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 been 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.
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 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 that operate so successfully with APNR are lowering not only the traffic of the streets themselves, they are also 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 to do this. 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 Rory
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This does feel like a good idea. The council's official policy, as communicated to the residents of the Ladder this week, is to do nothing about the traffic and pollution their policies have cursed us with. So we need to go over the heads of the people who have demonstrably failed us. To be honest, after the depressing meeting this week, I'll take any suggestions!
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What a pity the council didn’t consider point 1 on the slide before closing almost all the through routes on the east side of Green Lanes with LTNs. Presumably the anticipated income from fines (highlighted here on HoL a few weeks ago) outweighed any consideration of the extra pollution, traffic jams and delays to public transport caused elsewhere by the road closures. Cllr Hakata is effectively conceding that traffic “evaporation” is a myth, but failing to proffer any solutions to the chaos the council’s policies (not just St Ann’s but the long-time Gardens closure as well) have caused for years.
We all know that GL is the heart of the problem, because Harringay’s geography, the railway barrier and GL’s role as both a major north/south trunk route and a local shopping centre funnels ever more traffic into too narrow a space, especially when side roads that would otherwise provide a safety valve are closed. In many previous threads I’ve argued that a solution needs to involve the council, TfL, the GLA and probably the DoT all working together: at the least, limit GL parking between the Arena and the Salisbury, create a northbound bus lane and bus priority at junctions, and filter/restrict/ban traffic at the GL/North Circular junction, especially in rush hours. But this requires co-ordination and probably a lot of expenditure, whereas tinkering at the edges with CCTV and flowerpots is both cheaper and, it now appears, far more lucrative for the council.
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The outcome was exactly as I predicted. Not because I am a Nostradamus; but because I learned that our councillors have no power when a short closure of Warham Road was sought and rejected. Unnamed unelected bureaucrats hold all of the cards.
I reprint the pertinent part of that rejection notification - in the very least, it should serve to dissuade those who are hopeful that voting in different people or parties will make any difference whatsoever. The below makes it clear that no one will.
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"Zena and I have been corresponding with various council officers--of increasingly high seniority--regarding your request for a Play Street. Unfortunately, they remain unconvinced that Warham Road is an appropriate location for a Play Street.
Their decision seems to be based on the concern that the closure of Warham Road would have a disproportionate impact on traffic flow, which would put the Haringey Council in breach of its network management duty. They believe that the use of alternative routes would not be sufficient to effectively manage the traffic.
The officers have pointed out that Warham Road is the only direct route from St Anns Road to the west of Green Lanes via Salisbury Road. They argue that stopping access to Wightman Road via Warham Road at this point would leave only one way out of Salisbury Road given the banned right turn at this junction, and that would be to turn left into Green Lanes. This could lead to significant traffic backing up on Salisbury Road, especially on a Sunday when people would likely be visiting Green Lanes and accessing it from Salisbury Road. Without the option of people driving up Warham Road, the officers consider it likely that the traffic could back up, potentially all the way up to St Anns Road, which already faces heavy traffic.
When we pointed out that Pemberton Road has been granted a Play Street, the officers argued that Pemberton Road and Warham Road carry out very different functions on Haringey's road network. The council's latest traffic counts show that Warham Road carries nearly double the amount of traffic that Pemberton Road does, which, council officers argue make Warham Road a substantially less viable prospect for a Play Street."
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The above is all any one needs to be able to extrapolate why there will never be a Ladder LTN.
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Mark: From the Officers’ viewpoint this makes perfect sense. The Gardens are shut; St Ann’s Road already carries masses of traffic, exacerbated by the LTN, and funnels most of it into the ridiculously narrow Harringay Road before it gets to GL; the Salisbury/Warham junction is traffic light controlled and so offers the only point where westbound traffic can cross GL directly without causing tailbacks up and down GL itself. With Wightman as the western boundary of the road system and only two crossing points over the railway, east-west journeys across the borough are fraught already, so any move to close Warham is unlikely to be agreed. It might be possible to re-plan the St Ann’s/GL junction as two-way, with a left turn into GL, and Warham is already protected by a right turn prohibition from GL, so in those circs you might perhaps have more success, but the extra traffic directed down GL from St Ann’s as a result would probably still render it unacceptable to the council.
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To be honest, that seems like a rare sensible decision by the Council. Play streets are all well and good on quiet streets with lower volumes of traffic which can be diverted to other routes without unduly delaying motor vehicle users. Warham is not one of those streets. It is a major thoroughfare from East to West. Pemberton, on the other hand, could be closed for a play street with traffic easily diverted down other West to East streets on the Ladder.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris
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Thanks to Hugh for taking the trouble to write a coherent account of the meeting. I shall make only a couple of points:
So far as I can see, the Council has not seriously considered any measures that would reduce the total volume of traffic passing through our area.
If I understood him aright, Mr Hakata said that when the LTNs abutting West Green Road had become operational and the immediate impacts had settled down, the level of traffic on West Green Road returned to its previous level. In my view, this suggests two things:
- That the traffic which had previously been rat running through the LTN streets had evaporated (which was in fact the aim of the LTNs).
- That the volume of traffic on our through-routes always tends to rise to its capacity. Once the capacity has been reached, some drivers change their habits (either they go elsewhere or reduce their journeys),
The key question to be considered when introducing an LTN is which streets are to be recognised as primarily residential (and protected from extraneous traffic) and which are to be recognised as available to through traffic.
