Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Time to Tackle the Ladder Traffic Issue? - Policewoman cut out of vehicle after collision caused by car speeding down Ladder road
Last week a car speeeding down a Ladder road ran into the side of a police car travelling along Green Lanes on an emergency call. I am told that Green Lanes was closed for a while and the driver of the police car had to be cut out of her car by the fire brigade.
All Ladder roads suffer from traffic which as become worse since the closure of the Gardens. A number of people have mentioned to me that they are very concerend about the traffic due the the noise, possible damage to houses near the speed bumps and the safety aspect.
Incidents such as the one last week serve to underline the issue which we live with daily. Should 2008 be the time to tackle the issue with the council?
Tags for Forum Posts: Ladder traffic solutions, road safety, tfl, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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Unfortunately we live in a massive city in which people see the need to use their cars far too frequently.
The council have done a hell a lot in the nine years we have been living on the ladder, which they should be commended for. However they seem to be welcoming traffic by relaxing the CPZs in the evening and on Sundays encouraging vehicles to the already congested area. They on one hand, have parking permits based on your emissions or engine size, which I agree with (even though we pay more), and yet encourage all types of vehicles by offering free parking, inconsistent policy IMO.
Prior to speed humps, 20 mph roads and one ways, collisions, scrapes and the like we far more common, especially on those narrow roads, like mine, Allison Road, in which cars found it difficult to pass and as a result knocked off wing mirrors and damaged cars. People often turned their cars around again, bumping into others and driving off.
There was a suggestion that most of the ladder roads could be cornered off like some on the Gardens, but that would merely divert a heavy stream via Endymion (sp?) Turnpike Lane and Wightman Road.
I think the Gardens should be opened up again to dilute the flow of traffic off Green Lanes and the Ladder. Maybe the occasional mobile spped camera could be set up for those who insist on still driving up or down Ladder roads ant forty or fifty mph? Other than that I don’t know what could be done.
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Permalink Reply by Adam on
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I think we should call for a 'Transport Summit' with officials from Haringey who need to answer questions relating to excessive levels on congestion on Green Lanes particularly during weekday evenings and weekends which are related to the closure of The Gardens and Hermitage Road - we have been promised a holistic traffic survey for serveal years now.This traffic will only get worse when the new school, flats, houses and offices open in 'Haringey Heartlands', which is on our doorstep. The other issues are air quality in our area - it must be appalling due to the congestion and general levels of motor traffic. Why don't they publish data on this issue? Also road safety must be tackled - this incident last week was the third one (that I am aware of) including an emergency vehicle and a member of the public on Green lanes in the last few years. I also have the stats for all the fatal, serious and slight injuries on Green lanes during the last 5 years - it does not make pleasant reading. The council commissioned a Road Safety Audit of Green Lanes last year, then did very little to make the findings public and to date have not implemented any changes as a result of this report. I have a copy if anybody is interested. Of course we must not forget Wighttman Road which is a nightmare for pedestrians who have to dodge badly parked cars and overgrown hedges and cyclists who have to deal with the road narrowings (not designed in line with best practice guidelines) and speeding drivers. Anyone interested in meeting up to discuss how best to move forward on these issues?
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Road humps and one-way roads have reduced the speed of traffic considerably and stopped punch-ups from irate drivers doing their stand-off on the old, narrow two way system.
Why open up 'the Gardens'? They got parts of it closed. Well done them!
What would be radical would be to pedestrianize part of the Grand Parade section of Green Lanes and put dead ends on all the ladder roads.
See http://blog.environmentsolutions.co.uk/?p=74 for inspiration. :)
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Very ideal, but very NIMBY, it will dispurse the problem to the surrounding areas and not solve the congestion there but increase it. I would like to see solution that benefits all the surrounding areas, not just my turf.
The real issue is to try and get people to walk, cycle or take public transport and reduce traffic. It's unfortunate, but a fact that Green Lanes is a main road link in to the city and it wouldn't be an option to pedestrianise Grande Parade.
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whilst i would fully support matt's radical plans, i suspect they are not going to happen in the near future. The decision to close The Gardens was not done in a holistic manner. The quality of life of Ladder residents is far diminished due to this closure and this is not fair - let's campaign for an independent traffic survey to see what should be done. I suggest that as many of us as possible attend the next Area Assembly (http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/council/decisions/areaassemblies.htm) on Mon 28th Jan at the church at the junction of Frobisher and Wightman Roads. Whilst it might be too late to get traffic as an agenda item, we can request that it is discussed at the next one.
