Harringay Traffic Survey results

Not sure where to post this but I thought some may find it useful/interesting. There was a traffic survey in and around Harringay from 6-12 January 2016 and the underlying data has been released. I've compiled the data here if anyone is interested https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-EK0H7cjyLkVUhpSHJlMWhROTg

I've also quickly mapped the total traffic volumes (for a week) here https://batchgeo.com/map/2f4e10d6837dc467e22771242386901a

There's also further discussion/analysis on the local website, Harringay online http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/traffic-survey-data

Good work, but as usual it doesn't count cycling. I've heard various things over the years as to what exactly ATCs make of pedal cycles, none reliable. The technology can only evolve, so hopefully at some point we'll get a better reflection of how many people cycle. As ever, origin-destination surveys can be more valuable.

The rule of thumb for most major London single carriageway, single- to two-lane in each direction, arterial streets is around 20,000 vehicles per day (both directions combined). You can see this executed to perfection in Green Lanes. Streets like Wightman Road have about half to three quarters of that, depending on alignment. I suspect that it's slightly lower than the rule of thumb in the case of Wightman Road because of its inferior alignment, e.g. a poor connection north via Hornsey Park Road and the appalling Mayes Road. Unfortunately, the lower volumes mean that drivers drive considerably faster on those less busy alignments.

An interesting set of numbers nonetheless, and mapping it is useful.

Interesting to see the numbers for Black Boy Lane, Cornwall Road, and Avenue Road, the worst rat-runs in the area. Hermitage Road, which is pretty bad, too, is less significant. You can also see the tremendous difference between St Ann's Road and West Green Road, respectively, west and east of Black Boy Lane.

Yes, the theory is that bikes are counted in with motorbikes but that doesn't tell you much.

Interesting what you say on the speed limits. I was expecting places like West Green Rd and St Ann's Road to come on top of the speeding but that wasn't the case
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b9-8XUQbF_asdnNtRGLXV5waeIRfmZeJE0p2IBfjANM/edit?usp=sharing

I think there may be errors in this though. I think the measurements may be before Haringey became mainly a 20 zone but the speed limits from after.

Edit: I was surprised that you suggested that Green Lanes is about average for a London road of that size. Congestion seems much worse there than similar roads.

Ah, I didn't say anything on the speed limits, just implied that there is quite a lot of speeding on Wightman Road (you have that as Weightman Road, by the way), and I bet it's not just @middleofnowhere climbing hills. :)

A lot of intangible factors influence speeding, and the figures in that spreadsheet are somewhat misleading (although I think that at least the Ladder and Gardens have been 20mph for a while, you may be right that there are also some discrepancies based on time of introduction of speed limits, but that's hard to find out, and in practice it takes a while for them to sink in), as its impact does not depend on whether people observe the speed limit or not. (I also think that ATCs aren't completely reliable on how to measure speed, but I don't actually know how that's done.)

In a residential street like Wightman Road, with many side street junctions, driver behaviour that would hardly be noticed on a wide dual carriageway with few junctions can be very alarming. St Ann's Road is too narrow, and too frequently obstructed, for speeding to be an effective strategy, and West Green Road has long high street-like bits that are usually very busy with people walking, so you wouldn't expect very high speeds. Also, different bits (e.g., east and west of Black Boy Lane) have very different characteristics owing to the alignments the drivers are on.

Funny you should mention Wightman Rd. Due to Bridgework on the Finsbury Park end it is totally closed to through traffic (except bicycles).

Consequently it is a dream to ride at present.

Well, it's also open to through traffic on foot, and it's possible to drive into and along it from any of the ladder streets. :)

Still, what people always discover in this kind of situation is that a bit of through motor traffic evaporation doesn't cause any significant problems. After the bridge works are over, they'll miss the current state of affairs.

I see what you're saying re: the traffic.

I believe there is an intention to do another traffic survey whilst the road is closed to see what difference this makes.

Green Lanes doesn't seem any different to normal which is a little surprising. Endymion Road and Turnpike Lane seem to be severely backed up at the moment though.

The fear is that with the bridge strengthening there may be more large vehicles along Wightman Road.

Interesting that St Ann's and Stanhope Gardens are posted as 30mph limits there - I think they are 20 limits now. Also the placement of the counters has a big effect on measuring speed. The one on Stanhope was just before a big bend if I remember so not surprised it doesn't catch cars speeding. Also most speeding I have seen on St Ann's is around the hospital and the junctions with Warwick Gardens and Black Boy Lane - I don't think I saw counters there. Anyway the area is a traffic hell hole and its mental that Grand Parade is a car park, I have no faith in Haringey Council to do anything.

Green Lanes doesn't seem any different to normal which is a little surprising.

