Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey needs some Dutch courage
Mini-Holland bike-friendly schemes are transforming London. Hopefully eliminating the distressing sight of squashed cyclists.
For example you and your kids can now safely cycle along a protected lane from near Enfield Town Green Lanes down through Winchmore Hill and Palmers Green. Local petrolheads moaned but the council grabbed a big grant from the Mayor and used it.
But the lane comes to a shuddering halt at the North Circular ... and of course past Turnpike Lane you literally take your life in your hands going south.
Hope the new council cabinet will take a braver and more imaginative route towards planning than the last lot ...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Martin (Woodside) on
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It looks good, but I'm waiting for a fatality at the shared ramps at the bus-stops as someone alights a bus and meets a bicycle. Unfortnately, like the brilliant arrangement on the A10, some cyclists still prefer to risk their lives on the road and roundabout rather than using the much safer option provided for them.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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The fatality at that incident is just as likely to be the cyclist. That's why unlike motorists, cyclists slow down to stop themselves from hitting pedestrians.
I prefer to use the road as I am cycling at more than 20mph so not holding up the traffic and do not want to be cycling so fast so close to the footpath.
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The Enfield cycle lanes, whilst they do bring pedestrians into conflict with cyclists, are great for family/shopping type cycling, just not commuting.
With regard to your point about a local mafia, I think that's a bit harsh calling them a mafia. As far as I know they're just very, very firm in their opposition to losing parking spaces. More lately the excuse has been that they need to supply their shops from the front but this is because they built over the mews space in the rear that was for this purpose.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Couldn't we call them Enfield Pedestrian Lanes ?
BTW, Google translate suggests MAFYA
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Permalink Reply by Itsjono on
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I believe it may be possible to supply the shops from the side streets, and have more metered parking down there as well, but then the problems cascade as Gardens and Ladder residents will not be okay with losing their parking privileges.
Green Lanes is an abomination on the weekends, choked with fumes, a mile long queue of through traffic with thousands of bus passengers moving at walking pace in so that a few dozen restaurant managers can park out the front of their businesses any time that want, not to mention the close passes one endures on a bike, trying to stay out of the goddamn door zone.
This is a borough where it costs more to put a bike in a cyclehoop locker than park a hatchback on the street, where they think how a bike rack looks is more important than its function, where they think putting 'HARINGEY WALKS!' banners in parks is going to get people out of their cars, where they allow pavement parking, where they get rid of zebra crossings on the high street 'to smooth traffic flow', and cheerfully tell us the 20mph limit is 'self-enforcing'.
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Further up in Wood Green where they did not illegally build over their mews or convert them into residences you can see what the ones in Harringay used to look like. Sadly I think not ONE of our Labour councillors owns or uses a bicycle.
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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Indeed.
Council officers appear to have been trained in 1970s transport policies and think their role is to maximise throughput of motor vehicles regardless of the impact on residents, air quality, health etc.
Councillors don't want to stand up either to the officers or to the vested interests of traders - or maybe they just think air quality is a middle class preoccupation which has no place on a Labour agenda?
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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But most of those cars are not local. It's 'through traffic'. I watch the queues stinking up Seven Sisters in the morning, one person per car, most of which have come in via Forest Road or the A1055 from Enfield. They will have passed dozens of tube and train stations on the way. Every bloody day. For years.
Who drives down Green Lanes, to where? Where do they park when they get there?
Confession, I drove from Seven Sisters to Holloway to commute, till my college dug up its car park - Islington Council's requirement to any institution looking for planning permssion. Found I got to work by tube/bus in 15 minutes and spent £60 a month to do so, and arrived not in a strop from (other) idiot drivers.
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I agree it's a Mafia though. Perhaps not the traders but what about all the Gold Shops that are empty all the time? Everybody knows that Haringey is the heart of the national heroin trade...
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Permalink Reply by Geoff Amabilino on
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John - I am happy to be able to confirm that St Ann's councillor Mike Hakata is a commuter cyclist (at least in the good weather), having met him from work earlier this week on a Community Roadwatch event.
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