Wightman Road, Green Lanes, Harringay - Traffic workshop

Following on from the traffic counts in Harringay over the past year or so it looks like there are various discussions and proposals for improving the area. Some suggestions of segregated cycle lanes on Wightman Road which would be nice. The budget seems to be minimal though (£350k?) so I'm not sure what will actually be achieved.

http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/traffic-study-workshop?xg_source=activity

Looks like these are the options. Whilst everywhere else is moving away from one-way streets Haringey is viewing them as a solution.

One-way streets get put in all the time. You'd wish there was progress, but unfortunately these things are cyclical, and the reasons why one-way streets are a very bad idea are soon forgotten if they don't get emphasised all the time. Add to that the facts that a lot of people intuitively, without thinking much, think they're a great idea (get games of chicken and fisticuffs in your street? easily solved--one-way streets!) and that filtering seems to people impossibly daring, taking away their freedom, and/or interfering with a 'modern' lifestyle, and one-ways can actually, indirectly, be prompted by a suggestion to filter.

The above options are really fairly standard. One-ways are in there because they're seen as intermediate between the most basic and the luxury option. Of course, they're not 'intermediate' but something completely different. I do hope the local campaign manages to persuade a lot of people to back Option 4. And, lest we forget--a few years ago, an Option 4 wouldn't even have been on the menu. There was a long period in which very little filtering was done in London.

I think Option 4 has only really appeared after the road was closed due to the bridge works last year. I can't see it happening though, the council plan for Wightman Rd seems to be to shunt traffic down there when the developments for Wood Green happen (a lot of new housing and retail is being proposed).

One of the other issues with the one-way streets option is that it actually makes up 50% of the choices with each direction being a choice which skews it a little.

Looking at the local forum the one-way street isn't popular but I'm not sure how much influence that will have.

I live just north of WR, and can completely see why the road's residents wanted the closure to remain after the bridge work was completed. Having said that, the knock-on effect to the roads from Crouch End across to Green Lanes made the whole area horrendous and although I definitely feel traffic-reduction has got to be a move worth considering, until that actually happens none of options 2, 3 or 4 sound that appealing to me!

I can't see it happening though

Oh, it would be a miracle if it happened, and yes, the important thing is to stop 'something to be done because something has to be done' in general and in particular one-way streets.

although I definitely feel traffic-reduction has got to be a move worth considering, until that actually happens none of options 2, 3 or 4 sound that appealing to me!

Yes, the issue is that it has to be done everywhere consistently or you just end up pushing through motor traffic into other areas, usually to travel more orbitally. The big if in London is simply whether economic development, the primary cause of trip concentration and distribution, can be 'evened out' more, that is, whether the only, and fairly silly, reason why we engineer every junction for the over-concentrated morning peak hour, when most people go into Central London before they come back in the evening, can be mad redundant, so that people are able to travel shorter distances more locally and by better modes. Interestingly, greater densification of a city should make that possible--if, and it's a big if, the powerful interests that make a city attractive don't insist on further over-development of the city's core (obviously, they usually do).

The thing is that once you've started the filtering process in one area, usually the one affected the worst, it becomes easier to make the case for spreading the application (as the next worst-affected area is done, and so on).

I like one way streets where appropriate, to write them off wholescale is just blinkered ideology.

Where they don't allow fast rat running they can free up road space for segregation such as royal college street.

To pretty much no fanfare the report has been released http://api.ning.com/files/9LH5Xf1*iF0txrAihZTl2oF65V*qWvLBOGc3j5PEZMISwpvTDrgWo-kE4Z9b18R3cENKY1sVBrS6yZL*vz9wya8dCYPH44rN/gl_final_study_report_v1.01_final.pdf

The quiet release isn't that surprising when you read the report, it has a few minor tweaks and a few suggestions that some of the big junctions will be looked at when the areas around them are redeveloped at some point in the unconfirmed future and that's about it.

It's all summed up by this picture of the proposed "area-wide pedestrian and cycle network". A few streets where contra-flow cycling will be allowed and turning a short stretch of the New River into a cycle path which don't join up and don't actually follow the desire lines of current cyclists (especially North-South)

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No mention of the buying up of property to demolish...

Ah, that's a different plan, the Wood Green redevelopment. I had a read through it and it does appear that most of Wood Green is getting demolished and turned into flats.

Although there is the suggestion that the traffic plan above did nothing to limit the traffic (particularly on Wightman Road) because once they've built up all of Wood Green they'll need that capacity due to all the extra people living there.

How does the cycle track go through straight through the hospital? I know they’re redeveloping it but that project is contentious enough. Also it must surely mean a tunnel under the raised overground line which would be pretty dodgy I imagine .

That track is entirely contingent on the developer allowing them to run a track through the new development so it may well never happen. It seems there is already a disused tunnel that could be reopened.

Thanks, A, I'll have a look at this in a leisurely moment. #bedtimereading

That mini roundabout where Wightman Road joins Endymion Road is frequently a nightmare because people just ignore it as a roundabout all the time and don't care about anyone else having priority; have been cruising down there towards Green Lanes and almost smacked into people coming off Wightman Road because they don't care you're coming from the right. Endymion Road has become generally unpleasant because there are always way more HGVs tearing up and down there than you'd expect; my wife and I were actually looking at flats there years ago and although the buildings are super nice and you're right on the park we declined because the road was so much noisier than we expected.

Wonder what will happen now there seems to be a change in the local government.

Looks like Alternative 1 (Minor improvements) is the plan for Wightman Road (which isn't at all surprising). http://api.ning.com/files/tjjWCXzePugsqKVLywNAWkafjIYV-Fc1N2u5HX8eaCPIdPoOtbaKXlj4bYf*U-bGrftaXoF8R1*WQyf8GhYH2HrzZQBqPGpg/WightmanConsultation2018viaHoL.pdf

Get rid of pavement parking, remove the traffic islands and install "informal crossing points" (which are bound to be entirely ignored and are just a fudge because they don't want to slow the traffic down).

Sounds a lot like what the anti-segregationists on here are hankering for! Narrow carriageways, lots of ducking in and out of traffic and no real attempt to improve cycling what so ever!

What are you on about