Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Living Wightman: A safer, healthier, happier Harringay for everyone
Harringay residents gather to support the 'Living Wightman' message (Photo: Hugh Flouch)
Wightman Road is living again.
With the traffic dramatically reduced as a result of the bridge works, this is a residential community reborn.
A place where children play in the street, neighbours stop for a chat, families cycle safely through to Finsbury Park and that joggers and commuters can enjoy rather than endure.
For many of us, the idea of Wightman Road returning to a noisy, polluted traffic-clogged rat-run is unthinkable.
The peace today brings into sharp focus the nightmare that its residents have long suffered as a result of decades of planning decisions that have seen their needs come second every time to those of drivers using their home as a rat run.
Wightman Road is, unquestionably, a residential road. Despite this, it was having a massively disproportionate share of local traffic dumped on it –120,000 vehicles a week – only 40,000 less than, Green Lanes.
This level of traffic was generating dangerous levels of pollution, with children most at risk. Levels of nitrogen dioxide - a pollutant that inflames the lungs, stunts growth and increases the odds of respiratory diseases such as cancer and asthma – were much higher than EU legal limits.
Given the high proportion of deprived households on Wightman Road, some of the poorest children in Harringay were paying the price for those motorists who were using it as a rat run.
As such, Wightman Road represents in microcosm a wider divide in Harringay, which sees poorer residents suffer for the convenience of their wealthier neighbours. While 62% of households in our ward don’t have a car, ownership is high in surrounding areas such as Crouch End and Muswell Hill.
We should no longer tolerate this injustice, and we must not ignore this daily threat to the health of our community, and our children.
One of the first things that the new London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, did when he took office last month was to publish a major report on air quality. He also said nothing should be off limits when it came to tackling the issue.
He said: “Half a million under-19s in London are breathing in air in breach of NO2 levels. Separate from that, we know the air in London is responsible for 10,000 deaths last year and in parts of London children have under-developed lungs.”
But it’s not just lethal traffic pollution on Wightman Road that was a problem.
This traffic included foundation-shaking, thunderous lorries and HGVs that breach the tonnage limit with impunity. The bridge-strengthening works will give the green light for even heavier vehicles.
And more traffic will be generated by an estimated 7,500 new households created by the massive residential developments in the immediate and surrounding areas – including at Hawes & Curtis, Wightman Road Hornsey Station, Heartlands sites, Smithfield Square on Hornsey High Street and Tottenham Hale. Whilst we support the building of more affordable homes, it’s important to recognise that Harringay will accommodate a disproportionately high level of new housing in the borough. Wightman Road and the Ladder are right in the middle of all this development.
So when the bridge works finish in September, we won’t be going to back to how it was. It’s going to get worse.
So it’s in everyone’s interests that we act NOW to stand up for the quality of life of local residents, particularly children who face stark health inequalities, on Wightman Road and the surrounding area.
This is the aim behind Living Wightman; a group of residents who have come together to campaign for a safer, healthier and happier future for Wightman Road and the rest of the Ladder roads and, in doing so, inform a major initiative that Haringey Council is currently leading to address the traffic problems that have blighted Harringay for years.
In doing so, we are acutely aware of the concerns of businesses that have been affected by the current restrictions, particularly with the closure of the Alroy Road end, and congestion generated elsewhere and of the inconvenience experienced by residents in and around the Ladder.
Mindful of this, we are asking for the following:
Firstly, we’re requesting that Haringey Council extend the current arrangements beyond summer to allow time to find a long-term solution that drastically reduces traffic on Wightman Road. It isn’t practical to completely open and then limit traffic on Wightman. It would reproduce the initial chaos we all suffered when a change in access was first put in place.
Secondly, we’re proposing that any long-term solution allows access for local businesses and their customers, but stops Wightman Road being used a rat run through route as part of overall measures to improve traffic flow in the surrounding area.
Thirdly, in the meantime, we want to encourage even more people to take advantage of a safer, healthier, quieter Wightman Road, especially cyclists to use it as an alternative to Green Lanes as a route to Central London . We also want residents to share their experiences and ideas about how we can build on these gains and go forward.
There will be those who say it can’t be done.
You only have to look at access restrictions in the Gardens roads, on Hermitage Road and Harringay Road to see that this is not the case.
There will be those who say that the surrounding areas can’t cope with the displaced traffic.
The current situation, with congestion at times, at certain pinch points , is certainly far from ideal, but we know that there has been a drop in car journeys as a result of Wightman Road no longer being used as a rat run.
Anecdotally, many residents also report walking, cycling and using public transport more and, if they have cars, using them more thoughtfully – for example, running errands as part of one journey rather than making lots of short trips.
This decline in car use can only help ease congestion in the long-term and be welcome if the Council is serious about meeting its ambitious aim of reducing carbon emissions by 40% in just four years.
But there is no question that we are anti-car. Many of us are motorists. Rather that the Living Wightman campaign is pro-people and communities.
