Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Dear all,

This morning we walked along Wightman Road towards the train station and the pollution was unbearable. We noticed cars breaking hard when approaching the narrowing bays (drivers seem genuinely surprised by those bays) and then reaccelerating once they wiggled their way through them. Also we saw drivers not moving past the bay as they seemed concerned about the width and hitting oncoming traffic. This caused further build up of traffic which prevented ppl from moving on the green temporary traffic light.

The changes the council is making seem to cause all sorts of serious problems such as deteriorating road safety, build up of traffic and worsening air pollution. 

What can we do about this? 

Cheers

Dominik

Tags for Forum Posts: harringay traffic study, traffic, wightman road improvements

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I have only driven along Wightman a couple of times since this work began. It is a disaster. Cars sit literally fuming away. It is not safer, it is noisier and more polluting and will drive more cars onto ladder roads. I suggest local residents contact their local councillors without delay. When Wightman was closed due to bridge works it was a considerable improvement! 

Seems a bit soon to be jumping to conclusions.

There seems to be a consensus forming that the changes being implemented by the council are not leading to the expected improvement but on the contrary causing a lot of new problems and making the situation worse in so many ways. By intervening and expressing concerns at this stage it might not be too late to change course and make some badly needed adjustments.

There was a consultation and a request for residents' comments on how to improve traffic management on Wightman Road last year and one of the options presented was to prevent through traffic on the road for motor vehicles wider (I think) than a motorcycle. Access to properties on Wightman Road would still be possible via the 'rung roads' but there would be no long continuous route from Turnpike Lane to Finsbury Park.

Maybe this is what is needed?

We had this when they were raising the rail bridge at the bottom of Wightman, it was a summer of bliss. Safe cycling galore on Wightman and no cars speeding up and down the rung roads. Have had to go back to cycling down Green Lanes since, not so bad on the way down but a safety nightmare on the direction towards Wood Green.

If it makes it less popular as a rat run, it will benefit the whole area, no? And remember it takes time for traffic to dissipate after changes to roads.

Everyone would classify their own road as a rat run but it doesn't avoid the problem that there is a need for traffic to move from north to south and vice versa. Green Lanes is hopeless and Wightman is the next direct route possible.   Diverting the traffic so that it could no longer use Wightman as a through road would create genuine rat runs in the ladder roads.

How would it create rat runs on the ladder roads? Going up a ladder rung road would only take you to Wightman Road where you'd have to turn either right or left and then be forced down the next rung road back to Green Lanes.

Exactly what Haringey proposed as a solution...

No, Paul it wasn’t. In fact it was the very thing Haringey Council flatly refuse to even consider. Wightman Road is only a direct route because as part of an incomplete Wood Green bypass it was made so. It became a direct route when the ends of Hornsey Park Road and Wightman Road were aligned in the 70s. They had to knock down half a dozen houses on the north east corner of Turnpike Lane along with everything standing on Turnpike Lane between Wightman Road/Hornsey Park Road and the bridge to enable the alignment. So it was quite radical.There was supposed to have been a Wood Green bypass to the east of Green Lanes. That never got built. So Wightman Road became the default bypass it was never intended to be.

The proposal to reroute traffic across a road bridge at Harringay Station might be the solution  that would answer your concerns, Paul. 

That would be east-west, not north-south not a lot of help there... some sat navs think it's a road bridge anyway!

Ach, it could go west, then north. There's a great route via Mountview, Granville and Inderwick, then rejoining the north-south route at Tottenham Lane. . They're all the same width as Wightman so should serve just as well, no?

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