Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Tottenham High Road is beyond saving
Haringey Council is at it again. They are putting forward yet another consultation plan on the future of Tottenham High Road. The council have 'identified' parts of the moribund centre for 'investment', while completely ignoring the fact that for so long, many of their policies have caused so much damage to the wider area.
On top of a poorly maintained environment, restrictive parking zones, and poor planning controls, many traders have now suffered a double whammy with the recent riots that has seen many shops and stores on the brink of collapse and others have closed completely. They also have to put up with the stupid "I Love Tottenham" campaign, a cynical publicity stunt trumpeted in the council's "People" freesheet.
The so-called help the council given to traders is too little too late, at a time of an economic downturn in which more public-sector staff already serving one of the most jobless and deprived areas of the country are facing the sack. Football club Spurs' recent decision to stay at White Hart Lane may please the massive number of fast-food outlets who are dependent on them for most of their income, but beyond that there never will be anything to entice people to shop and spend time locally as private investment remains nonexistent. The wider area will continue to stagnate socially, while the few locals with money to spend will continue travelling to neighbouring shopping and cultural areas instead.
The just published report by government advisor Mary Portas into the future of the High Street argues that some of main shopping areas are beyond saving. I have long said that Tottenham High Road at the present time is beyond saving, and I believe Haringey Council should divert the resources from what is currently spent in this 'black hole' to support the borough's other main shopping areas, including of course, the vibrant Green Lanes.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matthew cuthbert on
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It's a shame that TfL don't go the extra mile in their 'consultation,' by listening to residents views on future problems resulting from interventions, maybe it should be called 'dialogue."
Joanne McCartney was a good suggestion, very active in debate at the GLA and a very personable politician.
If anyone has any sketches outlining local traffic issues / traffic redirection, Id be happy to take them up. As a local urban designer I could support your issues, using other proven case studies. At very least
draw up some diagrams highlighting your views graphically.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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I'm sort of thinking if I dont say anything they wont notice the rat-run behind Wards and wont close it off.
That way I'll just have a half mile detour to get home (I can see my house in Page Green from the High Rd) instead of the present mile and a quarter. Yes I have measured it.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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A lot of this discussion seems to be about the present, or future (under the plans) problems of _driving_ around the area. Driving itself is the problem. There are too many cars. If people just got out of their cars and used the excellent local bus services, or the tubes (Tottenham Hale, Seven Sisters) it would solve the problem. You could even _walk_! It might help to get some exercise, as well as reduce the number of cars, congestion and pollution. You can't have a vibrant high street, or a vibrant community, when so many people are driving around in their metal boxes, cut off from everyone else.
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Permalink Reply by JJ B on
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Except that the planned changes to the giratory system have nothing to do with improving the quality of life on the High Rd for locals. They are principaly for passers through. They are introducing extra traffic lanes to keep the traffic flowing, that will drain all the congestion that currently takes place beyond Tottenham Hale right down into the centre of what should have been our revamped Town Centre. Instead we will get a deguised motorway - 6 LANES of traffic where at present we have 4! There will only be 1 northbound bus lane. The dedicated, contra-flow south-bound bus lane will be eliminated and so buses will be caught up in the traffic.
Also, the overall pavement area (public amenity space) will be REDUCED in size in favour of road traffic - A very big missed opportunity to give those small shops on the east side, north of Tesco's the much-needed, wider pavement for future terrace café culture that has sprung up further down the High Rd in Dalston.
Why wasn't a segregated bike lane put in on the west side of the street? Pedestrians (mums with push chairs, older walkers, people with groceries) continuously battle with cyclists there. The period-style, relatively new, street furniture, that was in keeping with the Heritage Corridor revamp, was taken away and replaced with modern street lighting, etc, so that the visual continuity right up the High Road has been broken. As if they purposefully want to separate the Seven Sisters from Bruce Grove areas.
Down the High Rd in Dalston the new paving is in real yorkstone. We got cheap concrete slab paving, in an area that has signature buildings in it (old Jewish Hospital, Town Hall, listed Barclays Bank building, etc). And there are already weeds growing under the new benches, some of which are black with dirt and pollution.
I don't agree that Tottenham is beyond saving. There are loads of residents "activating" against the odds. However 'those in charge' (councilors and elected reps) don't really get it! Or seem completely ineffectual, or pass the buck to someone else's responsibility. It is a typical culture of underdevelopment just a few miles from the Square Mile where so much of the worlds wealth is managed. How ironic!
But in the end, maybe Neville Collins has a point! We should bulldoze the whole of Tottenham and let the regeneration people ignore the real needs of the local population who can be displaced and replaced because they are just not worth it. Let them build some more new, high density housing, 'a la Hale Village', so that the people can riot again and again and again when the problems just keep recurring.
