Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
More Traffic Headed for Wightman - 2 days to Act
Last October I raised the issue that possible street closures in surrounding areas would displace traffic our way.
One of the areas was Crouch End.
A consultation for those living/working in the area is in progress and one of the options being consulted on is the closure to through traffic (except for buses, emergency vehicles and cyclists) of one or more major roads, such as The Broadway.
A traffic survey for the Crouch End project suggests such a change might mean 2000 more vehicles a day in both directions for Wightman.
Harringay residents can make their views known via the questionnaire.
To complete the questionnaire go to:
https://www.haringey.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/roads-and-stre...
After the initial section you can opt to only complete the one on traffic. The deadline is 2 February.
Postscript navigation note: (For oversized lorry stuck on Warham, see P14, here.)
Tags for Forum Posts: liveable crouch end, liveable neighbourhoods, oversize hgvs on warham, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Peter Purdie on
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I think the results of the survey speak for themselves as 78% of respondents thought the Middle Lane Road closure was a bad idea or that it wasn’t the way to achieve the overall aims of the scheme.
With regards to schools on main roads, the only school likely to see a reduction in traffic if Crouch End Town Centre were shut would be Coleridge. St Marys Infants and Juniors, Rokesly, Greig City Academy and Highgate Woods would all see increases as cars make their way around Crouch End to get to Ferme Park Road and Shepherds Hill.
As for the traders they saw a significant drop in trade during the trial and one would think that the traders themselves know what is in their own best interests.
Even if there is some evaporation in the overall traffic numbers, the road layout of Crouch End means that closing any main roads displaces an increased number of vehicles onto other unsuitable roads in Crouch End and surrounding areas. You will not evaporate 40,000 vehicles a day. This very different to Walthamstow village which is surrounded by a ring road of three A roads and a B road.
Most people in Crouch End are in favour of measures which will reduce traffic and pollution in the shopping areas and residential roads. None of the proposals to date achieve this and this is reflected in the results of the survey, where people were overwhelmingly against closing Middle Lane. People will not have been deterred from expressing their views on the survey because of concerns about online abuse. All the exchanges we have seen on online forums have been a respectful exchange of a range of views.
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Well I have been on the receiving end of a significant amount of accusatory comments and haranguing which personally I found were not respectful in the slightest so we will need to agree to disagree on that. I have also been contacted on and offline by people thanking me for sticking my head above the parapet in favour of an LCE scheme as they didn't want to risk it. These people will I'm sure have completed the survey. The project team also report that the people they spoke to on the streets during the trial were also more positive than online comment would suggest.
The schools would need to be protected by school streets at the peak times of day under any scheme and school streets will be going ahead across the Borough whatever happens. Hopefully CPZ changes will happen too and the traders who CPZ hop in their cars might have to get public transport to work like the rest of us instead of driving. Perhaps they need to consider that they need to be part of the modal shift too.
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Permalink Reply by JulieB on
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Thanks Peter, I have been wondering how similar Waltham Forest is to Crouch End. Elizabeth seems certain they are comparable and we can take the success of Waltham Forest as proof that the CE scheme will be a similar success.
I remember reading a document about modular filtering that Living Wightman linked to during the GLATS consultation. This document explained the success of such schemes in some European cities. One point they made was in order to be an overall success the areas to be filtered should be surrounded by A roads (or equivalent) that were free flowing and had capacity to take any displaced traffic. IMHO this isn't true of Crouch End, or of Wightman Rd with Green Lanes as it stands.
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I'd certainly be happy with a much wider scheme - maybe using the A1, the A406 , the A10 and the Seven Sisters Road.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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ANPR and allow councils to bill motorists appropriately (loads) for traversing a borough perhaps? Can Sadiq Khan make this happen? Does he want to make anything happen?
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Why do people always think that social engineering can be accomplished by charging ? Motorists ( and others ) will always find the money to do what they want.
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The congestion charge worked, it no longer does because it has not increased in line with inflation.
The sugar tax has worked too. Notice how your IRN BRU doesn't have quite the same kick it used to?
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As I'm sure you will agree, the authorities limit increases to the point just before where revenue starts to fall.
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Permalink Reply by PeterPiper on
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You mean like the ideas first proposed by responses to the GLATS survey a few years ago when some people wanted to look at the big picture? LBH certainly didn't want to look at the big picture then, and don't seem to be prepared to look at it now.
Highways & transport working together could be a start.
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Yes I think a lot of us here have been saying that a holistic approach is needed, not piecemeal changes like our council have made in the past.
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Hi Peter,
The biggest issue with the Middle Lane trial/survey is that these kind of changes take some time to bed in. It's like going to a personal trainer to lose weight/get strong and assessing results after only a few days. This article puts this position forward well:
https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/ham-high-guest-simon-munk-london-cyc...
The knowledge and evidence about what works is out there; it is, however, generally counter-intuitive and thus not "believed" by many. This poses a big challenge to effecting meaningful change. I really don't know what the solution to this is. I personally get very frustrated with arguments against schemes that condense to basically one or other of, "I'm in favour of X in general but not this manifestation of X" or "it's different round here, and these experts don't understand the local situation". But I recognise this is a real barrier: this isn't to diminish these views, rather I'd hope through engagement more people could be persuaded to support changes, hence my posting on this issue here...!
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Thanks Peter an interesting summary.
It's worrying that the council are downplaying the negative feedback, especially in your last paragraph; "The Council has tried to downplay the results of the survey by saying that the generally negative results were not unexpected as 982 of the 3476 respondents lived “outside the area”"To me this reads like they are looking at piecemeal changes, again, and not looking holistically or calculating the cost (displaced traffic, increase in pollution etc) to neighbouring 'areas'.
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