Extraneous traffic is any vehicle that has no business being on that street, ie any vehicle not going to or from an address in that street (or group of streets).
As Mr Hakata began by saying, we have inherited a set of roads that were not designed for present circumstances. As it has turned out, even Green Lanes, our main shopping street, has limited capacity for carrying vehicles that do not have business in the area. Until Haringey Council is in a position to recognise this and take effective action to restrict through traffic (not only on the ladder including Wightman Road but also on its commercial roads that have too little carrying capacity) there will be no end to the blight of our residential environment and the unreasonable pressures on our local businesses.
Fiddling about with junctions and introducing more and better pedestrian crossings (desirable though those things may be) will not make much difference to traffic volumes – indeed some of the Council’s proposed measures are aimed at increasing traffic flows.
This much has been clear for several years and yet no serious attempt has been made to deal with the problem of excessive traffic passing through the area. The fact that proper provision for cyclist must now be made, means I think, that the need to deter through traffic can no longer be put off.
Do Haringey councillors have the stomach and the necessary powers to deal with this?
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Dick: In these debates, I always have a problem with the concept of “through traffic”, because there’s clearly no way of defining it. I don’t know if you drive or ever take a cab (I’m excluding taking buses, obviously), but if you do, then any time you’re not in the street where you live you’re “through traffic” to somebody else. For example, a St Ann’s resident using Mattison to reach Jewsons in Wightman, for example, is “through traffic” in Mattison; a Ladder resident turning off Endymion into, say, Victoria Road to avoid a tailback is “through traffic”. At what point do roads get defined as “rat runs” — and by whom? — and should “extraneous” vehicles then be identified and always banned from using them?
I doubt you’re proposing checkpoints on residential roads to exclude all non-residents, but non-residential traffic is a fact of life in any London street, and some exist to facilitate just that: in Harringay we straddle a major north-south trunk route in GL. Ideally perhaps, everyone would live within walking distance of their work, leisure, education and shopping needs, but we all know it’s never going to happen here, so managing it is the priority. Cllr Hakata has conceded that a Ladder LTN would just make GL worse, and JulieB’s comment elsewhere on this thread suggests that residents of GL, St Ann’s and WGR (the mis-named “boundary roads”) have already been sacrificed to increased pollution for the supposed benefit of the LTN enclaves.
I’m not going to repeat my previous post on here suggesting GL solutions, but I’d add that the GLA should require all utilities, council and “last-mile” vehicles to be electric to operate within the M25, and TfL should be properly funded to run cheap, fast, frequent and reliable buses, using dedicated bus lanes and with junction priority. Incentivising people to use public transport and improving roads to allow for it would be far more effective than closing side streets, forcing more traffic onto overcrowded roads such as GL and hoping (against the evidence) that drivers will just give up.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh
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i suppose that to get anywhere with arriving at a definition of through-traffic, you need to identify what the local area is, since most definitions of through traffic run along the lines of:
"...vehicular traffic that passes through an area without stopping there, as it is simply using that road or location as a route to a different destination.This is in contrast to local traffic, which has a starting point or destination within the area."
So, let's say you took an approach that 'local' is anyone living within the borough + a 1 mile radius from the location of the road (varying those figures as appropriate - or you could simply use a radius.
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Permalink Reply by JulieB
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I have never supported LTNs because I don't believe they work. I live within St Ann's LTN and it's not improved my life at all, in fact it's made transport worse, especially buses.
On the other hand, I do think schemes like expanding the ULEZ and School Streets have made improvements in terms of air quality and safety. I would like to see more of these schemes instead of the blunt instruments of LTNs which block more and more roads to (almost) everyone.
I do like your idea, Hugh, of using an APNR system to 'filter' non-Haringey traffic (borough wide) away from 'side streets'. I think this would be much more effective than LTNs.
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Julie: Couldn’t agree more (and as a fellow St Ann’s LTN resident). By all accounts, the ULEZ and its extension has made a palpable difference, and I firmly believe that electrification of all service and delivery vehicles would add to the benefit. I see more Amazon and UPS electric vans, so there’s some hope the idea is spreading, but it’ll be slow progress as fleet renewal happens over years, unless there’s a government-imposed deadline.
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Permalink Reply by Pacific_Flower
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As a pedestrian with a pushchair and walking regularly from the Ladder to Downhills Park and Lordship Rec for various baby groups, I really appreciate the St Ann's LTN and especially La Rose Lane being bus only. It's a lovely respite from GL and St Ann's Rds. It's also lovely for Chestnuts Park not having traffic hooning down La Rose La.
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Don, before talking further about how to differentiate types of traffic, I would like to disagree with your assertion that GL is a major north-south trunk route. That might be a suitable description of the M1. The UK does have a set of roads called the Primary Road Network and I believe that any such road must comply with certain technical standards especially as to load bearing capacity. I think that there are only four such roads in Haringey, the A1, the A10, the North Circular and Seven Sisters Road and even these do not necessarily have the capacity to handle all the traffic that wants to use them. GL may run north-south (and so does Wightman Road) but its dimensions are simply not suitable for the demands being made on it and there is no feasible way of increasing its capacity. It follows that if more of the limited width of GL is to be used for bus lanes and/or cycle lanes we must expect it to carry less traffic of other sorts so let us get serious about finding ways of deterring/excluding traffic that doesn't need to be here.
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