Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey to be given up to £10 million to improve buses
Haringey has been selected as one of three London boroughs that will benefit from £30 million to improve its bus network.
Lewisham and Southwark in south London are the other boroughs chosen to take part in TfL’s Better Bus Partnerships programme.
The money will be divided between the boroughs over the next four years. The aim of the programme is to improve bus journey times and reliability, making services easier to use.
To secure the funding, boroughs had to submit proposals outlining how they would use the money to improve bus services. The successful boroughs proposed schemes aiming to cut journey times by up to 30 per cent.
TfL will now work closely with the successful boroughs throughout 2026 on design and planning, with delivery expected to begin in 2027. Full details of the schemes will apparently be shared by the boroughs in the coming months, subject to consultation and engagement.
The initiative, called the Better Bus Partnership, was launched by TfL in July 2024 to improve London’s bus network and encourage more people to travel by bus.
The money is in addition to the £80.85 million of funding already claimed by London’s boroughs this year from Local Implementation Plans – the ordinary financial support they receive to improve transport schemes from the Mayor.
According to Haringey, the new funding will transform public transport links in Wood Green and North Tottenham as the borough gears up for the London Borough of Culture 2027 and UEFA Euro 2028 games at Tottenham Hotspur.
Great news for that part of the borough, but, whilst Harringay's Green Lanes and the Ladder lie mouldering, it does show where priorities lay. I note that whilst the substance of Haringey's press release refers to work in the north and east of the borough, Mike Hakata's quote references hoped-for improvements on Harringay's Green Lanes. I assume this is imagined as the same sort of 'magical' knock-on effect of evaporation that Mike recently claimed that the Ladder School Streets provide for the rest of the Ladder.
Thank you to Southwark News for flagging this.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by neil
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Does anyone have any insight as to why Green Lanes Red Routing has been ruled out ? Lobbying ? Cost ? It seems fishy to me given the importance of 29, 141 and 341 routes and the war zone that Green Lanes is for cyclists. Even a timed bus lane North and South during rush hours would be a huge improvement!
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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THIS funding announcement sounds nice, but may be less positive than the headline suggests. A cautious interpretation may be that the council may be given some money, not more than £10 million and not if the offer is later withdrawn.**
If the council does receive some money for this purpose, then it won't necessarily be spent in the way intended, especially given that this council now teeters on bankruptcy.
- The five-figure cost for the (controversial) street name change was un-budgeted, but the council let slip that it would be met from "existing budgets". We were never told which budget suffered the subtraction nor the cost of the (unnecessary) name-change. The subtext, is that budgets are more flexible than the council pretends. The street name-change cost may have been relatively minor, but there was a more relevant example involving larger sums during the pandemic:
- During the Covid crisis, the council were given a large sum for the purpose of improving cycling infrastructure in the Borough, but much or most of this was siphoned off for other purposes. The reduction in the effective sum available was visible in the 100m (only) stretch of Highways' cycle lane by the north-eastern side of Finsbury Park. For a long time, the lane was marked by one pole at each end. It has since been filled in with more poles but it serves to illustrate the reduction of funding available and Highways' chronic lack of regard for cyclists. (These poles offer similar protection as vertical paint).
- Haringey PR boasts that £10,000,000 is secured.
- ** Council PR previously bragged that they had "secured" multi-million pound funding from TfL for the Crouch End Liveable Neighbourhood Scheme. The scheme received so little support from the council—especially lacking from the previous Cabinet Member for Highways—that TfL then unsecured (withdrew) their offer.
- Haringey Council's accounts are in terrible state. Were such a sum to be provided, then it would be tempting to nibble at. Or take bites from.
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I thought the Crouch End scheme was abandoned because it was a total disaster that completely gridlocked the area while outraging residents, and the council subsequently disowned the (now ex-) officers responsible for its creation on the mythical grounds that they’d failed to explain how wonderful it was to people stuck in traffic jams.
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Don, you're right that the council abandoned the Scheme for the Crouch End Liveable Neighbourhood.
However, given that the Scheme did not start, it's hard to see that it was a "total disaster" or "completely gridlocked the area". I accept that the prospect of the Liveable Neighbourhood Scheme may have had the effect of outraging you, but are your remarks not a tad hyperbolic?
You've also claimed that "the council subsequently disowned the officers responsible".
Where is the evidence for such disowning?
Where and how did the council disown their employees?
Haringey Council employ staff to perform job descriptions. What makes the "disowning" comment hard to believe is that, if the council did disown their officers and if the disowning was unfair and unreasonable, then those people could sue for defamation. I doubt the scenario you paint actually happened. Did you make up any of your post?
Aside from the likes of road-works, as a general rule, people get stuck in traffic jams because there are too many cars.
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Clive: You’re probably right, but I certainly didn’t invent any of my comment, which I prefaced with “I thought” when I posted it. It was based on memory of an old discussion on HoL before the current LTNs were created (possibly even as far back as the Wightman railway bridge closure, which also generated much comment at the time), but I didn’t trawl through the many, many pages of comments to make sure, not having a whole afternoon available to do so! Those discussions were some time back, many fingers have been placed on keyboards since, and memory is fallible.
Meanwhile, taking your point about “too many cars”, and your criticisms of the council’s failure to tackle this, what would you suggest as a solution, especially re Green Lanes and public teansport?
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Don!
Too many cars ~
The first point I'd make, is that at Haringey Council there is no acceptance of the above observable phenomenon.
