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Sophia, Seymour traffic levels average less then 30 vehicles per hour for most of the day, or 1 car every two minutes. That's less than half the average for a Ladder rung, and less than 3% of Wightman Road itself. Wightman gets over 1000 cars per hour, with peaks around 1400 per hour, or 1 car every 3 seconds.
So I'm not surprised the councillor you spoke to wasn't concerned about the potential increase on Seymour.
I am surprised that you don't support filtering, since it would bring traffic levels on all rungs, and on Wightman itself, down to the same sort of level that Seymour enjoys. I think you're right though to identify that other options (including no change) will bring increases on Seymour.
I am also surprised that the canvasser you spoke to said that neighbouring councillors were resisting opening their roads in order to absorb the traffic, since the idea of reopening any currently closed roads was thankfully ruled out months ago. The point of filtering is, again, to level down, to allow Wightman and the rungs to enjoy similar traffic levels to those in neighbouring filtered cells. And to force all the through traffic onto the intended A-roads where it can be managed.
Hmm, so "reopening any currently closed roads was thankfully ruled out" is a Good Thing, but dumping some of Warham's traffic onto Seymour (and Mattison) is not a Bad Thing? That seems hard to justify when opening closed roads is ruled out - if moving traffic to Seymour is ok why not reopen the Gardens and Hermitage to help share the burden of some of the Ladder traffic? Don't we aspire to other Ladder rungs being as quiet as Seymour so should be trying to protect Seymour's quietness not move traffic to it?
Tris, I think you'll find that Ant was being tongue-in-cheek and pointing out to the detractors of the filtering of Wightman Rd what it means by looking into the past not panicking about the future.
So what you are saying is that the closure of Wightman Rd would:
Tris, the traffic at the top of the ladder was definitely made worse by the gardens closure. East West traffic through Harringay needs to get across the railway at either Turnpike Lane, Endymion Rd or Seven Sisters.
If you can guess something about the gardens closure then I can use the exact same guesses for the ladder and Wightman Rd.
I don't know where this "overwhelming consensus" comes from. Certainly not from the people who live in the area in question. It really doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what someone in e.g., Enfield thinks. Keep in mind there is a public policy initiative to discourage private vehicle use. Making it difficult to use our residential streets as a cut through by thousands of vehicles per day, reasonably comports with this policy.
It's not just cyclists who benefited. Anecdotally, there are four non-cyclists in my own house and I can assure you they prefer last summer to status quo. Oh, and cyclists are also a favoured transportation class, as a matter of public policy. As filtered closure would encourage cycling, this would also favour the filtering of Wightman Road.
Depending where you look the overwhelming consensus was it was a good thing, was a bad thing, didn't make that much difference.
I spent the first part of the bridge works cycling and walking and it was pretty pleasant. I spent the second half on public transport as I had a bad back and it wasn't that dissimilar to when the bridge was re-instated.
Most of those who say it was a disaster seem to base it on anecdotes rather than data (there are various threads comparing vehicle numbers, bus times, air pollution, etc on here if you'd like a more objective view).
There is scope for mitigation measures (traffic light timings, one-way street directions, prohibited turns, bus lanes, etc) which may be introduced if the filtering is permanent.
I suggest it's a possibility, I'm not a town planner so couldn't guess at all the implications and some changes will improve one mode of transport over others (e. implementing a bus lane).
That goes back to my point about anecdotes versus data. A lot of the bus times, particularly during the week, weren't much different per the TFL GPS data. The pollution levels on Green Lanes were lower than the previous year. There's a variety of analysis on here if you look for it.
Personally I think the current levels of traffic are way too high and filtering Wightman will probably assist in reducing this (although it may take some time for the behavioural change to filter through). Given that the majority in Harringay don't own cars I feel there is too much pandering to car owners (it's not just a Harringay issue but the council is particularly bad compared to others in London) and not enough focus on other methods of transport.
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