And the country will be entertained. "Panem et circensis". Is that what the romans said?
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I already don't grow edibles my garden as they would be too full of poison to be safe. We can expect to double that pollution as traffic speeds up and multiplies.
I've lived in London all my adult life and have never felt like moving away before. But lately I can begin to feel the need to look for alternatives. I refuse to allow despair, but it is knocking loudly at my windows.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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JJ B, it really does sound like a lost opportunity going on what you're detailing, particularly regards lost paving area, no bike lane. I did wonder looking at the map how they were fitting it all in.
On a separate note I've never understood why Monument Way is so wide. There's never really that much traffic on it. Broad Lane is a different story with it often chock-a-block, with traffic pouring in from Ferry Lane and Watermead Way. Guessing that's where you're affected pamish.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Monument Way is so wide because it was laid out in the 1970s, after part of the heart of Old Tottenham was ripped out, when the houses on High Cross Road, the original connecting road between the Hale and The Green, were demolished.. For some unknown reason, it was decided to allow one house from High Cross Road to remain.
Both High Cross Road and Chesnut Road, simalarly Northumberland Park & Lansdowne Road (the more up-market part of Tottenham) were lined with larger victorian houses.. most of which were demolished in the 1960s..
These houses were no worse than any other in Tottenham, Harringay or Wood Green and were really just victims of the town-planners..
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The objective should be to reduce the High Road to 2 x 2 lane traffic in either direction as is the case for most of it from Shoreditch to Stamford Hill further south. Traffic will then flow CONTINUOUSLY, albeit slowly, at times, so it would be in keeping with urban area speed guidelines anyway! Priority for buses in bus lanes. Proper cycle routes as found in the Netherlands where children cycle trough towns with their parents and people commute on bikes. This IS NOT RADICAL thinking.
Traffic coming in from outer London should use a different route or public transport. This is OUR TOWN CENTRE. Tottenham Hale is ripe for car-based mall shopping and the Tottenham's Historic TOWN CENTRE is for independant smaller shops serving a mix of locals and people attracted by the speciality pull and attractiveness of the street scape and range of products on offer. This CANNOT be achieved with the present policy paradigm and WITHOUT STRONG POLITICAL WILL.
I cannot under the decision to give subsidies to Tottenham Hotspur to remain in the area. The club's threat should have been taken up. LET IT LEAVE!!! and the opportunity to develop a huge swathe of North Tottenahm seized to bring in businesses and services coupled with quality housing and improved transport links to revive that place. Instead we will get a football stadium that is only open for business very periodically, feeding the fast foods outlets as some else o the forum put it. And the tax take can't be all that great.
North Tottenham has 2 (yes 2) rail lines passing through it. Where is the innovative thinking to improve the transport links to the north of the Borough? Croydon got a tram years ago. Then for some reason the East London line swung left at Dalston instead of coming straight up to Edmonton. WHERE IS THE RADICAL VISION FOR THE FUTURE?
The situation is dire and the present consultations and technocrats brought in from outside to pay lip service to our needs, from the what's being said in the neighbourhoods, is not going the right way. A lot of money and resources are being spent in a knee jerk reaction after the riots. Long, long term solutions are needed and hard-on-the-ground graft is necessary. It won't be easy. But when you hear the politicians saying REPEATEDLY "there will be casualties in the regeneration process" it does not leave you reassured as to the final agenda.
Just as economic growth does not mean progress for people. Regeneration, as being pushed, does not mean improvement in the lives of the people who most need it.
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The new design will pour that traffic into Monument Way (bypassing Broad Lane) and directly into the High Rd heading south, still fifty yards from my back yard. There are only two roads north of the A12 across the marshes - Forest Road and Lea Bridge Rd, so all that traffic from the east has to use one of them.
Hey, how about toll roads? As there are only two ways in, it could happen. That would make them think twice.
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JJB: Thank you for clarifying the plans. I agree with you, and others here, 100%. Tottenham, with the High Road as its central shopping area, and its commercial "spine" should be dedicated to the local community, not be turned into an urban motorway, funnelling traffic north-south. I said in my earlier comment that the problem was traffic. So I agree completely that we need to reduce the number of lanes in this plan to choke off the through traffic. I was also shocked to find that there will not be bus lanes northbound and southbound. If we want to revive Tottenham, and bring shoppers, restaurants and businesses back, we need a "people-friendly" environment, which having an urban motorway running north-south through it is certainly _not_. I was very hopeful about the future, when I saw the work starting to remove the gyratory system, and also saw that the inappropriate development at Wards Corner had been shelved. But now it looks as if all that will be wasted, if more and more north-south traffic is going through Tottenham.
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