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Wightman road was lovely when it was closed but the rest of the area was horrendous. It could take over an hour to get from Clissold park to Harringay green lanes station on the bus, not much fun when you're picking up your kid from nursery.
I don't know what the answer is really, the whole area is traffic hellhole but as aggi says there's no political will to do anything at the moment.
jv-
I don't know what the answer is really
The answer is proper strategic planning, traditionally non-existent in London, which has been subjected to numerous experimental measures over the last one and a half centuries, most of which have had perverse results. The trouble is that when anything has happened, London has usually been the first to try it, and hasn't been able to anticipate the consequences. The goals to pursue are difficult and long-term and seem out of reach, but where there's a will, there's a way, and we simply cannot continue the constant parade of short-termistic token measures.
the whole area is traffic hellhole but as aggi says there's no political will to do anything at the moment.
The impact on buses can be mitigated by further bus priority measures. Strategic filtering has to occur everywhere, leaving only a few cell boundary streets, so that there is a stronger disincentive to travel long distances across the city by car. This will obviously take a period of adjustment, but the aim is to change trip patterns and ultimately enable people to do things more locally, reducing the need to travel.
All around London are run-down activity centres that wouldn't take much work to be brought back into use. Even centres like Wood Green or Green Lanes, which at a superficial glance seem to be buzzing, are actually underperforming. The mix of uses there is poor, for instance, with very little office accommodation and mostly just retail. When people have good shops, schools, employment opportunities, and other factors more locally, they will choose not to travel further than they need to.
Currently, Central London is the cause of most of the through motor traffic in the Ladder area, as it is by far the most dominant trip attractor, which is absurd. People 'leap-frog' centres and by so doing have long destroyed or nearly destroyed the localised economies which existed. These were never rivals to the power of Central London, of course, but they kept certain uses local that have disappeared in many areas. The world-wide resurgence in urbanism gives hope that some of this can come back and be enhanced and modernised.
Oliver Schick
Rode through there the other day.
After a dream Summer it has reverted to the norm; speeding, aggressive drivers on tight lanes.
A real missed opportunity.