Traffic counts

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Annie J on January 17, 2020 at 11:20

I really hope this is not another attempt by Haringey Council to “conflate and confuse” the two issues of HGV;s illegally running through the Ward with a PARTIAL traffic count  and a comprehensive traffic count to assess the outcome of the  Green Lanes Area Transport “Study” which requires a COMPREHENSIVE traffic count and should have been budgeted for.  The volume of traffic on Fairfax Road is dreadful with 5 cars per minute during the rush hour and the Council needs to address this mess. 

We need to push for an assurance from Haringey Council that a COMPREHENSIVE count will be done and have a timetable as to when this will happen, so that we can evaluate the effectiveness of these “improvements” which we all paid for through our Council Tax.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 07vq9gg1ne3g5 on January 17, 2020 at 16:33

I did this once back in the late 1960s when it was customary to hire small groups of students for a week or two by the local council to undertake traffic surveys. We sometimes just did a count with a clickometer, or a full survey with police help when a small sample of drivers were flagged down by a policeman to a siding where we presented ourselves at the drivers window with half a dozen questions concerning their journey, i. e. start and destination, purpose, regular etc. All voluntary of course. We moved round the Borough (in this case Southwark) to different locations every day. On one occasion I was posted near New Cross Gate on a road to East Dulwich, the residency of several well known wrestling legends. It was a pleasure to meet Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks on the same day, plus a frankly offended Mick McManus who told me to "Fxxx Off" in a hugely menacing way, and emerge in one piece alive. Happy days. Ah back in the swinging decade when people actually were employed to do work rather than look for solutions and information in a box or an App. The human touch. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 07vq9gg1ne3g5 on January 17, 2020 at 18:20

Anticipating a frisson of interest rising in my youthful traffic surveying adventures I add this note on the clickometer. This was a small handheld mechanical device that had only one button. For a car you clicked once, for a commercial vehicle truck etc you double clicked - like a computer mouse, though the late 1960s were mouse free with the IT promise of shorter working hours, improved living conditions and a world of wonder in the future, lay just round the corner , ha ha ha - and buses were represented by three clicks. You can imagine on a busy London road during the rush hour even the most resilient casual surveyor, fortified by a previous evening of boozing, might be reduced to a lump of gibbering jelly after a thirty minute stint. The questionaires, when they were used, also recorded information about car occupancy which is a really important feature of road congestion, an aspect which seems to have been blithely forgotten by avaricious councils given the attractions of raising cash in a punitive congestion charge scheme in which most cars driving in and out of London are still obscenely carrying only one person the driver. Clearly nothing must stand in the way of the opportunity of taxing further, even air pollution and climate change. Intentions and promises. 

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page