Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
End through traffic on Wightman and on Ladder rungs!
John McMullan has made this proposal in various places. Maybe there’s an extended discussion of it in this forum somewhere, but what I’ve seen is scattered around the threads. In any case, I think it’s time to try to move this in the direction of concerted action, so here are my 2p.
We should begin a campaign to close Wightman Road to through traffic, along with complementary traffic controls at certain points on the rungs of the Harringay Ladder (exactly what and where these additional controls are would depend on the particular points at which Wightman is cut). This would eliminate through traffic from the Ladder, except on Green Lanes itself.
These roads are residential. The area has a combined population of over 10,000 (the population of Harringay Ward, most of which is the Ladder, is estimated at 13,700). We need to take this action in order to make the streets safe for children; to make the street a place of neighbourly interaction; and to make the air cleaner and healthier. Children should be able to walk to school and to parks; cyclists should have a safe north-south route through Harringay (Wightman would become that route).
Some further points:
· Road traffic reduction – don’t see this as a NIMBY proposal to chase traffic elsewhere: one of the aims should be to reduce road traffic overall. Roads accommodate traffic. There is ample scientific evidence that an increase in road capacity simply increases traffic, until at some point congestion chokes off the increase - at which point, highway planners call for more roads, leading to a spiral of ever-increasing traffic. What we see in the Ladder today is part of that spiral: several years ago, the Haringey council took two steps to reduce traffic congestion on the Ladder by making it flow more easily: it made all the rungs of the Ladder one-way, and it allowed pavement parking on Wightman to effectively widen the Wightman roadway. Both of these increases in road capacity have led simply to more traffic and faster traffic – the streets that are less safe for children, the air that is more polluted.
· The reverse is also true: a reduction in road capacity reduces traffic, overall. Somebody will rightly complain of increased traffic congestion, somewhere, as a result of cutting off traffic through the Ladder. But a reduction in road capacity will mean that overall traffic in north London will be reduced, and that will good for air quality, for child safety, for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists generally, and for the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Some may say that it would be better for the government address these problems in a comprehensive way, but such comprehensive treatment of the problem is, at best, slow in coming. By taking this local action, we can make a small contribution to the overall reduction of the problems caused by road traffic, and at the same time show public support for more comprehensive action.
· Half-way measures don’t do the job. Speed bumps slow traffic a bit, but are not sufficient to make the road safe. 20mph limits are nice, but there are no resources to enforce them.
· Whole Ladder: if you cut traffic on any one of the Ladder’s rungs, you just push it to another. For that reason, the Ladder needs to act together as one community.
· Other neighborhoods: for reasons discussed below, cutting off Ladder traffic might well reduce traffic in adjoining neighborhoods. More importantly, cutting off Ladder traffic should be seen as one step towards making the borough of Haringey a continuous quilt of safe, healthy, traffic-calmed neighborhoods. It builds on the work done by residents of the Gardens and other neighborhoods in recent years, and we should hope that it is followed by similar actions in other neighborhoods.
· We cannot know exactly what the effect on traffic in other neighborhoods will be – traffic engineering studies of the question would be helpful, although even there we note that such studies are far from an exact science: it may be necessary to experiment!
· Cutting routes through the Ladder will probably increase traffic on Green Lanes, but it will also help that traffic flow better. Most of the traffic to and from Wightman on the rungs of the Ladder crosses one or both lanes of traffic in Green Lanes. The constant merging in of traffic at several points along Green Lanes and the turns across Green Lanes traffic slow the north-south flow, including the buses. While Green Lanes would certainly continue to be congested after cutting off Ladder traffic, the near elimination of cross-traffic should improve the flow.
· Much of the cross traffic is coming to and from St Ann’s Rd and the various roads feeding through St Ann’s (Woodlands Park, Black Boy Lane, etc.). It also passes through a handful of short, heavily traveled residential streets on the east side of Green Lanes: Salisbury Road, part of Harringay Road, and Alfoxton Avenue. Similarly, to the north of the Ladder, much of the traffic on the Hornsey Park Road/Mayes Road is to or from Wightman; to the south, the same goes for much of the traffic on Endymion. By eliminating the Ladder routes, many of these trips that now cut through the adjoining neighborhoods would probably not take place.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Oh I've just noticed this. I can't believe you got away with it. I'd be censored if I accused you of not being of sound mind. They said the same about Plato so I'm in good company. Personally I think you've considered the propsal for about 2 seconds and are quite smugly happy with yourself. Keep thinking.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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If drivers were paying for all such costs they impose on others, your argument would hold some water. But they're not
Oh really ? How about tax on fuel ?
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Permalink Reply by Frederick Guy on
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Fuel tax and and vehicle license fees (often erroneously called the "road tax") don't begin to cover the costs.
One comparison for the UK, about fifteen years old, is here. The climate change cost in those old figures is low - for a more recent adding up of costs (but not of taxes) see this comparison of EU countries.
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It's difficult to place any credence on these figures, given that the first line says they are " estinated " but ignoring that and other careless mistakes, there is a glaring error. The author estimates that the cost of road use is £50.8 Bn and the revenues from motorists amount to £16.1 Bn. and -
" Thus motorists are being subsidized by an amount three times larger than that which they pay via taxes and duty."
This would only be true if motorists paid no other taxes and duty which go in part to paying for health care etc. In fact, they pay their share of these costs plus the tax revenue so you could equally argue that the motorist is subsidising the non-motoring public.
Also, the author attributes the cost to society of " road use " as being caused by " motorists " and " car use ". He appears to ignore the contribution of buses and lorries.
