Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cycling along Green Lanes
There is growing impatience and frustration about the Council’s lack of action on improving cycling and pedestrian safety on Green Lanes.* This mounting concern was covered in a recent piece in the Ham and High (see link below) about this and the growing discontent from cyclist about the safety of cycling along Green Lanes – either as a commuter, or just travelling to the local shops and services.
https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/25393803.cycling-campaigner-wants-pr...
As Trump would say…. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
*and elsewhere across the borough. All the cycle routes from surrounding boroughs stop abruptly at the Haringey border!
Cycling along Green Lanes has been described as 'hairy' (Image: Carla Francome) (Image: Carla Francome)
Tags for Forum Posts: cycling
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Don
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Inevitably, at some point in this kind of thread, somebody mentions Walthamstow, often as the epitome of cycle-friendly urban planning.
But it would be as well to remember that that scheme was part of a huge £27 million project for a "Little Holland", over four LTNs, of which around £1 million was spent directly in central Walthamstow. It included road closures, bus re-routing, pavement-widening, new lamp-posts, cycle stands and street furniture, plus other environmental improvements – in short, a huge, complete and ambitious makeover to pedestrianise a tiny, compact area, made possible only by one-off TfL funding and the existence of Lea Bridge Road (where further millions were also spent on a road rebuild) and two other trunk routes that could take all the displaced traffic.
It may have been a success for a few people in that borough, but it's not replicable in Harringay – and probably now nowhere else in London, given the amount of money it cost. As I said above, limited and manageable improvements to Green Lanes would do a huge amount to reduce congestion and improve public transport, two absolute prerequisites for persuading people out of their cars and making streets much better for pedestrians, bus users – and cyclists. I'm with you on the Council's failure to improve the environment, but it's always going to be cheaper for them to put flower pots and CCTV on side roads to force traffic onto main roads that are already crammed than it is to deal with the major trunk route that bisects our part of the borough.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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WALTHAM Forest is furthest ahead and one of the leaders in London.
But are not all the next door Boroughs ahead?
It would be as well to remember that go-ahead Waltham Forest competed for a one third share of the £100m made available to north London Boroughs by then London Mayor and LTN-advocate Boris Johnson.
On paper, Haringey Council also put in a bid for a one third share.
Their action showed willing. And the show was the point.
However, my understanding is that Haringey's proposal was so poor, so unserious, that it did not have any chance of succeeding. Was it not some form of ski-tow affair up Muswell Hill? Modelled on such a thing in Norway and repeated nowhere else?
Those of cynical mind might suspect that the Highwaymen's joke-bid was intended to fail.
We need a new, fresher breed of Highway engineer.
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Permalink Reply by Pugface
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Perhaps the real Highwayman is the Streetscene/Roads Team. The income from parking fees that the Council realise from Green Lanes (that would be worth an FOI) is probably significant - no doubt there would be stiff internal resistance to the loss of this income - even if some of this parking shifts to the side streets.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Williams
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Yes, funding (lack of) is really the heart of the issue. London and Haringey lag behind because so little is spent on active travel. It's not just local political will. The Waltham Forest model is not unique and it can be repeated, but it needs proper investment, as you say. I think TfL's plan was always to test in three boroughs (Waltham Forest, Enfield, Kingston) and then scale up.
When single road schemes like the Black Cat roundabout (£1.4bn) or Silvertown Tunnel (£2.2bn) get funded, it's clear the money exists if the government makes it a priority. Active travel just isn't very high up on the priority list.
If I remember correctly, even the recent LTNs in Haringey were in part funded by central government, with small pots of money that were made available during COVID.
Sad to see we are faffing around doing consultations to see if we will maybe remove footway parking, if budgets permit. Meanwhile, cities like Paris have been completely transformed with serious investment.
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Paris may have gone full-blast down the cycling route, but it’s a tiny city in comparison with London — around two million people compared with almost ten million here. London’s global scale gives it far larger numbers of visitors, commuters and businesses, in an economy bigger than that of some countries, and transport in a conurbation has to be a question of priorities or the whole place will grind to a halt. London needs street access for commercial vehicles — everything from local builders through utility companies, Veolia, DPD, Ocado and Royal Mail up to artics from Jewson or Tesco and beyond — to make it run at all, so balancing those needs with buses, cycles, taxis and people who still need to use private cars is key. Paris is not only more compact, but has also managed to keep locally self-sufficient neighbourhoods with a far better balance of residential to commercial premises than London, so diverting traffic and closing roads for bike use has less drastic impact.
TfL’s report (mentioned above) that buses are getting slower and slower and more and more unreliable because of congestion implies that existing measures, such as road-narrowing for cycle lanes in central areas and LTNs that also squeeze more traffic onto major roads, aren’t working, because they cause so much congestion that they don’t provide viable incentives to stop car use and just make it far harder for people to travel for work or leisure. Cycling in a city this big simply isn’t a universal panacea and investment has to take that into account.
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Don!
You are absolutely correct!
London is bigger than Paris!
However most of what you write about traffic is bluster by hinting that reform of transport policy will somehow damage the London economy.
or the whole place will grind to a halt.
