Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay Traffic meeting Outcome
Exactly three weeks ago today, I added a post on HoL pointing out the failure to convene a traffic meeting about Harringay's traffic. Just over a week later, a meeting seems to have been hurriedly arranged at rather short notice. I'm sure the two events were linked only by coincidence.
That meeting was last night at Alexandra House on Station Road in Wood Green. I was expecting to see a handful of the locals who normally turn up for these things. However, I was surprised to find a large room with about 50 - 100 people, all apparently eager to hear of progress.
We were graciously met at the building's reception desk by traffic boss, Cllr, Mike Hakata. Joking with Mike and looking about his person, I asked him where he was hiding his magic wand. His coy and slightly embarrassed reaction rather set the tone for the evening.
The meeting began with a long and very detailed explanation about why it had taken so long to get yesterday's meeting set up. The room was then given a clear message. In a nutshell, we were given the standard explanation of the past twenty years, that doing anything about traffic on the Ladder is too difficult and that all possibilities had been deemed impractical. Cllr Hakata didn't discount that one day the Council would magically find the solution that has been so stubbornly evading them all these decades, but for the time being the focus was moving away from reducing traffic volume and on to safety - and away from Wightman and the Ladder rung roads and on to Green Lanes. More on that in just a minute.
Below is a copy of the slide Mike showed to explain the decision to abandon traffic calming on the Ladder.
There was plenty of disgruntled reaction to the slide but surprisingly little direct dissection of it. Having said that, whilst I think most people understand the issue raised in the first point and few have any appetite for clogging up Green Lanes, one person did make the point that once again the Ladder seems to have come at the end of the queue and the bowl is empty. The resident pointed out that with all other through routes already closed off by LTNs or other traffic control blockages, of course options are now limited because traffic is now so concentrated on Green Lanes and Wightman Road because.
With regards to the second point on the slide, which essentially indicates technical reasons why filtering won't work on the Ladder, I asked Mike how the filtering currently works for the two school streets. He confirmed what I thought - APNR, but he hurried to add some explanation that now eludes me about why that couldn't work on a the Ladder as a whole. I didn't want to get into a pointless disagreement with Mike about that, but as I understand it the LTNs at Hammersmith and Fulham work very effectively100% by APNR, where residents' cars are registered and are excepted from penalties. Clearly it would need more research, but having rechecked my facts this morning, here's what Google AI tells us:
How They Work
Enforcement: ANPR cameras record vehicle registration numbers. Drivers without valid permits who use restricted roads as shortcuts receive fines, which can range from £60 to £130.
Access: The schemes aim to stop out-of-borough traffic from cutting through residential streets, but they do not prevent access to any location within the borough.
Permits and Exemptions:Borough Residents can travel freely through the camera points if their vehicle is registered in the borough.
Visitors to residents can be registered for access using the RingGo app or website.
Carers can apply for free exemptions if they look after residents within the zone.
Some services like Uber have a technical solution to automatically exempt their drivers during a pickup or dropoff in the zone.
Mike swept away further concerns about traffic volumes with a reassurance that those same Ladder School Streets schemes operate so successfully with APNR that they are lowering not only the traffic of the streets themselves but are having a knock-on effect on the neighbouring streets. The message seemed almost to be that we'll have to content ourselves with that for now.
As to Green Lanes, there are some plans. Mike was at pains to underline how very expensive these plans would be and how many millions each part of the plan would cost. There was no detail on exactly what the treatment would be, but the aim is to target the safety record of the road, which Mike explained is very much the worst in the borough. What we were able to find out is that the plans would see four (or was it five) junctions being somehow remodelled to improve safety. There was no slide to show the details, but from memory, going from North to South, I think those junctions were Turnpike Lane, Frobisher/Alfoxton, Colina Road and Endymion Road.