Not to me. Green Lanes is already very close to being at full capacity, if it's not already there or over, and there just isn't much scope for it to get more congested at peak times.

Also, basically, people aren't stupid. If what they've been doing doesn't work any more, they start to do something else. They will not simply stubbornly persist in driving when significant permeability for driving has been taken away, even if temporarily. They'll switch modes instead or go somewhere else. The temporary congestion along Endymion Road would also ease over time if the filter at the bridge was kept in place.

I can see that the worry about more large vehicles along Wightman Road may well come true, though, once the works are completed.

Saying that, Green Lanes southbound was considerably worse this morning than it has been in the past two weeks. I assume it's the schools going back meaning more car use.

The road closure is in place for a lengthy amount of time, 4 or 5 months, so it will be interesting to see if the congestion eases over that time.

Yes, certainly. Usually these occasions don't see enough monitoring, so it's good that they're collecting (some) data. I do wish they counted bikes better.

As the area away from the main streets isn't filtered consistently, though, it is likely that slightly different rat-running patterns will establish themselves. As I said above, it's likely that one or some of the ladder streets will get consistently heavier flows after a period of habituation, i.e. people getting off Green Lanes to cut across to Wightman Road north of the bridge. When you filter (which, of course, they're only doing by accident here and not by intention), you have to filter a whole area or the rat-runners soon discover the routes that are still open to through motor traffic.

There is also the ongoing problem of more and more new development being located in Central London and not elsewhere so that through motor traffic flows (mainly servicing and deliveries, private motor traffic will keep going down) might not change too much or might even see a slight increase. Development located elsewhere would help to spread traffic out instead of everybody piling only into Central London every morning.

If anyone is interested, the council have set up an interactive map for comments and suggestions re: the roads around Harringay. http://greenlanes.sdg-labs.com/

No cycling suggestions on there yet

So, the Wightman Road bridge works have been completed and it's business as usual again. Have you heard of any further progress?

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.

I mapped the traffic count that was done during the closure, you can see significant decrease in traffic along the Ladder and Wightman unsurprisingly https://batchgeo.com/map/f6dadd7f35d86d118c8bd3da53fd7f87 https://batchgeo.com/map/dffd78475ca0d105236f9860a0555b49

It looks like it's back to normal now, I rarely ride on it as the combination of aggressive drivers and multiple pinch points is pretty shit (bad enough that most people favour the traffic-filled Green Lanes).

There is a count going on there at the moment to see whether the traffic has returned or not following the closure.

There's no real political will to do anything about it, the priority still seems to be cars. A few years back there was even a proposal to remove the bus lane on Green Lanes to provide more car parking (fortunately vetoed by TFL).

Cheers, great work. I rode along most of Wightman Road today and can only describe the drivers I encountered as courteous and competent, but of course it wasn't operating under heavy pressure today. Very steady flows but nobody got impatient.

What I find very interesting about the findings along Wightman Road is that there doesn't seem to have been a pattern I thought likely--that Turnpike Lane-bound drivers might have turned off Green Lanes after a few streets of the Ladder to scoot over to Wightman Road. That doesn't seem to have happened, with consistent flow reduction figures of 90-95% all the way along Wightman Road. Obviously, it's only a snapshot, but still intriguing.

Where the connection was used between Green Lanes and Wightman Road, it seems to have been the trio of one-way streets that are Allison Road, Hewitt Road, Seymour Road, although there was an overall reduction even there. Motor traffic movements along these three streets are probably related to drivers going to and from St Ann's Road; eastbound via Hewitt Road, and westbound via the Harringay Road one-way system and then into Allison Road, which has much higher flows than surrounding streets, or via Salisbury Road/Warham Road.

There were barriers set up all along Wightman when it was closed, you couldn't scoot along more than a few streets and at either end you couldn't get down to Green Lanes at all.

Allison and a few others probably showed less decrease as they aren't used as rat runs that much compared to others.

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.

There were barriers set up all along Wightman when it was closed

Ah thanks, I didn't realise that. I was in the area only once during that time, and only rode a short section of Wightman Road then. Obviously, that changes interpretation of the findings. :)

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.

Out of interest, do you know where to find info on the exact locations of the filters?

This only mentions a filter at the junction of Wightman Road and Turnpike Lane:

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/20160328_wightman_rd_bridge_information_letter_to_residents_3_3.pdf

I read the study brief at the time, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't any mention of further filters in there, so I never picked that up.

I said:

Out of interest, do you know where to find info on the exact locations of the filters?

I found it, sorry to be slow:

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/wightman_road_closure_-_residential_access_map.pdf

There have also been some unplanned-for disruptions by water main bursts during the study period, both quite far away but showing how strategically one has to think:

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/wightman_road_update_8_-_13_may.pdf