This is the kind of hysterical nonsense that some of the car owner minority is prepared to engage in:
The centre of Paris has not ground to a halt.
In particular, London's ancient heart—the City of London—has not ground to a halt, despite its dependence on public transport and the severe lack of accommodation for cars!
The #ActiveTravel tide is turning. London Mayor Khan did well on the #ULEZ and he is now on aiming to make progress on Oxford Street.
The Conservative City of London, like Socialist Paris, are good examples to "rebel" Haringey Council, but from which the local New Labour council cannot and will not learn.
It's a mystery as to why Haringey's minority of car owners are defensive: they are likely to be able to rest easy for years, as there is no possibility of improvement on "Green" Lanes.
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Clive: For the record, I am not now nor have ever been a car owner or driver. My “bluster” is no more so than your characterisation of cycling opponents as “highwaymen” and the apparently unsupported assertions that the GL shopkeepers are so powerful that they can consistently prevent the council from changing traffic regs or parking controls. If there’s evidence of this, please publicise it!
I stand by my Paris remarks, based on available population stats, but if Ile de France is included then, yes, the metropolitan area may well be the same as London’s. However, Anne Hidalgo’s cycling initiatives have, so far, been in central Paris and within the Peripherique, and I believe my suggestion that Paris still has more local and self-sufficient neighbourhoods than (at least central) London is not unreasonable and is relevant to the city’s ability to cope. (Unlike London, for instance, Carrefour and Monop don’t have the same stranglehold on food retail that Sainsbury’s and Tesco do here, so their artics don’t clutter the streets as Tesco do in GL.)
Ultimately we want the same things from GL. I want parking, loading and waiting controls, a northbound bus lane with priority at traffic lights, and traffic restrictions at the N Circular junction. I also want all Veolia, DPD, utility and similar service vehicles to be electric and only allowed to operate if they are — the ULEZ was a major step forward, so time to follow it to the next stage.
GL is a major trunk route, the railway is a barrier on one side and the LTNs push unnecessary extra traffic onto “boundary” roads. I don’t believe in traffic “evaporation” (and nor do the Bounds Green residents who were flooded with extra traffic when Enfield declared an LTN next door, for example), but persuading people out of their cars needs carrots, not sticks. If GL is better controlled, more people-friendly and has buses that are frequent, reliable and faster, there’s less incentive to use cars, and the road can be shared between pedestrians, vehicles — and, yes, cycles. GL is a mixed-use road and any scheme has to take account of that — unless, of course, there are moves to close all the restaurants and shops, put up barriers at Manor House and Wood Green and turn it into a genuinely “green” lane…. Now that really would have a radical impact on the economy and people’s lives!
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Grand Paris is pretty comparable with Greater London.
But ultimately the point should be that shifting people out of cars and onto bikes should also improve traffic for the remaining few who really need motor vehicles.
Whenever schemes are suggested some people are up in arms about how not everyone can walk, cycle or take public transport with the implication that they are the only ones who are in the motor vehicles.
That isn't the reality though, you only have to look at the big uptick in cars on the road when school holidays end to realise that there are plenty of people in cars who really don't need to be.
Also, electric bikes have further democratised cycling, fitness is much less of a barrier now, but fear of getting splatted with poor (or often non-existent) infrastructure is still a big barrier.
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Paris does differ from London in many ways (generally denser, for example), however, you are mistaken to think it's much smaller. Parisians define "the city" much more narrowly than Londoners do. It's like me saying London ends at Zone 2 and pretending the rest of the population doesn't exist. The metropolitan area is over 10million, and it has a great number of visitors.
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ONE of the key characteristics of a small minority of car owners is a lack of honesty. For example, the (disgraceful) Tottenham Conservatives claimed that, the reason for the closure of the big Edmonton IKEA store was due to the LTNs and ULEZ. That was untrue. But due to heavy car-addiction, some car-owners will say anything no matter how preposterous.
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Great points. The whole borough is in desperate need and is long overdue the delivery of strategic cycling routes. It's so strange to accuse those who move around by bike as being 'entitled'. It's a prejudice that gets repeated over and over. To move around a city on a bike is clean, cheap, empowering, healthy - it's good for the economy - it's a good thing to do and should be applauded not despised or vilified. It's a humble not an entitled thing to do. The actual real harm on the road comes from motorised vehicles - we know that. So calling people 'entitled' is gaslighting people who are merely asking for fair positive and doable interventions (commonplace in the rest of Europe). They are merely asking for the council to put human safety above parking spots directly outside shops (with so many side roads providing parking space). Is it entitled to not want to die or have a broken bone or lose a limb? It's why so many here are asking what is the root cause of the inertia in Haringey. Don't we want to be the greenest borough? 'Supporting greener choices' is Call to Action no 6 I do believe. And reducing road deaths and injuries (towards zero) is a GLA requirement of all councils.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson
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The problem of Green Lanes is perfectly illustrated by the photograph used in the original post. A perfectly good cycle/bus lane, rather than allowing a faster bus journey and safer cycle ride, is being used as a car park.
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