The current arrangements on Wightman Road – for example, pavements in terrible condition impassable to wheelchairs and buggies in some places because of cars parked on the pavement rather than the road, are about as anti-people as you can get.
They are unsafe, potentially in breach of equalities laws and prioritise the rights of people using the road as a rat run over those who live there.
This cannot be right and is totally unfair.
We only want for our children and quality of life what our neighbours in places where this has been made a priority are getting without question.
No residential road should have 120,000 cars, vans and lorries roaring past people’s homes every week
No child should have their health put at risk and their lives cut short by dangerous levels of pollution
As we are seeing now, in a safer, healthier, happier Wightman Road, there is a better way for Harringay .
So let’s be ambitious and imaginative in striving for this together.
What can you do?
To find out more, get involved, tell us what you think, share your ideas, please get in touch. You can:
- Email us at livingwightman@gmail.com
- Join our facebook group: Living Wightman
- Follow us on Twitter at @Living_Wightman
- Help us raise £500 to fund the Living Wightman campaign by making a donation at Just Giving Living Wightman.
Tags for Forum Posts: traffic, wightman bridge, wightman bridge closure
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I sympathise with your plight, James, but the situation is not a dichotomy. There may well be a solution which offers both improved traffic flows over the situation today as well as an improved quality of life for residents. Rather than us all hanging on to our end of the rope and tugging, it may make sense for all Harringay to pitch in and find a solution that works well enough for all.
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Permalink Reply by Nick on
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Completely agree. Closing the road certainly does not 'benefit all of Harringay', only non car owning residents on the ladder and Wightman Road itself.
It's a B Road so by definition cannot be a rat run, and is not even wholly residential as has been claimed.
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Another solution would be to open all roads in the area to traffic, Nick, including Hermitage, Harringay Road and the Gardens. That would certainly ease flows all round, but I'm not sure it would help the area.
As to the nature of Wightman Road, between Hampden and Burgoyne it's 99% residential. The ends are probably 85% residential.
I've said elsewhere that the best solution might be a compromise, but it needs to be one based on a understanding of others' issues and finding solution that works well enough for all. That solution may not be found at either extreme of what's possible.
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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For me that would be the most equitable solution in my view. Open up all the roads and let the traffic self-distribute if what we are aiming to achieve a fairer distribution of the traffic flows...
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The problem is that through induced demand this will just lead to higher traffic levels all round. The number of motor vehicles isn't a constant in all this.
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We may also find that whilst people are passionate advocates of traffic running freely on Wightman, they may not feel the same about it being giving free reign on other roads.
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Permalink Reply by Pat on
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The Garden roads closer to the Iceland end already suffer from congestion, cars travelling too fast and almost daily contretemps with drivers refusing to give way on streets that are no longer suited to two-way traffic. At the weekend it is even worse because the parking restrictions are not in place which encourages all the families not local to Green Lanes to drive in to visit the Turkish restaurants.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Some of us have been living here since before all the residential through roads east and west of us were blocked off meaning a huge increase in traffic and pollution and a huge decrease in our standard of living. It's not nimbyism. Nimbyism is where you see the need for something but you don't want it near you. I don't see the need for Wightman Rd as a through road, same as all the other local residential roads (not near me).
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Permalink Reply by James Whyte on
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Hugh, having thought about it. I think a tunnel under wightman road (maybe where St Ann's Road goes up the ladder) towards tottenham Lane would ease pressure. Basically we need more routes as the traffic headed to Finsbury Park only has two. What do you do with the amount of cars that want to use the area?
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Maybe the real question is why do cars want to use the area? With a very low level of car ownership locally and streets in the Gardens that take about 4,000 vehicles a week as compared to 18,000 on Warham Road, it's pretty safe to assume that many of the vehicles in the Wightman Road count (120,000 per week) and Green Lanes (180,000 per week) are not people who live locally going about their daily business.
So why do more vehicles use Green Lanes instead of the relatively uncongested Seven Sisters Road, or even the A10? I've just been down to Green Lanes for a loaf and while there were a lot of parked cars, there were far more pedestrians and people queuing for buses, so it's not to just to stop off and shop. What is it about Green Lanes that, despite being a clogged up road for years and years, makes drivers want to use it?
There is a map that has been worked on for a few weeks that tries to identify areas around Harringay ward where traffic calming and traffic prohibition is in place. When you map this information you can see that the area is completely surrounded by measures to disuade or even stop vehicles travelling through them. That leaves the Wightman Road/Green Lanes route as a funnel, collecting all of the traffic from the surrounding area. While this could have worked to everyone's benefit if it had been well planned, the changes in the surrounding areas have been incremental, uncoordinated and often knee jerk.
The real problem is, and has been since I moved here in 1984, Green Lanes and the unwillingness to deal with the problem of traffic. Wightman Road and the roads running between it and Green Lanes have been turned into an overflow for Green Lanes and a convenient way to ignore the sticky problem of dealing with it.
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Tunnels are not things you can rustle up just like that... they're expensive to build and to maintain...and what about the New River?
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Have a read of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess'_paradox
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