Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Wightman Road Closure – is your road benefiting?
I was just wondering this week how the other ladder roads are being affecting by the current Wightman closure. Are any road benefiting more than others or suffering more traffic. It would be really interesting to know as I have always thought that Wightman Road is the key to finding a solution the traffic issue on the ladder.
The traffic situation seems much calmer on Endymion both in the morning and evening and I walked down Green Lanes this morning about 7.30am and it didn't seem any more congested than normal (before the closure of WR). I appreciate that there are still issues with the traffic on Hornsey High Street coming down to Turnpike Lane.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic, wightman bridge, wightman bridge closure
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thankfully the volumes of traffic on Hewitt as measured in 2016 were similar to or greater than those of about a third of the Ladder. I'm with you on getting the other two-thirds down to the same level.
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Permalink Reply by Don on
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Well, yes….. But what’s "local traffic"? Mattison to Crouch End via Wightman? Wood Green shopping centre to Hewitt? Sainsbury’s to Pemberton (barely a quarter of a mile but hardly environmentally friendly)? The traffic survey couldn't ask drivers where their journeys started and ended, so even Hornsey Park Road to Endymion might count as "cutting through"; surely it's impossible to sort out "good" traffic from "bad"? Lots of people would argue that journeys under, say, a mile should be on foot, by bike or by bus if practicable, so if that became the norm then cars using Wightman, etc, would by definition be the longer-distance travellers many residents want to discourage.
As I said above, one person’s smart solution to avoiding jams is another’s use of a road as a rat run. It would be really great to reduce traffic all down the Ladder but what is the solution to Green Lanes that will enable this?
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I have to say I agree. We spent 30 minutes on a bus from the bottom of Wood Green high street to Mattison Rd today. For the sake of 100 or so car parks the journey time could have been considerably shorter.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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You're right of course Don that what happens to GL is key to traffic management in the whole area. There is a ludicrous situation at the moment where you go down GL using a bus lane that is only operational for very limited hours only to turn onto Seven Sisters Road at Manor House where the bus lane is in operation for most of the day and where the traffic flows remarkably well most of the time.
There are two approaches I think. Either what can be done to make GL move and so make traffic choose to remain on it or dealing with it before it even hits the area.
GL at the moment is not fit for the purpose it has ended up being used for, a major route in and out of central London. That's why, I think, the situation on Wightman has been allowed to happen and get worse, a reluctance to deal with GL.
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I similarly don't understand this somewhat strange differentiation between good local traffic from bad through traffic. I went to Chelmsford on Saturday. My journey took me up GL, 7 Sisters, Amhurst Park, Lea Bridge Rd, Orient Way to the A12. No rat running - just taking what I would consider the designated route from A to B. Does that make me Hackneys bad through traffic? If (as I often do) I take my niece riding to the Lea Bridge stables, is that same journey ok because it's local?
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Rat running is the symptom, not the disease. Motorists want to get from one point to another in the shortest possible time which is entirely reasonable. What causes rat running is either the route you would expect traffic to take (major roads) being unsuitable or, and this is the case all over London, the major routes taking far more traffic than they were designed for. And that in a nutshell is my issue with Green Lanes vs Wightman Road. For years it has been obvious that Green Lanes simply isn't up to the job. The volumes it carries are far higher that it was designed to take (even greater that it actually took when I moved here over 30 years ago). But it's a hard, expensive and politically difficult nut to crack. The "solution" has been to allow residential roads to turn into rat runs to compensate for the lack of action, followed by a series of isolated panic measures to deal with the hell people living on residential roads have ended up being forced into - The Gardens and Hermitage being good examples.
The action needed is to either to make major routes more condusive to large traffic volumes by keep them moving (see Seven Sisters Road south of the park) or to prevent traffic entering in the first place (within the congestion charge zone is a good example)
For me the problem with reopening Wightman again would be that the pressure to come up with a whole area solution to traffic problems would cease as Wightman would again mop up the overflow from Green Lanes.
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Or maybe the real solution is to reduce car usage in the first place? Also, as has been mentioned the parking on Green Lanes is ridiculous.
I did read an article on a study that found that rat running worsened congestion overall, although improved the journey time for the person rat running. I'm finding it difficult to find unfortunately.
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I agree but I'm also pragmatic. Lessening car dependence has to go hand in hand with improving public transport options and that isn't a short term solution. In the interim I'd like to see better management of what we have at the moment.
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I live on Falkland and it's been amazing. And there appears to be very little impact on North Harringay School drop off an pick ups either. There's virtually no noise, virtually no pollution, demonstrably less rubbish on the streets and the bliss of a residential road being as it should be. I also use my car around the surrounding roads and will gladly swap our new quality of life with a slightly longer journey around Turnpike Lane etc. I'll be gutted if the roads open again to the status quo beforehand, with clearly the vast majority of traffic from out of the borough using Falkland as a rat run as the first available right hand turn after Turnpike Lane up through Hornsey.
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It's a nightmare to get anywhere at the moment. I've stopped going to local independent shops for what I need and am buying more online as it's more time efficient for me.
Commuting in the mornings and evenings (via public transport) has added at least an hour to my day. The sooner it's over the better.
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