Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay transport study - next steps and headline information
In case you didn't get this through your door attached is an update on the transport study.
Main points are
- Headline findings
- Drop in sessions
- Link to the interactive map - below
- http://greenlanes.sdg-labs.com
Tags for Forum Posts: harringay traffic study, traffic, transport, wightman bridge closure
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Don on
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As a frustrated bus-user who’s fed up with sitting in solid Green Lanes traffic, I’d like to make two points (that I’ve raised before; sorry).
a) One person’s rat-run is another person’s short-cut. Can car owners in Wightman or rung roads honestly say they’ve never driven up, say, Lancaster/Florence/Victoria Roads to avoid the Endymion/Stroud Green junction? Rat-run or short-cut?
b) What is “local” traffic? Rutland Gardens to Crouch End via Cavendish and Wightman? The Arena to Fairfax via Umfreville and Wightman? Or only cars starting in Mattison or Duckett, for instance (and then going... where?). Are residents seriously saying that only people actually living on ladder roads should be allowed to use them, so the putative Rutland/Crouch End traveller may only use Green Lanes? The traffic count can’t know the start and end points of journeys, so we can’t accurately identify who is actually using the Ladder.
Believe me, I sympathise with Wightman and rung road residents who’ve seen traffic and pollution levels drop dramatically, and, yes, I know how lucky I am to live in a quiet road off St Ann’s (not the Gardens). But Harringay has a fundamental geographical problem: the railway is a wall on the west, the barriers block traffic on the east, so Green Lanes bears the brunt – and it can’t take it.
Not everyone can walk or cycle, ideal though this might be, and tinkering with individual roads just displaces a problem rather than solving it. Surely any answer has to consider the whole of this area, probably from the North Circular down to Manor House, to try to find an integrated solution?
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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You're absolutely right. We need to build more roads, not close the ones we have...
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Can't see where Don even hints at that
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No, the primacy given to cars and roadbuilding in recent years has greatly contributed to the problems we face. My preference is for much greater investment in public transport (I'd welcome the return of a London-wide tram network, for instance), but there needs to be recognition that roads are shared between private vehicles and public transport – hence my frustration at buses being hampered by the increased traffic on Green Lanes. But that's my personal gripe, and I know it's not the same as everyone else's.
Seductive as the idea may be of permanently closing Wightman and/or ladder roads, or restricting their use to residents only, I was trying to point out that on present data nobody knows who is using these roads or exactly where they're going to/from. For example, Turnpike Lane to Endymion via Wightman could be a "through" journey; or is it "local"? If anyone can define "local" traffic, please do so!
Piecemeal alterations to specific roads just shift the problem (some ladder contributors on here haven't been exactly thrilled about the gates in the Gardens, for instance), so I'm suggesting that any future traffic plan needs to look at a far wider geographical area.
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Ouch! Careful, they don't much like broader large scale plans round here.
I suggested some such not long ago and had my hair set on fire.
Was told to embrace a hyper local mind set, so I'm after pedestianising the road just outside my house.
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From this discussion. Michael "Dealing with the problem of one or two roads is one of the main contributors to the situation we are in at the moment"
Simon "I would welcome a more integrated approach from the council looking at motor traffic across the Borough"
and many similar comments.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Chalk on
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One part of the solution must surely be to make Green Lanes a red route like Wood Green High Road?
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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Don, ratrunning and short-cuts are different words for the same thing. The problem is when the volume becomes excessive - when it starts to seriously impair the health and safety of residents and the quality of their living environment. At this point the residents start to complain and the local authority does something about it - normally closing streets (making them residents only) or introducing one-way systems.
Ideally someone who lives on Rutland Gardens travelling to Crouch End should get onto Green Lanes and go up to Turnpike Lane. That is what major roads (both are A-roads) are for.
If it was just Rutlanders that cut through Cavendish onto Wightman we wouldn't be discussing it. We might even see it as a benefit, that Rutlanders were using local sidestreets allowing non-local traffic to flow more smoothly on the major roads.
Unfortunately the local geography, and probably technology like satnavs, creates an excessive volume of ratrunning, which needs a solution.
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Joe, I think you’ve reinforced one of my points. If Rutland Gardens isn’t “local” enough because it’s, maybe, all of 20m from Cavendish but across Green Lanes, and its traffic should therefore use GL instead, then isn't any decision on banning or controlling “non-local” traffic likely to be arbitrary? Where does one – literally – draw the line?
You also endorse my comment about “rat-run” and “short-cut” being opposite sides of the same coin. I’m sure there’s a point at which traffic volumes begin to damage people’s health and a road becomes a rat-run, but who determines it?
Of course barriers or rising bollards could reduce ladder traffic to a trickle of just the car-owners in those roads, but I don’t see ringing support on this board for the Gardens having done exactly that – and it brings us right back to the current GL problem, where it’s a funnel for traffic displaced from elsewhere. That’s why I suggested a much larger-scale look at the whole Harringay area, backed up with far more detailed data as to who exactly is using the roads and where they’re going to and from.
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Not quite sure why this conversation didn't move towards agreement that rising bollards exactly like those in the Gardens is exactly what Wightman needs? With Ladder and Gardens residents sharing the same set of keys!
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