Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay Traffic meeting Outcome
Exactly three weeks ago today, I added a post on HoL pointing out the failure to convene a traffic meeting about Harringay's traffic. Just over a week later, a meeting seems to have been hurriedly arranged at rather short notice. I'm sure the two events were linked only by coincidence.
That meeting was last night at Alexandra House on Station Road in Wood Green. I was expecting to see a handful of the locals who normally turn up for these things. However, I was surprised to find a large room with about 50 - 100 people, all apparently eager to hear of progress.
We were graciously met at the building's reception desk by traffic boss, Cllr, Mike Hakata. Joking with Mike and looking about his person, I asked him where he was hiding his magic wand. His coy and slightly embarrassed reaction rather set the tone for the evening.
The meeting began with a long and very detailed explanation about why it had taken so long to get yesterday's meeting set up. The room was then given a clear message. In a nutshell, we were given the standard explanation of the past twenty years, that doing anything about traffic on the Ladder is too difficult and that all possibilities had been deemed impractical. Cllr Hakata didn't discount that one day the Council would magically find the solution that has been so stubbornly been evading them all these decades, but for the time being the focus was moving away from reducing traffic volume and on to safety - and away from Wightman and the Ladder rung roads and on to Green Lanes. More on that in just a minute.
Below is a copy of the slide Mike showed to explain the decision to abandon traffic calming on the Ladder.
There was plenty of disgruntled reaction to the slide but surprisingly little direct dissection of it. Having said that, whilst I think most people understand the issue raised in the first point and few have any appetite for clogging up Green Lanes, one person did make the point that once again the Ladder seems to have come at the end of the queue and the bowl is empty. The resident pointed out that with all other through routes already closed off by LTNs or other traffic control blockages, of course options are now limited because traffic is now so concentrated on Green Lanes and Wightman Road.
With regards to the second point on the slide, which essentially indicates technical reasons why filtering won't work on the Ladder, I asked Mike how the filtering currently works for the two school streets. He confirmed what I thought - APNR, but he hurried to add some explanation that now eludes me about why that couldn't work on the Ladder as a whole. I didn't want to get into a pointless disagreement with Mike about that, but as I understand it the LTNs at Hammersmith and Fulham work very effectively100% by APNR, where residents' cars are registered and are excepted from penalties. Clearly it would need more research, but having rechecked my facts this morning, here's what Google AI tells us:
How They Work
Enforcement: ANPR cameras record vehicle registration numbers. Drivers without valid permits who use restricted roads as shortcuts receive fines, which can range from £60 to £130.
Access: The schemes aim to stop out-of-borough traffic from cutting through residential streets, but they do not prevent access to any location within the borough.
Permits and Exemptions:Borough Residents can travel freely through the camera points if their vehicle is registered in the borough.
Visitors to residents can be registered for access using the RingGo app or website.
Carers can apply for free exemptions if they look after residents within the zone.
Some services like Uber have a technical solution to automatically exempt their drivers during a pickup or dropoff in the zone.
Mike swept away further concerns about traffic volumes with a reassurance that those same Ladder School Streets schemes that operate so successfully with APNR are lowering not only the traffic of the streets themselves, they are also having a knock-on effect on the neighbouring streets. The message seemed almost to be that we'll have to content ourselves with that for now.
As to Green Lanes, there are some plans. Mike was at pains to underline how very expensive these plans would be and how many millions each part of the plan would cost. There was no detail on exactly what the treatment would be, but the aim is to target the safety record of the road, which Mike explained is very much the worst in the borough. What we were able to find out is that the plans would see four (or was it five) junctions being somehow remodelled to improve safety. There was no slide to show the details, but from memory, going from North to South, I think those junctions were Turnpike Lane, Frobisher/Alfoxton, Colina Road and Endymion Road.
Quite a number of people suggested that the best solution for Harringay's Green Lanes, costing a fraction of the proposed plans, would be to remove parking from the road entirely, but the room was told that there are no immediate plans to do this. It seems, for some reason he didn't explain, that whilst reducing traffic volume is seen as the key to safety elsewhere in the borough, in Harringay magic roundabouts (or was it junctions) are the trick. Cllr Hakata also seemed unable to give any reassurance that the Green Lanes plans would ensure that traffic wasn't simply displaced on the the Ladder.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the meeting ended in quite a fractious mood with Mike Hakata appearing to be rather testily batting away an unwelcome swarm of autumn bees.
Was I or anyone else at all reassured by last night? No, I don't think so. If anything, I left with heightened concerns about the future for our neighbourhood. This in the year before local elections tells us that they see Harringay as in the bag already, I guess.
I conclude with the cartoon I used for my recent post on this issue and somewhat retract the apologies I gave at the end of that post for my uncharacteristic pessimism.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by RD
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Hi Anna
As a Cllr representing the Harringay ward and Ladder residents, can you please clarify your position now on reducing traffic on the Ladder in the light of the meeting. Are the findings of the transport review the end of the matter as far as you, Zena and Gina are concerned?
