than " closure " ) but I'm trying to think of the other residents of the area.
Firstly, one person's experience proves little but my journeys were displaced onto other roads. Instead of using Green Lanes to go regularly to Sainsbury's, I changed to crossing over onto West Green Road and went to Tottenham Tesco instead. During the closure, I would go to Tottenham Hale instead of Muswell Hill. Again, on my weekly trips to Maidstone, I would go via West Green Road instead of Green Lanes/ St Anns.
There are two ways of assessing the impact on the surrounding roads when Wightman was closed - number of vehicle movements and, alternatively, time taken to get from A to B, which is what travellers are concerned about. As a selfish individual, I don't care how many vehicles are going the same way as me: I just care about how long it takes me to get there.
It is possible that the figures for the bus delays ( which I have not seen ) were averaged over the day. Were there figures broken down for 8am-10am and 4pm-6pm which is when most people actually want to use the roads ? It is certain that journeys between Priory Road and Turnpike Lane/Green Lanes junction and between Manor House and Turnpike Lane were much longer than normal at these times. Wightman Road to Turnpike Lane Station would take me 15 minutes instead of the current five.
To take two other points - the Westway did move the jams to Marybone Road, but the subsequent " Green Wave" synchronising of the traffic lights makes it possible to maintain a steady 30mph between the Westway and King's Cross, this being a non-mythical measure leading to an amelioration of traffic flow.
How are " emissions-based parking charges " relevant to traffic flow ? An electric vehicle moving at 1-mph and 2- litre BMW moving at 1 mph are equally impeding the traffic flow.
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Synchronising the traffic lights with the new traffic flows would indeed be a key mitigation John. One of many examples you must have seen would be traffic from the direction of Muswell Hill towards Turnpike Lane which meets traffic lights at the Wightman Road junction - these lights did not appear to be altered during the bridgeworks. They still went green for traffic to turn right - of which there was none - for 20-30 seconds every couple of minutes. Traffic continuing along Turnpike Lane - of which there was more than usual, because it couldn't use its usual ratrun down Wightman and a rung - was at a standstill for 20-30 seconds every couple of minutes, so started to form a longer queue than normal. At the busiest times the queue was too long to fully clear when its own light was green again, so the queue gets longer, eventually back beyond the junction of Hornsey High Street and Church Lane. At which point (partly in the absence of yellow boxes at this junction - another minor mitigation) traffic exiting Church Lane (another set of traffic lights likely to need rephasing) starts to get snarled up - can't exit because the High Street traffic is now in the way. (I think there is evidence for this in that bus journey times from Crouch End - using Church Lane - were impacted more during the bridgeworks than the buses from Muswell Hill)
Same thing happened at GL/Turnpike junction - lights not adjusted to account this time for increased traffic filtering right. Same thing at the GL/Endymion lights. Same thing at the GL/Seven Sisters junction. Etc., etc.
All these incorrectly phased lights contributed significantly to unreliable journey times, so fixing them would contribute significantly to making journey times more reliable. Fixing them - perhaps with other mitigations but this is where I'd start - would allow Wightman to be filtered without causing unreliable bus journey times.
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Permalink Reply by Nick on
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Option 4 has no chance of being implemented. Looking at the wording on the leaflet sent out, you can see that even Haringey are embarrassed that it's on there. They are taking into consideration the views of everyone in the study area, not just those on the ladder. In the initial online consultation, the most voted against proposal was... the "filtering" of Wightman Road.
The problem is obvious - all East / West traffic, following the closure of Wightman, is forced on to two roads - Endymion and Turnpike Lane. Traffic which was spread out fairly evenly across the ladder is piled up onto two roads, one of which is entirely residential. No amount of traffic light reconfiguration is going to fix this.
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Hi Nick - I wondered when you'd emerge!
"all East / West traffic, following the closure of Wightman, is forced on to two roads - Endymion and Turnpike Lane"
That's not true, 8% of it evaporated - switched or stayed on other roads such as Seven Sisters or the North Circ, switched to cycling or walking or public transport, or decided not to make a journey at all.
"the most voted against proposal was... the "filtering" of Wightman Road"
That's also not true as I pointed out earlier here
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Joe, you're nitpicking. Okay, so 92% of the traffic is forced onto two roads - still not great is it? Endymion Road is more 'residential' than Wightman - why should those residents suffer?
Also the survey shows 62 against the closure and 39 for. We're talking about the closure, not bollards, which have been discounted as an option anyway.
Any changes surely have to contain some sort of compromise, in order to gain support. Option 4 is a totally one-sided measure which benefits a select few to the detriment of everyone else in the area.
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"92% of the traffic is forced onto two roads"
Sorry you're wrong again Nick, 92% of traffic is not forced onto those roads, some of it was already on them, and some of it never goes on either those two roads or a Ladder rung. This diagram from the consultants shows the relative size of flows between different nodes:
"Endymion Road is more 'residential' than Wightman - why should those residents suffer"
Traffic flow on Endymion is 12.7K per day, a lot less than over 16K per day on Wightman. Even during the bridgeworks when Wightman was filtered it only increased to 14.2K per day - still less than Wightman suffers. (And notice again that "92% of traffic forced onto two roads" just didn't happen). Endymion has houses on one side of the road only which are generally further set back than houses on Wightman. Because Endymion only has houses on one side, it only has cars parked on one side, so the road is wide enough to allow two lanes of traffic without needing pavement parking. Wightman on the other hand has pavement parking on both sides (and even then is not wide enough to allow two lanes of traffic with current volumes, hence why cyclists find Wightman so hostile), which reduces the width of Wightman pavements to less than the recommendation in the governments Manual For Streets.
So basically the road least suited to carrying traffic in terms of house frontage, pavement width, need for parking, and road width, is actually currently carrying the most traffic. There are certainly other roads which need protection from excessive traffic but Wightman is the one most desperately in need of it.
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"Also the survey shows 62 against the closure and 39 for"
You have either misunderstood the consultation responses, or are deliberately misrepresenting them. The responses here show perhaps a few hundred people added a thousand or more comments to the interactive map, others sent emails and written responses and raised issues which concerned them. It was not a referendum "are you For or Against" this or that proposal. It was a mechanism to allow issues to be raised and a long list of possible solutions to be proposed.
The closest thing to a referendum so far would be the petition which Living Wightman took end to end on several streets on the Ladder. IIRC this showed around 80% of households were in favour of a long term solution which drastically reduces the 16000 vehicles per day on Wightman. The longlist of possible solutions is now reduced to four packages of options for Wightman Road, and filtering is the only one of those which meets the description of a longterm solution to drastically reduce traffic. And this benefits everyone - certainly 10,000 Ladder residents (not just a "select few"), but there was 8% traffic evaporation and a significant reduction in pollution measured on Green Lanes in the last three months of the bridgeworks.
The main issue seems to be bus journey reliability - but as is being discussed on other threads there was literally nothing to mitigate this during the bridgeworks.
I can't see why anyone - or at least anyone who breathes - would not vote in favour of filtering Wightman, with mitigations to alleviate impact on bus journey reliability.
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