Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Is Cycling as Mass Transport on its Way to Haringey?
Image: Courtesy of Skycyle - published under fair use
With bikes now accounting for 24 per cent of all road traffic in central London during the morning peak and 16 per cent across the whole day, TfL's new Cycling Design Standards Policy has declared that cycling is to be considered mass transport in London. How quickly will this translate into the Haringey context?
The TfL policy begins with the words “Cycling is now mass transport and must be treated as such”. The effect of the policy means that councils in London are now starting require developers to integrate this approach into their development plans. A growing number of high profile examples are regularly cited.
I wonder how this policy is being translated into the local context, across Haringey in general, but more specifically within Harringay. Is it part of the requirements being placed on the St Ann's developers or those planning the huge development by Hornsey Station? Does anyone know?
Whether Haringey is at the cutting edge or trailing behind, what seems almost certain is that we can expect some Amsterdamification over the coming years. Transport for London figures show that cyclists now make 570,000 trips in London every day compared with 290,000 trips in 2001. And, looking ahead, the mayor’s “cycle vision” aims to sustain the cycling boom by increasing cyclist numbers by 400 per cent from 2001 to 2026.
Over the coming few years, a tube network for the bike is envisaged with the development of a system of Dutch-style bike lanes and in n 2016, an east-to-west "cycling crossrail" will open.
More locally, the Cycle Enfield scheme, also known as 'mini-Holland', saw Enfield Borough Council gain £30million from London Mayor Boris Johnson to improve cycle lanes in the borough.
It may well be that we'll begin to see things changing in Haringey soon too. New Council traffic supremo Stuart MacNamara is a keen cyclist and has been spending time looking at how cycling provision can be improved in the borough. As a man with something of a reputation for putting action above political gaming, those in the know are allowing their expectations to to see change coming.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by sam martin on
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tunnels a no no... i think Cross Rail 1 is nearly built & Cross Rail 2 is being designed - that is the reality. we have to fit 1 million more people into our crowded transport network.... they can't all fit on the existing system... more tunnels OR another way. look forward 50 years, add 2.5x Birmingham's population & don't add tunnels, rail, tube or buses - how will everyone get around?
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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London is twelve times denser than Copenhagen so you can't just say "all cities are dense".
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I don't think you understand what density means.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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When you say " clear private cars out of the equation " do you mean ban them ?
If yes, why not say so ?
Of course, if you did, you would have no chance of being elected, even as milk monitor
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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There's no need to ban private cars. Cheaper, more practical alternatives will naturally reduce the case for owning one. It's already started, and the mass market self-drive technology coming in 20 years or so will give it a huge push.
Where we will see legislation is vehicles without self-driving technology. As more and more transport moves to self-drive, the stats will show the human-controlled vehicles to be more accident-prone and disruptive to traffic flow. Once the "normal" choice is self-drive, public opinion will push to minimise the effect of the minority human-controlled-car people on everyone else. 30-40 years from now you can expect to see lanes or whole roads which are not open to human-controlled cars, high insurance costs and possibly people who want to retain fully-human-controlled vehicle licenses having to retake their tests every year or so (driver MOT!)
Private owners of self-drive cars will be fine, just considered a little eccentric. (They will be eccentric rather than mad because they will also have to be rich to afford and maintain the car!)
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(Although I'm using "cars" very loosely here - they are not going to be 2-in-front-3-in-back-and-a-boot-style vehicles. If you need to own the vehicle that makes sense, but once you move to an on-demand model, you can get exactly what you need, which for many journeys is one person plus a bag)
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Permalink Reply by Robert Pike on
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Think of the High Line in NYC and how one alternative vision for a derelict space has led to one of the most celebrated new parks in the world. The linear green space could be considered in isolation which I believe is how you are viewing the proposal pictured above. However the High Line has led to significant influence of the fringes along it. So think for a second about how this can tie into the areas where cycle paths lead to the communities they serve? Can backland spaces/ rail arches...etc around rail lines become something useful to all, not just cyclists? I think infrastructure like this has an important role to play, and I welcome more ideas from in the clouds if it leads to debate and wider thinking.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Nor me either..
Metropolis for bikes?
Forget it!
The future never is so outrageous as previously planned..
It's a shame some of London's radials are not updated with some of the yucky areas being demolished. Wider tree lined roads with trams down the middle and bike lanes are the future. Not Westways for Bikes.
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Whilst I agree with what you're saying here, SkyCycle is the way forward. Think of it as the scaffolding, and comparisons to the cost of Crossrail demonstrate this too, for a new city. It will come down (maybe) once everyone is on their bikes.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Just curious, Stephen. Which particular "radials" did you have in mind? Through which particular "yucky areas"?
Oh and where are the yucky dwellers going to go?
As I recall from a brief visit, Berlin had rather a lot more space than London.
Also, it was planners and developers helping one another by drawing wide lines on maps who wanted to demolish Greenwich Village in New Yucky York.
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Alan, I'm not talking about wholescale demolition of neighbourhoods. But trying to regulate a 21st century city within a 19th century grid just won't work.
I see no difference in moving people out of yucky buildings - seen all over London, than rehousing council tenants from 60s, 70s blocks. Why should it acceptable to uproot social housing tenants and not the others?
London's housing stock is widely decrepit with more than 50% pre-WW2 I guess. Much of which has been 'modernised' in a seemingly uncontrolled way. Giving many areas the appearance of shanty towns. Added to that, new housing is often extremely small in relation to what is being built elsewhere in Western Europe.
Most of London's radials were traversed by trams, in the north until the early 40s, in the south until the early 50s. It's not impossible to run trams again in London, sharing road space on stretches like Harringay and on reserved tracks on either side. In fact, traffic was just as heavy in the early 20th century, as it is today. The only difference being that in 2015, car users imagine that they have a god given right to drive and park anywhere they want. Ban parking on Green Lanes in Harringay and it would be possible almost immediately to run trams and provide bike lanes.
I'm not sure why you mentioned Berlin. No, London never had it's own Haussmann or Hobrecht,
and therefore unfortunately doesn't have the planned grid of either Paris or Berlin. Nevertheless, there are plenty of radials in London on which trams could be running quite easily alongside bikes.
Just one thrown-in for good measure. Trams from Turnpike Lane along Westbury Avenue and along the Great Cambridge Road to Enfield with a link to Enfield Town & Waltham Cross. It's possible in the U.S.A., Europe & Japan, but seemingly not in the U.K. Mostly, because politicians, national & local, just don't have the backbone to set up and support such systems, prefering to bow to nimbyism and the continuation of local fiefdoms, rather than support a Londonwide mobility scheme for the future.
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Yes, I don't want to mess up Hugh's Bike posting. So just a couple of lines in answer.
Trams are capable of transporting far more passengers than buses and the ratio of staff to do so is much lower. They use 'home grown' fuel and cost only a third of what it would take to build an Underground railway and have more flexibility of routes. Last but not least, less pollution. It has also been proven time and again that ridership increases significantly when trams are introduced over former bus routes. Passengers also seem to trust railed transport more than buses. The same is true for the Underground. Perceived reliability in the rails!
Boris' expensive new buses haven't been running as hybrid vehicles for over six months now -problems with the batteries and the (expensive) idea of a second crew member on board has been quietly dropped. What is London left with? A very expensive short vehicle that carries fewer** passengers than the others in the fleet. A fitting tribute to Boris. **Less or Few, I haven't got a clue
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