From your response here it does sound like you'd prefer residents to refocus on the road safety proposals for Green Lanes and forget any hope of getting Ladder traffic measures introduced. So clarification of your stance going forward would be welcomed.
Thank you.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Williams
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Protected cycle facilities both ways from Endymion Road to the Borough boundary with Hackney.
Does this mean the stretch of Green Lanes between Endymion and New River?
Any improvement there is welcome, but it feels incredibly piecemeal and surely of limited value without proper physical protection and the removal of parking to the north. Much of that length is already protected by flexible wands. In fact, it's the only section of Harringay’s Green Lanes that I know of with any form of protection for cyclists. The protected length to be constructed in these improvements must only be about 50 metres total.
I use the Hermitage-Green Lanes and Endymion-Green Lanes junctions regularly as a cyclist and commute by bike south of the river. Notably, the scariest part of my commute is the 2-minute section in my own neighbourhood.
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It was a dreadful meeting, an utter car crash. The only positive was the very large number of residents who attended.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson
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A number of us have lived here for a very long time (40 years in my case) and the problem has always been the same - traffic does not want to use Green Lanes. Green Lanes is and has always been the key to easing traffic on roads surrounding it.
I was involved in trying to do something about traffic on The Ladder from almost the day I moved here and the solutions offered have always been to treat the symptoms but not the cause. So we had the gating of The Gardens and Ladder streets changed from two way to one way. But none of this ever solved that cause - Green Lanes.
At every step proposals to solve the issue of GL has been stopped by the Green Lanes Traders Association and their insistence that shops cannot survive unless people can drive to them and park outside - this is despite study after study showing that this is not the case and those who walk or use public transport are the ones who spend their money there.
I’m not pretending dealing with Green Lanes is easy. It’s not and there are many vested interests who shout loudly at any attempt to bring about even modest changes to bus lanes and parking, but local authorities and elected councillors are there to do the hard stuff. We’re not some quiet parish council.
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Permalink Reply by Pacific_Flower
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Thank you Hugh! Great summary and measured.
The Ladder mobilised so well on the issue of abolishing visitor day permits, it would be brilliant to do a similar effort on this but what to champion... this suggestion? "remove parking from the road (Green Lanes) entirely"
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The council already appears to have convinced some that tinkering with GL rather than addressing their years of deceit and dishonesty is for the best. Hermitage, the Gardens, and St Ann's didn't get their traffic shut down through magnanimity and being pleasant. Their campaigns were anything but.
Solutions and fixes for ladder roads are often in conflict with one another. There is no realistic solution that satisfies all of the disparate conditions and desires. But bailing out TfL and the through-traffic of Green Lanes by offering up parking spots and inviting more heavy goods and other vehicular traffic onto our own streets might be the most Ladder thing ever.
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Yes, good point Jamie... by no parking on GL we'd turn it into a sort of highway north, open invitation.
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I honestly don't think that's the case. The thinking is that removing the parking will allow for a continuous, safe bus/cycling lane from Turnpike Lane to Manor House, not a dual carriageway.
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Yes an unobstructed bus and cycle lane seems really sensible. Maybe it's something residents can get behind. Clear message too.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Lewis
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Obviously this needs to be taken out of the hands of Haringey Council as we all know they are totally useless - and I think most of the people that work for the council would probably agree with this statement. This has been going on for a long time and It's clear that Mike has been put in place to try and quiet down the process. Is there not a way to go over the council and involve the Mayor of London and TFL. The Mayor's office is proactive in traffic calming and all boroughs have a responsibility to improve air quality. I have seen endless schemes across all boroughs except Harringay that seems take delight in being one of the worst boroughs in London. The other community schemes have been funded by TFL so why can't this one be the same?
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This does feel like a good idea. The council's official policy, as communicated to the residents of the Ladder this week, is to do nothing about the traffic and pollution their policies have cursed us with. So we need to go over the heads of the people who have demonstrably failed us. To be honest, after the depressing meeting this week, I'll take any suggestions!
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What a pity the council didn’t consider point 1 on the slide before closing almost all the through routes on the east side of Green Lanes with LTNs. Presumably the anticipated income from fines (highlighted here on HoL a few weeks ago) outweighed any consideration of the extra pollution, traffic jams and delays to public transport caused elsewhere by the road closures. Cllr Hakata is effectively conceding that traffic “evaporation” is a myth, but failing to proffer any solutions to the chaos the council’s policies (not just St Ann’s but the long-time Gardens closure as well) have caused for years.
We all know that GL is the heart of the problem, because Harringay’s geography, the railway barrier and GL’s role as both a major north/south trunk route and a local shopping centre funnels ever more traffic into too narrow a space, especially when side roads that would otherwise provide a safety valve are closed. In many previous threads I’ve argued that a solution needs to involve the council, TfL, the GLA and probably the DoT all working together: at the least, limit GL parking between the Arena and the Salisbury, create a northbound bus lane and bus priority at junctions, and filter/restrict/ban traffic at the GL/North Circular junction, especially in rush hours. But this requires co-ordination and probably a lot of expenditure, whereas tinkering at the edges with CCTV and flowerpots is both cheaper and, it now appears, far more lucrative for the council.
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