" Climate change: Difficult to quantify because one has to assess probably future damage to farming, cities, land, etc. Calculated from average effect on GDP and scaled as appropriate."
Well, of course it's difficult to quanitify so let's just have a guess.
Obviously embarrassed about the weakness of his arguments so far, he has the grace to exclude - " The costs to the NHS of treating ailments due to insufficient exercise due to
excessive car use. "Wisely, , he has also omitted the costs to the NHS of treating ailments due to insufficient exercise due to excessive television viewing "
A wooly, scrappy and biased piece of work.
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Obviously, any work like this there are a lot of estimates and we can argue about those estimates - this is inevitable with external costs - i.e., costs that are not priced by the market. Yes, the UK one I linked is very sketchy. If you want something more thorough (though using North American data, so it's not as good a fit for the UK) see Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis: Techniques, Estimates and..., Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Victoria, BC, Canada.
When you say
This would only be true if motorists paid no other taxes and duty which go in part to paying for health care etc. In fact, they pay their share of these costs plus the tax revenue so you could equally argue that the motorist is subsidising the non-motoring public.
You could say that if the motorists were paying more than enough to compensate the non-motorists for the various costs imposed on them. I think that if your mind is open on this and you're willing to look at the evidence, you'll find that there is little question that the motorists are net gainers here, compared with, say, bus passengers, cyclists, or pedestrians. Also that the generations alive now are net gainers while people dealing with the (yes, difficult to quantify) costs of climate change in fifty or one hundred years will be net losers from what we're doing.
(Though even among people alive today, it's an over-simplification to think of this as a motorists vs. non-motorists thing. Many motorists do not want to use their cars as much as they do: many people drive because so many other people drive, because lots of people driving shapes the transportation system and the city itself for drivers. Go to most American cities and you can see this clearly - one of the costs of there being so many drivers is that you have to be a driver yourself.)
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Another reason to doubt the validity of the figures is they take no account of the introduction in 1992 of catalytic converters which reduce the quantity of harmful emissions from motor vehicles. The motorist of course pays for these converters and for their periodic replacement.
The increase in the numbers of LPG, hybrid and electric vehicles over the last 17 years and the scrapping of older non-catalysed vehicles mean that the figures quoted for 1996 have no relevance today.
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But in place of gasoline engines cleaned up via catalytic converters, we've gotten an increasing proportion of diesel engines. For the health effects of these, see
NHS Choices, July 2013 'Air pollution linked to lung cancer and heart failure'
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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gasoline engines . . . . gotten
Frederick, are Wightman Road, Ladder rungs and the NHS all suffering from continental drift?
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Worth a look at this report from the IPPR:
http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2012/08/war-on-m...
A few quotes from the executive summary: 'fuel duty rates... actually 7 per cent lower in real terms in 2011 than in 2001.'
'the costs to society of car travel are considerable – these include congestion, road casualties, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, noise, and physical inactivity. Estimates of these social and environmental externalities range up to £56 billion in total – even excluding congestion costs, they are well over £32 billion [the amount collected in 2010 in fuel tax and vehicle exise duty]. There are also many costs which are difficult to estimate but are not trivial, such as community severance, disruption to tranquillity and landscape, and waste and water pollution.'
'the full costs of the environmental and social impacts of car and road traffic are not being fully paid by motorists.'
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Permalink Reply by ant on
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Nice discussion to come back from holiday to find :) I think this is worth pursuing and would willing to help.
Reading through the thread there haven't really been many very clear explanations for why this might be a really bad idea. Ok Green Lanes and Turnpike Lane would get busier, but those are 'A' roads so it seems better the traffic goes there instead of the Ladder residential roads. It wouldn't be great for Endymion Rd, but I think you have to look at it from the POV of if the change would make an overall improvement and result in many more people better off than worse off. And this would be a huge improvement for all the Ladder which must be tens of thousands of residents and no one has pointed to any similarly sized area that would become worse off after the change.
I don't know how realistic it really is but we wont find out without trying and we'll probably learn things about how to make traffic changes happen in the process (actually i think the Frobisher gate proposal might be more realistic and i'm still pursuing that). I agree with the comment that the council probably responds to residents requests rather than doing things like this by themselves so we'd probably need to do some door knocking to get lots of signatures in support. Its local elections next year so another thing would be to try to get some candidates to come out and back this as an option.
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I don't think thats relevant, the merits of the proposal and the arguments for and against don't change whether or not i own a car. But ok no I don't. I do use zip cars, and so often it would probably make more sense financially to buy my own one. And I do on occasion drive via the Ladder rungs and Wightman Rd, sometimes just to avoid the congestion on Turnpike Lane and Green Lanes. I use a bicycle a lot too and maybe if Wightman Rd got closed off and i couldn't drive the zip car via it then i'd use the car less and the bicycle more.
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Hello,
I have lived on Wightman Road with the noise and pollution for many years. I would obviously be delighted to see the area made traffic free. (I should add that I don't have a car, and most of my friends have given up theirs.) I co-chair the Wightman Road N4 Residents' Association (part of Haringey Federation of Residents' Associations) We have already helped to get the traffic slowed down to 20 mph, and I'm sure would back any campaign to remove traffic.
One of the local policemen used to attend our meetings, and he had a proposal similar to the one suggested. He moved on, but I have contact details for his colleagues which I will check out. Also, LibDem Councillor Karen Alexander is supportive of positive schemes, and lives on Wightman Road herself.
The garden roads on the other side of Green Lanes (Rutland, Kimberley etc) successfully managed to get some of the through routes up to West Green Road blocked to traffic a few years ago, so I don't see why we shouldn't.
Lets start the campaign!
Susan
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