Quite a number of people suggested that the best solution for Harringay's Green Lanes, costing a fraction of the proposed plans, would be to remove parking from the road entirely, but the room was told that there are no immediate plans. It seems, for some reason he didn't explain, that whilst reducing traffic volume is seen as the key to safety elsewhere in the borough, in Harringay magic roundabouts (or was it junctions) are the trick. Cllr Hakata also seemed unable to give any reassurance that the Green Lanes plans would ensure that traffic wasn't simply displaced on the the Ladder.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the meeting ended in quite a fractious mood with Mike Hakata appearing to be rather testily batting away an unwelcome swarm of autumn bees.
Was I or anyone else at all reassured by last night? No, I don't think so. If anything, I left with heightened concerns about the future for our neighbourhood. This in the year before local elections tells us that they see Harringay as in the bag already, I guess.
I conclude with the cartoon I used for my recent post on this issue and somewhat retract the apologies I gave at the end of that post for my uncharacteristic pessimism.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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HUGH, many thanks for the update, which appears to closely match your earlier expectations.
The current, complacent crew is chronically incapable of dealing with Harringay traffic problems in between and including Wightman Road and Green Lanes. This is "a multifactorial question" and is "due to a confluence of factors" ***
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The following bullet points are not an exhaustive list of the factors and not listed necessarily in order of importance, but here are some likley background reasons this long-term inability:
- Lack of funds due to past waste: and worse
- A Highways Cabinet Member lacking interest
- A pro-car Highways Department lacking imagination
- Cosy (too cosy) relationships with businesses on Green Lanes
- A Public Health Dept. unable or unwilling to exert influence on air-pollution
- A boss who may be focused on Haringey Borough of Culture 2027 than issues affecting residents today
The absence of action and results will be camouflaged by the press team who well remunerated job it is to cast all council action and inaction in the best possible PR lighting.
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*** These are phrases used last month by the council's external barrister in submissions to a Judge, as reasons for disobeying the order of an earlier Judge to supply information to me by a certain date, in my ongoing Information rights case.
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Permalink Reply by RD
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My partner was at the meeting last night and I'm sure will comment on this thread later, but he came home with the takeaway that the council and in particular Cllr Hakata doesn't care about Ladder residents and the impact traffic and pollution has on our narrow roads and that residents daring to question him last night were treated like irritants. It feels like as long as his ward benefits from the LTNs reducing traffic, to hell with ours.
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Permalink Reply by Shar
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Thank you for this analysis Hugh. Looks like removing parking on Green Lanes is simply non-negotiable, and we know why. I appreciate the local businesses wanting parking in order to drive their business, but a number of vehicles belong to business owners and employees.
There are surely ways to ensure a certain number of customers can park in designated sections of GL or Ladder / Garden streets, while not making it possible to simply commute and park on GL - as is achieved on literally hundreds of roads in London.
Hoping our ward councillors will pursue this with Council Leadership and the Cabinet and point out that residents are not feeling consulted or having our needs catered to. It's especially galling that expenditure on consultants is prioritised over consistent local feedback.
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It's difficult to read the 'primary issue' in the slide above as anything other than tacit agreement that LTNs cause undue pressure on boundary roads; and that traffic 'evaporation' is a myth. Mr Hakata has pulled a reverse ferret here and used anti-LTN campaign arguments against the Ladder residents.
He's even gone so far as using the "ambulances can't get through" canard in the second bullet point. If I thought he had any wit, I would almost admire the level of disdain he's showing the voters of Harringay ward.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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"Filtering Wightman & Ladder Roads was carefully considered but discounted:
- "Primary issue: Would displace traffic onto Green Lanes and neighbouring areas due to the Ladder's strategic position on the traffic network This would also significantly impact bus journey times and reliability, discouraging public transport use.
- "Technical barriers: Insufficient space for large vehicles (including emergency services and delivery lorries) to turn safely and section of road would have to be turned two way to allow for this."