It remains the transport truth that dare not speak its name. Until this basic fact of built-up, urban areas is acknowledged, there can be no progress in transport. the Council proves this on a daily basis.
At the hide-bound Haringey Highways Team, too many cars runs contrary to all they know, all they believe in and all they hold dear.
Among the Highwaymen, this very idea is likely to be a ThoughtCrime.
You ask for my solution, but it won't be palatable because I suspect you think there may be a quick fix available. It is possible to suggest a tweak here or a tweak there, but this cannot affect the underlying truth above.
Tweaks on Wightman Road
A few years ago and at a cost of about one million pounds, Highways reversed several of their earlier mistakes along Wightman Road: the pavement parking and the hazardous pedestrian islands. But it remains a through-road. The council missed a golden opportunity to continue to filter this road, after the rebuilding of the bridge over the railway line which caused the road to be closed for four or five months (Highways' arrangements then were actually sensible).
Thinning-out the number of cars coursing through Haringey (often out-of-Borough) cannot be effected by the council alone. There are steps the Government could take, the most obvious one being to unfreeze the Fuel Duty freeze. I would hope this will happen in the Budget net week; not only might it discourage the burning of fossil fuels, but it might restore a little faith in New Labour's climate policies.
Howling mob at the Decorium
At a local level, there is much that could be done to discourage car ownership and use, but the council is wary—if not fearful—of car owners. Councillors had a taste of some of them one winter's evening: an ugly group of anti-liveable neighbourhood protestors threatened to storm a meeting of Full Council.
That meeting was at the Decorium which fortunately is next to a police base. A dozen officers managed, professionally, to hold back the howling mob (I and others were standing literally behind the officers). The council meeting had to be abandoned due to the mob and I understand, Police advice.
The local council is unwilling to tackle car use in general and the stand up to the mob-mentality in particular. Many residents want a solution to the traffic problem, but few want to address the underlying cause. Nothing will change unless at least three pre-conditions are met.
The sine qua non:
1. Acceptance by councillors of the fundamental, underlying, causal reason of traffic problems
2. A Cabinet Member for Highways who is interested in reform
3. Root and branch overhaul of the Council's Highways Department (See also this on the Highways Dept.)
Until the above steps are in place, nothing can improve in any meaningful way and the Cabinet will continue to believe these matters should be left to the experts (their highways employees).
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Clive: My memory wasn’t completely faulty… After a bit of excavation, I found that what I was remembering, rather imprecisely, was the council’s Liveable Crouch End experiment in the autumn of 2019, which involved the closure of Middle Lane to private traffic. There are comments in an old HoL thread, including a link to a research report which suggests that many local residents were strongly critical of the congestion that ensued across the area. (Link to the thread itself at the end of this post.)
https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3851862466?prof...
I also think that, after the event, the council said that they were no longer working with the consultancy who had developed the scheme (rather than officers, as I mistakenly said) and that this was partly because of failures to publicise and explain the scheme in advance, but I haven’t yet found a reference to this.
I see that your own suggestions for ameliorating Harringay’s traffic problems are primarily political (not unreasonably), rather than schemes such as bus lanes, parking control, junction priority, etc, suggested by HoL readers (yes, including me!); so might you consider standing for the council next May?
(Link to the previous thread below. The research report above comes from a post on page 12; it’s a very long thread.
https://harringayonline.com/forum/topics/more-traffic-headed-for-wi... )
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Don, there was a closure of Middle Lane although buses could still go through. If I remember rightly, this filtering lasted only 14 days which was not a fair or reasonable test.
I remember seeing four security guards at the Hornsey end, a number which would have added to the cost of the short experiment; I wonder if Highwaymen were involved. Highways probably fought this trial tooth and nail especially if, as you suggest, an external consultancy was involved.
Transport policy and practice is 100% political, from the primary legislation through to the direction of the employees in a local highways department.
I'm no longer a member of a political party. I've been propositioned about standing again, but I think four years was enough. In many ways, one can have more influence by being outside the tent.
If it were up to me I'd choose the best people from all the political parties. Except for the Reform Party, who may continue to harbour actual traitors to this country (My support for the principle of proportional representation would regrettably have their reps in too.)
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I’m not sure standing for the council as a member of a political party helps other than giving access to support on the ground, does it? I’d have thought that if you were elected as an independent you’d have more chance of influencing the relevant departments from the inside, but maybe staying outside will be more effective in the long run, as you suggest.
And, yes, a two-week trial for an LTN isn’t very long, but presumably any further experiments were clobbered by the pandemic shortly afterwards. In any case, if the report’s to be believed, it wasn’t well-received in the area all the same.
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I'm told they've been hammered by the cost of social care. Care home fees have rocketed since the evil hedge funds got the claws into that sector, ditto vets.
A bit old but good reporting as ever by Byline https://bylinetimes.com/2021/09/08/the-great-social-care-gold-rush-...
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Haringey funds have also been hammered by the council's own sledgehammer:
The Leader won't go into detail about the eight-figure sum they lent to a business some time ago that they have not yet recovered, another the eight-figure sum lost on property* wheeling and dealing and of course, normal council waste.
*i.e. the background to my information rights Tribunal case where council conduct may be now be considered at the Court's Upper Tier Tribunal. The council went to extreme lengths to conceal information from the public.
(N.B. I'm ready and willing to lavish praise on Haringey Council and will do so at the first significant available opportunity)
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