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Permalink Reply by DavidJ on
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Traffic on the Gardens roads - particular Stanhope was really, really awful. I think they were right to close it off. It is bad luck that there is not a similar solution for the ladder.
Traffic is an urgent issue for this area. Somehow traffic has to be discouraged from the area. I do not understand why Haringey are encouraging cars into the area in the evenings and on Sunday as birdy -2 says this is contradictory (I can only assume this is about Haringey saving money by not having to police the CPZ at these timese).
Traffic calming on Wightman Road should be introduced - at the very least this might make cycling less hair raising.
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Permalink Reply by David on
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When the Council closed off the Gardens they thought they were putting the traffic into Green Lanes but infact they forced most of it into Wightman,which is itself a residential street. Traffic going East /West along the Ladder Streets is now much greater than it was and almost all of us have suffered as a result. We need a solution for all the Ladder Streets because if we try and do it one by one all that will happen will be that the traffic will get worse in the streets that do not have any protection and we will repeat the unfair policy that the Garden residents so successfully pushed for and won.
What about closing All the Ladder Streets off at the Passage so that there is no through traffic. This is done in many Islington and Hackney Streets.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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OK, and here again I could be wrong... I thought that the one-way system was introduced to increase traffic 'flow'. Lots of traffic traveling east/west or west/east can use a Ladder Rd instead of traveling up and down Green Lanes.
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The idea of blocking off in the middle was floated afew years ago. The difficulty is that the roads are too narrow for a turning circle and the roads are quite long. So you would have lots of problems with cars, vans, lorries having to reverse long distances. Emergency vehicles would have problems as well.
Raising bollards might be a soluition if they were reliable and if they were affordable.
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I assumed that they did not police it on Sundays so that all those church goers could drive to church.
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Permalink Reply by Lucy Whitman on
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Fellow residents of Harringay! Don’t let this degenerate into a Ladder versus Gardens quarrel.
I can’t believe the traffic problems on the Ladder are caused by the Gardens closures. Looking at the map, I can’t see why someone wanting to drive between Green Lanes and St Ann’s Road, who couldn’t take a short-cut through the Gardens because of the road closures, would end up on the other side of Green Lanes, using the Ladder roads. It doesn’t make any sense. So please don’t blame the Gardens residents for the problems on the Ladder!
The real problem is that there are too many vehicles and too many inconsiderate and dangerous drivers. Instead of setting one group of Harringay residents against another, let’s campaign together to get fewer vehicles on the road and for tough enforcement of road safety measures. (On a personal level, every local car owner can do their bit by cutting out unnecessary short car journeys. More of us could even give up our cars altogether.)
A bit of history, for everyone’s information: before the bollards and gate were installed at Warwick Gardens and Cleveland Gardens, the Gardens area was a rat-run for traffic taking a short-cut between St Ann’s Road and Green Lanes, often at top speed, leading to many accidents. During a one hour vehicle count between 4.30pm and 5.30pm in March 2001, the Gardens Residents Association counted 831 vehicles passing through the Gardens, including 124 vans and 6 heavy goods trucks. Since the road closures were instituted, later in 2001, the situation has vastly improved. However, the bollards and gate have suffered repeated serious vandalism from drivers prepared to resort to criminal damage to force their way through.
Let’s unite, and put people first, not traffic.
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We're not saying that the closure of Gardens has an effect on Ladder roads, but I think it does have an impact on the Salisbury traffic lights, the traffic lights by Fairline and the one way behind the old Coliseum, in fact the traffic on Harringay Green Lanes as a whole.
Simply closing roads off diverts greater traffic through the other roads near by. If all Ladder roads were closed off, the surrounding roads not closed would become gridlocked. Selfishly, I would love my road to be closed off, but I am thinking of the other residents on Turnpike Lane, Green Lanes, Wightman Road and the wider area etc.
We cannot simply pedestrianise Harringay or Crouch End, Hornsey , Wood Green, Muswell Hill etc as again this would divert traffic and bottle neck elsewhere. It would be interesting to see if there was a “Grande Parade Traffic Free Day” one Sunday to see the impact it would have on surrounding roads.
These roads weren’t meant for this quantity of traffic and the key is to make people not use their cars, if I knew the answer to make that happen, I would be a rich bloke.
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