Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Don't Forget - Wightman Road Closed for 5 months from Next Tuesday (29th March)
In case it's escaped your notice or slipped your mind, Wightman Road will be closed to through traffic for five months starting next Tuesday 29th March.
This will be a significant dislocation to North London traffic movement. So much so that warning notices have been placed as far away as Archway. No doubt it will also have a significant impact on Harringay's traffic.
However, there really is no alternative to at least partial road closure. The railway bridge between Alroy and Wightman roads is being replaced and there will simply be no road for a few months!
One option the Council could have taken would have been to simply reroute the traffic via the Ladder rung roads. It is to their credit, however, they recognised that with over 16,000 vehicles a day using Wightman Road, this would have placed an intolerable burden on our narrow residential roads, already beset by undue traffic volumes.
After consultation with residents, the solution decided upon is to place blocks at regular intervals along Wightman Road, in effect creating clusters of two or three rung roads. Whilst this will retain unfettered access for residents. it will render the whole Ladder, including Wightman, useless as a rat run. You can clearly see the details on the full size pdf map attached below.
Quite what it will mean for traffic in Harringay, Haringey and further afield remains to be seen. Those of us who have been working with the Council on this very much hope that traffic will quickly find other routes. It's fair to say, however, that at very best, we're going to experience some very heavy congestion on Green Lanes for a month or so.
At the same time, the Harringay traffic study will continue. The coincident timing of this piece of work with the bridge closure may be fortunate in that it will give the consultants an opportunity to study the outcome of diverting traffic away from Harringay.
A pdf copy of the Wightman Road closure is attached, along with some Council-produced documentation. You can stay up to date with what's happening on the Wightman Road closure on a dedicated page on the council website here.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic, wightman bridge, wightman bridge closure
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by WightmanPaul on
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I agree but feel I must point out that a 'rung' road such as Burgoyne is actually wider than Wightman. I make this point because I still read comments where people write 'Wightman and the Ladder' as if Wightman is not an integral part of the Ladder 20mph zone. If I didn't know better I might suspect that there might be correspondents from 'rung' roads who were not empathising fully with Wightman residents. Oh, and if the 'rungs' were closed at Green Lanes and Wightman kept open at Turnpike Lane, how would the bin vans/delivery lorries etc. do a three point turn?
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Permalink Reply by Dominik on
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Totally agree. The bus lane towards Manor House is totally useless. They should encourage more ppl to use public transport during this time and make travelling on the bus more attractive and one way to do this is to allow buses to use the bus lane and provide a fast journey along Green Lanes. There is plenty of parking on the Ladder Roads. All those cars going in and out of parking spots are already delaying traffic. This will get much worse now. Really don't understand the council here
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At the end of the day my views are irrelevant. The Council will do whatever it sees fit. These "consultations" are mere lip service.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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I would normally agree with you Antoinette, but this time I think there is a difference. The council (and especially Counsellor McNamara- who will be a key part of the decision making process ultimately) has been at pains to show a real openness and inclusion on this issue!
I would suggest we need to keep an open mind, and make an effort to engage. and make our voices heard
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I can't agree in this case Antoinette. I went along to a consultation meeting Harringay and Network Rail held and there were a number of option presented. The feeling of the meeting was pretty clear about the positives and negatives of each and I think we came out with the least worst way to get through the next 5 months.
I do agree though that not suspending parking on Green Lanes is rather breathtaking stupid and flies in the face of any logical approach to keeping GL moving a little better during the works. Like someone said in this thread, the traders might think that suspending parking will mean fewer people coming to their shops, but not being actually able to move because parking is still allowed will put far more people off coming to the area. What I'm hoping is that this policy will be fairly quickly reviewed once the impact of not suspending has been felt for a week or two.
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The problem on Green Lanes is the width of the pavements. I suppose they could have marked half on half off boxes ala Wightman.
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The width of the pavements is entirely necessary though in my opinion....particularly where you have the food markets that have fruit & veg stalls outside.... if they were any narrower you would have people stepping into the road even more than they already do....
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And the issue here is that some of our Trader neighbors take the royal p**s in how far they push their things into the pavement. The guys at the bottom of Umfrevrille is a classic example.
Some have rented part of the pavement legitimately, but there are limits as to how far they push out. The canyoning that occurs at pinch points (where other street furniture also imping into the space the footpath presents) is something I raised during the Green Lanes refurb that occurred a while back, but sadly nothing was done about it. Example, get rid of or move things like bins, signs and those useless phone boxes that do not give us room to move.
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Sadly there is little that can be done about pointless phone boxes. They are covered by some old telecommunications law that exempts them for licensing and planning permission. Even though they are de facto pissoirs they make for fantastic free, no permission required, advertising sites for the owners.
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My pet peeve Antoinette. I naively thought that pavements were for walking on, not extensions of the trading floor of shops. There is a run of traders at the southern end of Green Lanes who reduce the footpath to single file - you have to walk in the gutter at some points.
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It is the parking issue on Green Lanes that I am mainly referring to. But my comments also stem partly from my utter despair at the "consultation" into school admissions finding that despite a majority wanting change, nothing will change because the automated eadmissions process (not owned or run by Haringey) can't accommodate the change in policy proposed. So what was the purpose of consulting at all....it was something I personally campaigned for, the majority agreed, net result is it was a lot of effort for nothing.
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