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Nick the B-road classification has been discussed several times e.g. here, here and here. Why are you asking the same question over and over again expecting a different answer?
You also missed the point about pavements. The usable width of Wightman's pavements is reduced by pavement parking to significantly less than the 2.0m minimum recommended on page 68 of the government's Manual for Streets:
Once you add in an overgrown hedge, street furniture, bins, and pavement parked cars which frequently encroach on the little bit of pavement left for pedestrians (because the owners want to avoid clipped wingmirrors and other damage caused by the excessive traffic), parts of the footway become quite hazardous for many users:
The traffic stats for Westbury Avenue are in the Existing Conditions document p32. The traffic on Wightman Road (supposedly a B-road but actually functioning as a de facto by-pass for Green Lanes and/or rat-run to avoid GL/Turnpike Lane or GL/Endymion junctions) is 50% higher than Westbury Avenue, which is an A-road which terminates at one of London's busiest transport hub (Turnpike Lane bus and tube station) at the southern end of one of London's Metropolitan District Centres (Wood Green). Shocking isn't it?
I did not miss the point - there is an option to remove the pavement parking in the list of proposals. If you look at Westbury Avenue, there are yellow lines on both sides for most of its length.
The road classification is important because if Wightman is closed, it opens the door for similar measures on other B roads in the area.
Answer this: is Westbury Avenue a residential road?
I've answered that question several times too Nick. Why are you asking the same question over and over again expecting a different answer?
Westbury Avenue is an A-road with no pavement parking, no parking at all actually - it has double yellow lines mostly.
Why not ban parking on Wightman too, reclassify as an A-road? Because it's a residential street, and using residential streets to increase road capacity just induces more traffic onto the A-roads and makes it even harder for them to fulfil their various functions.
It looks like it's been to designed to carry high volumes of traffic, so no I doubt anyone would classify that as a residential street.
Answer this: Do you think Wightman Road should carry 50% more traffic than one of the roads in London's Strategic Road Network? (There are four of these controlled by the council in Haringey - A105 Wood Green High Road/Green Lanes, A1080 Westbury Avenue/The Roundway (west), A1010 Tottenham High Road and A1000 Great North Road - plus 2 controlled by TfL - A1 Archway Road and A10 Tottenham High Road).
JoeW:
"Remember that Wightman is exactly the same width as the rungs, the same residential character, the same distance from your living room window to the traffic outside"
All of these apply to Westbury Avenue.
If Wightman were made an A road, and all parking removed, would it then be 'non-residential'?
Anyway, yes I think everyone can agree that there's excessive traffic on Wightman (although there's very little congestion). You're correct in saying that only option 4 reduces this traffic, however this plan has undesirable knock on effects over a wide area.
It's unfortunate that the planners couldn't come up with any better alternatives. I suspect that Haringey have their own plans which they will implement regardless of the consultation result.
The FAQ on the Living Wightman site is simplified, TfL actually use a 3X3 matrix to classify roads:
The same point applies though - people can and do live on all those road types, but that doesn't make them all "residential streets". See the "London's Street Family" documents on this page
So yes if Wightman were made an A-road, it would be because it needed to serve other purposes than being a "quiet, safe and desirable residential area that fosters community spirit and pride":
Westbury Avenue is a "connector", part of the Strategic Road Network joining the A10 with Green Lanes. Wightman Road is supposed to be a "local street", but massively dysfunctional and carrying a shocking amount of excessive traffic since the road layout of the ladder makes it a rat-runners paradise. Note that "rat run" is not one of the 9 road types in the above matrix!
The only solution which will reduce that excessive traffic is filtering. That did have some undesirable effects during the bridgeworks last year, partly because of initial bad signage (and the fact that the majority of traffic is through-traffic so were unaware of the change), partly because of the partial closure of the GOBLIN and other roadworks like Stroud Green Road, and partly because there were minimal mitigation measures in place on the surrounding roads such as adjusting traffic light phases or altering bus lanes etc.
"you'll just do the same as the gardens - 'I'm alright, you lot look after yourselves" - I very much admire the that way that, on the whole, the ladder has stuck together. It would have been more than possible to block off the rung roads where they meet Green Lanes (as is usually done with main roads) and to have left Wightman to its own devices.
I would not normally be advocating for the removal of through traffic completely as I appreciate that there will be unsatisfactory knock on effects, however nothing else will have any effect on the ladder's traffic problem.
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