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I was at the meeting and was astonished at what an absolutely criminal waste of everyone’s time the entire thing was: calling the residents of a ward together to stand up and tell them that the position of the council on a matter of utmost importance to them was to do nothing. It’s just too difficult for them. And the best minds in the land (paid an extraordinary amount of our money, it appears, to find no solutions.) Mike then took everyone’s point in turn, wrote them down and responded to virtually none of them. This is our council in action. They’ve looked at the tens of thousands of cars pushed down the Ladder, in part because they have closed off every other residential road east to west across the borough, shrugged and said: we’re changing some crossings on Green Lanes. The only takeaway I left the meeting with was that we need new councillors. It’s not difficult. If enough Ladder residents joined the Labour Party, we can select a candidate on this single issue platform. Or any independents who are HoL members: stand on this platform and you get my vote. Because we are demonstrably being failed by the incumbents.
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Well said. Unfortunately we can't vote Cllr Hakata out because the Ladder isn't his ward – which speaks volumes, frankly – but his Ladder colleagues enabling this apathy don't deserve to be reelected either.
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Permalink Reply by Anna Abela
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Hi Hugh,
Thank you for sharing this update. More importantly, thank you to the 52 residents (by my count!) who attended yesterday's community meeting and made clear the strength of feeling in Harringay on this issue. Please rest assured that the importance of this issue is not lost on me or my co-councillor Zena.
Yesterday's meeting was not organised by coincidence. Since being informed, earlier this year, that the Council's Harringay traffic modelling had been approved by TfL, Zena and I have been pushing relentlessly for residents to be updated on the outcome of the Harringay Traffic & Transport Review. We wanted to ensure full transparency on this exercise and give residents an opportunity to express their views. While yesterday's meeting was organised by Cllr Mike Hakata and council officers, it came about after several months of pressure by us to make sure residents had an opportunity to make their voices heard.
We are also committed to ensuring it is not the last opportunity to engage on this topic:
- I understand that Mike has promised to send written responses to yesterday's attendees for those questions that were not answered in person. Zena and I will follow up with him to ensure this happens.
- At the end of Mike's presentation, he shared that written feedback is welcome on harringayladderttr@haringey.gov.uk. I strongly urge residents to take up this opportunity to feed into this process. If you do decide to write in, I would encourage you to also copy myself (Anna.Abela@haringey.gov.uk) and Zena (Zena.Brabazon@haringey.gov.uk) into your email, so that we can represent your views and continue to advocate on this issue.
- If you would prefer to share feedback with us in person, do not hesitate to attend our monthly surgeries at the Turkish Cypriot Community Association on Green Lanes on the second (Zena) and fourth (Anna) Saturdays of each month from 11am - noon.
I will also ask for a visual representation of the Green Lanes Safety Improvement Scheme to be shared with residents, as I think this would have conveyed the proposed plans Mike presented with greater clarity. The objective of this scheme is to improve road safety on Green Lanes, as the Review found that it is the most dangerous road in the Borough in terms of number of collisions. From my notes from yesterday, the proposed scheme - which requires TfL approval - will deliver the following:
- Improved road junctions to improve pedestrian safety at the following 5 junctions with Green Lanes: Endymion Road, St Ann's Road, Colina Mews, Alfoxton Avenue and Turnpike Lane.
- Improved cycle facilities to improve cyclist safety on Green Lanes.
- Protected cycle facilities both ways from Endymion Road to the Borough boundary with Hackney.
Delivering this scheme will require a significant financial investment by the Council in Harringay ward's road infrastructure and will therefore be rolled out in phases. Please do share your initial feedback on this proposed scheme with harringayladderttr@haringey.gov.uk.
Best regards,
Anna
Cllr Anna Abela (Harringay ward)
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Thanks, Anna.
I noted that they said Colina Mews yesterday, but I assumed they meant Colina Road. Am I being rash there?
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I think you are right as Colina Road is at the junction with Green Lanes. However, to be 100% sure, I can fact check this with the officer who spoke to this point and come back to you.
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