I’ve lived on Green Lanes for a while now, and I wondered how other 'boundary road' residents are doing. While I understand the goal of the LTNs was to reduce traffic on side streets, the reality here on the main road has become incredibly difficult.
Two years on, the congestion outside my door feels constant. More worryingly, my asthma has significantly flared up recently, and I can’t help but link it to the idling engines and poor air quality we’re now facing daily.
Does anyone know if there are updated air quality monitoring reports for Green Lanes specifically for 2025/2026? And for those living on boundary roads, how are you coping? I’d love to know if there are any active resident groups focusing on the health impacts for those of us who weren't 'filtered'.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
"You don't like your council or your council's decision then local elections are where you need to be casting your vote."
Elizabeth, Lutfur Rahman ran and won on a promise of removing the LTNs. The people of Tower Hamlets did exactly as you suggest. The decision appears then to be a triumph against democracy.
Except the council still has to act lawfully and they didn't in TH's case. And the idea that the Mayor of TH wanted to do this for public transport users is ridiculous.
Exactly, Jamie, well put.
Elizabeth — Quite right, it was a “consultation” not a vote (sorry), but still only 700 or so people expressed support, which is a tiny proportion of St Ann’s residents. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion anyway; Haringey were never going to turn down free money from the GLA or TfL, and the lobbying for a “yes” outcome appeared very heavily influenced by the council and a hitherto unknown pressure group that managed to leaflet the whole ward to get the message across, without considering any alternatives or negatives. However, as is so often shown, local authority “consultations” are almost always just window-dressing, not just in Haringey but in plenty of other boroughs too. Other recent HoL threads have also commented on the council’s total failure to make any changes in GL (as had been promised before the LTNs were created), thus avoiding any attempt to deal with the central and by far the most important problems in our part of the borough, some of which are reflected in this thread.
Don, the St Ann's filters were asked for in part by parents of children at Chestnuts Primary after 2 children were run over there. Through traffic belongs on main roads. No roads are closed. If anything, they're more open to more people.
Itsjono — Yes, nobody wants children (or others) being run over, but no alternative solutions — such as chicanes, peak hours traffic filters or school hours car bans on (then) Black Boy Lane — were offered for residents to consider, because cash was only available from the GLA for a full-on LTN. The crash stats for the St Ann’s LTN area were consistently far lower than for either Green Lanes or West Green Road before the LTN was created, and in the western part (Avondale, Clarendon, Conway, Glenwood, etc) the roads were already so quiet that they were regularly used in the daytime for children’s cycle training and learner drivers practising reversing (I’ve never lived anywhere so quiet). Currently, three of the roads mentioned above are de facto closed to through traffic by planters and CCTV, meaning that residents face longer journeys and create more pollution if they have to get to either the northern or southern “boundary roads” as part of their journey.
The council maintained that St Ann’s was a motorway for rat-runners. If this is true, then it’s hardly surprising if traffic that would previously have used LRL or Cornwall Road, the only two roads cited as needing to be controlled or closed, now uses Green Lanes instead, thus increasing the traffic. The council’s failure to make good on the promised mitigation for the increased traffic and pollution on GL in particular is deeply unfair on anyone walking, riding, scooting or living on the road, as well as those responsibly using public transport.
a hitherto unknown pressure group that managed to leaflet the whole ward to get the message across
Wasn't that Haringey Living Streets (it certainly was in the Bruce Grove one)? They'd been around for a few years before the LTNs got introduced.
I expect so. Living Streets is the charity for walking and has been around a long time under various names (since the 1929). Hitherto unknown mostly by the poster who mentioned it. Haringey has its own local group.
Yes, a local branch of Living Streets, a national organisation headed — ironically — by a Jane Roberts (who I happen to know slightly in a different context), though, I’m assuming, not the one of the same name who started this thread! I’m not going to replay ancient history, but at the time the pro-LTN leaflet campaign appeared to be more wide-ranging and with greater reach than might have been expected of a very small group, who didn’t clearly identify themselves on their literature. It was suggested that they might not have been as spontaneous a grassroots movement as they appeared but I don’t know if that’s so. I did call them “hitherto unknown” above because their public presence only materialised once the LTN was proposed, but perhaps they had actually been in existence for longer.
In any case, the LTNs were heavily promoted by the council, championed by Cllr Hakata and backed up by LS’s leaflet campaign, and presented only as a foregone conclusion that would reduce rat-running and get cars off the streets. Alterrnatives such as those I mentioned above were not given any weight and the potential knock-on effects — the original subject of this thread — weren’t discussed. I’d maintain that the St Ann’s LTN at least was an expedient solution because “free” money was available to the council, rather than a considered way of dealing with the central problem, which Haringey’s broken promise to do anything about Green Lanes has exacerbated. (And, incidentally, an erstwhile councillor told me that the Bounds Green LTN was only created because Enfield’s LTN on the other side of the borough boundary had displaced so much traffic onto Haringey’s roads that residents were complaining too loudly to be ignored. Tit-for-tat doesn’t seem like the best rationale for a major change such as this.)
The Haringey branch was set up in 2019
https://harringayonline.com/forum/topics/haringey-living-streets-in...
I was involved in the leafleting in the West Green LTN. A few residents chipped in with £5/£10, from what I remember five thousand leaflets or so cost about £50, and someone did the design. Haringey Living Streets involvement was minimal.
It may be St Ann's was different and part of some nefarious scheme but I suspect not.
From what I remember Green Lanes doesn't show much difference in traffic pre/post LTN, I'll try and dig out the actual numbers at some point (although the monitoring was much poorer than it was originally sold as by the council).
the central problem, which [is] Haringey’s broken promise to do anything about Green Lanes has exacerbated.
———
The current council crew are highly unlikely to do anything meaningful about Green Lanes. They've been talking about tinkering with it for more than a decade.
In my view, the underlying "central" problem can be expressed simply. There are too many cars in this built-up area. Few are willing to accept this simple proposition and least of all, our fairer and greener council.
With current crew there can only be talk, more talk, tinkering and hand-wringing without end.
———
It was ever thus.
I've attached the council's gorgeous Going Green, Haringey Greenest Borough Strategy, 2010-2018.
This was not an AI production. The Foreword has the imprimatur of the then Council Leader and the Cabinet Member for Environment and Conservation.
It's a great example of the council's expertise in public relations.
The 50-page document is also evidence of the true value of Haringey Council plans, promises and strategy in the area of transport, the environment and climate action.
.
© 2026 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
© Copyright Harringay Online Created by Hugh