Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Really P****d Off
I hope all you who have the vote in Harringay will remember tonight ( and certainly other nights to come ) and at the next election vote out the incompetent shower responsible for the introduction of the LTN.
My weekly 5-minute journey from Wightman Road to Green Lanes took 45 minutes, including 30 minutes to go the length of Hampden Road. Yes, I know that there was a burst water main. But in happier times traffic would have been distributed across the roads now blocked off and not confined to Green Lanes. Yes, I know that I could have taken a bus to sit in the same traffic jam as I did this evening but in any case there aren't any buses between my house and the bottom of Effingham Road.
I understand the concerns of those residents living in the LTN who hope that the pollution in their streets will be reduced but don't the residents of Green Lanes, Turnpike Lane and Wightman Road breathe ? don't their children have lungs ?. Where did the Council think the LTN traffic would go ?
And please don't suggest to this disabled person that I could have cycled. I couldn't.
Tags for Forum Posts: low traffic neighbourhoods, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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There was a protest march on Green Lanes which held every thing up
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth M on
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Not if you are going into a place of business it isn't. 8.45 is the school run.
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6:30am start in Warham Road John
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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For those who do feel strongly that the Council should reconsider LTNs now rather than wait 6 months there will be a rally this evening, starting at 5.30 at Downhills Park cafe and walking towards Wood Green.
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So they can leave their cars behind on two Monday early evenings but not any other time?
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I'm going, I don't have a car to leave behind. I'll ask some of the others about that!
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AndrewAW1 — Can’t post this in the correct place because your comment no 8 is the end of that section. I find it very, very hard to believe that Woodlands Park Road carries anything like the number of vehicles using Ladder roads; I live round the corner from it, and at any time of day it’s practically empty, while, thanks to the existing filtering system near the school, any vans, lorries, etc making deliveries are already diverted onto adjacent roads such as mine.
As for the council’s “evidence” on traffic reduction, the piece you quote reads as merely an aspiration or belief to support their policy; are there actual stats for vehicles on the roads quoted v the number on all the Ladder roads?
Yes, merely closing BBL would send traffic into unfiltered streets. But isn’t this exactly what happened when Enfield put their LTN in and shunted all their traffic into Haringey? Ladder residents have been waiting twenty years for the Gardens LTN to “bed in” and all that traffic — which now mysteriously uses their roads instead — to “evaporate”, as we’re always told it will. LTNs just push a problem sideways unless there are viable alternatives, and Haringey is nowhere near providing any.
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This is why it's important to base these decisions on data rather than anecdotes. Things may have changed since the last comprehensive count but I can't see that there have been many drivers for change before the LTNs.
Woodlands Park Rd had ~ 25k cars in a week. Warham,, which is by far the busiest ladder road, had ~ 18k and the average ladder road is about 10k.
Counts can all be seen here https://batchgeo.com/map/8f870459dcd152cb5b094cf677476094 which will probably answer your question about ladder roads too.
I don't really see how the closure of the gardens drives traffic on to the ladder. It might change the distribution (Warham for instance) but they aren't going in the same direction. I've been around the area for 20 years+ and don't remember traffic being much different to now on Green Lanes and the ladder. I've lost count of the number of times I got off the bus early to walk because the traffic isn't moving.
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I’ve lived on Warham since 1984. Green Lanes used to be far worse than it is now. Getting the bus by what is now the Tesco Metro to Manor House during the rush hour was a half hour journey. Getting off the bus at Manor House I used to walk to home and my husband took the bus. I always got home first.
The problem was that every Garden road and Ladder road disgorged a constant stream of traffic onto The Lanes, holding up every junction. The increase in traffic on Warham wasn’t the Gardens closure per se but the active directing of traffic from St Ann’s Road up Salisbury Road and then via Warham to Wightman as a way to avoid Green Lanes.
The one constant in all these years is Green Lanes. It’s easy to throw the blame at Haringey but as it is a priority route nothing much can change unless TfL are on board and I get a feeling that they aren’t inclined to be so.
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Michael — I entirely agree with you that GL is the perpetual thorn in the side, which is why I believe sorting that out is a far greater priority than using a big stick to tell LTN residents to walk everywhere. Haringey seems never to have taken a holistic view of the area’s real traffic problems and tried to make it easier for its residents to get around, because they’d rather make “four wheels bad, two wheels good” gestures with CCTV and flowerpots instead.
Yes, of course it would need major collaboration with TfL, the GLA, the DfT et al to make changes (eg restricting traffic flow at the N Circular junction, prioritising buses, removing parking, etc, etc), but that’s the nettle nobody’s grasping and why I get p’d off that the source of the problem isn’t being tackled. While people still need to commute from outer boroughs and other counties to central London, Harringay will always be in the firing line. Closing roads and hoping drivers will also be p’d off enough just to go somewhere else — which is fundamentally the LTN philosophy — while not providing viable alternatives for those who live in the LTNs themselves, such as better, more reliable public transport, is not the answer. If the council wants to change people’s behaviour, the alternatives have to be better, not worse.
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