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 Rory
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What makes me really sad is that for years I have been a huge supporter of LTNs: the thinking behind them, the way they operate and the clear benefit for residents and the environment. But if my council has weaponised LTNs against me, where their introduction throughout the borough has demonstrably worsened my health outcomes, air quality and quality of life, I feel I have no option really, but to oppose them. Why wouldn't I, when their introduction has been wholly negative to me and my family and the firm council policy is to direct traffic away from all the streets that surround me and down my residential road. Tens of thousands of cars a week, most of them from outside the borough. I broadly supported the LTNs and defended them on Harringay Online time and time again, foolishly and naively thinking that this was a process which would benefit me and the environment in due course, if I trusted the process. What an idiot I am.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah
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I was a supporter of LTNs when I lived in the proposed St Ann's LTN. Then right before the introduction of the LTNs, I moved to a boundary road.
I still support the LTNs. I think the bulk of the traffic belongs on the roads that were designed to carry more traffic. The smaller residential roads were never meant to be through roads.
What has changed is there are more and bigger cars on the road. London roads were not designed to carry the volume of traffic we now have. We have an excellent public transport system. We need to incentivise people away from travelling by car and towards travelling by public transport. That means LTNs and other measures such as traffic calming, it means bus lanes so pubic transport becomes more reliable, it means safe infrastructure so people feel comfortable walking and cycling.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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Sarah, your reasonable points are like water off a duck's back to the Highways Team and their employer, the Council of Haringey.
If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
If all the Haringey Council Cabinet have is their Highways Department (and its present employees), then everything in the Borough either looks like a threat to curtail traffic or as an opportunity to improve traffic flow. The evidence is in the (telling) Highwaymen’s phrase:
“… due to the Ladder’s strategic position on the traffic network”.
And stuff the growing lungs of Ladder’s youngest with pollution and particulates.
This blinkered of municipal departments sees the Ladder solely through the prism of easing traffic flow. Residents may be more inclined to view the Ladder as a living environment or as a residential neighbourhood (as largely is Wightman Road).
The Council Cabinet has always found it easier to side with their staff, rather than siding with residents on whose behalf the council is supposed to work and many of whom pay Council Tax. The council cares, but not enough to effect meaningful improvement.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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Great data. Thanks for adding. It’s no surprise to me to see Enfield right at the bottom of that table. It always feels like the car capital of London. Drive around any residential road and you’re very likely to see enlarged driveways stuffed with multiple vehicles.
Would it be cheeky of me to wonder whether it’s neighbouring boroughs like Enfield that create so much of our through traffic?
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Hugh: You’d be absolutely right. Our erstwhile St Ann’s councillor, the late Julie Davies, told me that Haringey’s Bounds Green residents were up in arms when Enfield created an LTN on their side of the borough boundary, because it just shunted all their traffic across the border. Haringey’s Bounds Green LTN was a direct tit-for-tat response, and it seems clear from Mike Hakata’s slide that you copied above that he also now agrees that LTNs simply displace traffic to other areas and give them problems, rather than being a solution.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Williams
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Are they? The graph shows that a majority of adults in Haringey do not walk (or cycle) somewhere for more than 20 minutes daily. I think that's pretty dire for an urban area. Ok, we're doing way better than somewhere like Enfield, but it's not exactly a benchmark worth celebrating either.
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Plus. As we are well aware, the issue is that the majority of traffic in Haringey begins and ends outside of the borough. This is a classic example of statistics being totally counterintuitive. The residents of Haringey may be walking and cycling, but they are walking and cycling past thousands of cars and vans provided by drivers from other boroughs!
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Where in this data are the responses to "I am comfortable walking and cycling ?".
How about looking at it another way, I cycle and walk because it's cheaper than using pricy public transport.
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Me too, but they have always struck me as an interim hack before the road pricing is tried out, and fingers-crossed may actually work.
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Camden council is launching Liveable Neighbourhoods - https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-mind-blowingly-good-plans-f...
Why can't Haringey council do the same?
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THE Cabinet could, but they choose not to. The Council Cabinet are unable or unwilling to bring their Highways Team to heel. The delinquent Council is content to maintain some Neighbourhoods as less-liveable.
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