Forum topic: Plans for Fox Lane low-traffic neighbourhood published

There's many cul-de-sacs in Enfield that work very well - including the estate at the top of the Fox Lane neighbourhood. There will much less chaos than happens now with thousands of rat runners cutting through our residentials streets.

Have a read:

http://betterstreets.co.uk/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-faqs-facts

Firstly, 15% of drivers surpassing the speed limit cannot be accurately described as ‘a few outliers’, Roger.

Secondly, speed cameras are not a viable option. They’re only installed at sites where a pattern of serious or fatal speed-related collisions have been identified.

Thirdly, flippant, inflammatory remarks such as: “the main issue is the tiny minority who want to shut all the roads completely without showing compromise” only seek to increase division and polarisation on the issue.

Thanks Adrian, enlightening and a link well worth reading.
Some discussion on this street has raised the potential benefit on crime in making it more difficult - such as car and opportunist drive-past related theft .
I’d hope that a more pleasant walking environment might encourage more locals to get out and go spend time on the PG high street – get their haircut then have a coffee sort of thing. There’s nowhere better supplied.

Probably not everyone who has contributed to this conversation will remember the idea of a 'Mini-Holland ' for the north/south road though Palmers Green to Enfield Town, with QN's (Quieter Neighbourhoods) on either side of that road. Which, as I remember it, mirrored recent changes in Germany. What we are experiencing now is the development of that idea.

And how pleased I am to see it happening.

What bothers me is that drivers seem not to have grasped the idea that once in a QN they are in a place for living, nor have they realised that priority really ought to pass from car to people, perhaps especially children . In streets like this adults should be chatting in the streets, and, wait for it, children should playing out there, much as I did as a youngster. I am very old and times have changed amazingly.

The freedoms of kids have suffered most from the car-age. It really is time to redress the balance.

Please everyone have a look at how the new proposal effects Oakfield Road at the top of Fox Lane. Oakfield Road will be the only road in and out of the newly proposed cul-de-sac which comprises the whole Meadway Estate as well as other roads near us. This is a cul-de-sac of many roads, with many houses and flats.
Every car, delivery van, lorry, taxi, every vehicle big or small will now have to come in or go out of our road to access all these homes. Under these proposals our road, currently a fairly quiet, pleasant road, with a great community and with many young families will inevitably become a noisy, congested thoroughfare. It will become the service road for the whole area.

I am hoping this is just an oversight for those people who, lower down Fox Lane, want to stop rat running in their streets and have proposed this solution. I am all in favour of less cars, less petrol fumes, less congestion but our street should not be getting noisy, polluted and highly congested as a way of solving the neighbourhood's problems.

Candy Newman 77 Oakfield Road N14

A very fair point, Candy. Hopefully some variant of the suggested plan can be developed. Better Streets for Enfield has proposed an alternative (see below) that keeps the integrity of the LTN |(ie no through routes for rat-runners) but allows more entry/exit options to relieve the pressure on your road.

http://betterstreets.co.uk/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-faqs-facts

The end to rat-running and speeding is the nice side effect. The main drive of this scheme is to remove private cars from the picture. We cannot continue to use private cars as freely as we do now and the only way to do this is to make their use as inconvenient and impractical as possible. Cars are but a part of the picture.

We have to bite the bullet and make proper efforts to address climate change and reduce our individual and thus communal carbon footprint. This will include huge and in many instances uncomfortable changes to the way we run and live our lives.

More use of public transport, more use of bicycles and our own steampower, more frequent food shopping rather than shopping weekly (this country throws more than 10 million tonnes of food away annually, which will be addressed a little if we buy the food our family needs on a more frequent basis rather than bulk buying), getting online shopping delivered to a central hub rather than our homes, reducing or removing meat from our diets, stopping buying bottled water, replacing heating systems and boilers, wearing more clothes in the winter and turning the heating down, washing clothes at a lower temperature, electing to take short showers and not baths, switching off lights and appliances when not in use, vastly reducing air travel, installing solar panels on houses and ensuring our homes are insulated properly – the list is long and painful. Those lucky enough to be around in 20 years will not recognise London – the roads will not be full of cars, either on the road or parked in front of houses. Off-street parking will be returned to gardens allowing the rain a place to go rather than sheeting off our drives and into the drains. Our children and their children might also have half a chance.

In general I support the idea although there will be considerable local opposition as it adds to one’s car journey time. My concern is the feasibility of the scheme. I can’t see how the displacement of 16,445 vehicle movements (Basil Clarke) can be absorbed by the three through-routes proposed. As for road capacity to carry this displaced traffic the betterstreets.co.uk paragraph is vague “saw some increases”, and, “Main roads are usually better suited to absorb traffic than residential neighbourhoods, with wider carriageways…”. Having just narrowed Green Lanes (highly controversial in its own right) LBE will, at a stroke, gridlock this ‘main road’. This may have the beneficial effect of ‘car journey pain’ but buses will be stranded like ‘dinosaurs in a tar pit’ while LBE waits for the magical “traffic evaporation”. I am pretty sure all you have witnessed and heard of dangerous overtaking of buses since the cycle lane came into being.

For this scheme to work another unpopular measure needs to be considered? That is, the removal of all on-street parking on the through routes. Equally unpopular but in tune with the anti-car sentiment an additional car-per-household levy? In other words, a residential parking scheme within a large CPZ. Combined with this could be a Council funded drop-kerb scheme for all through-route properties so that residential parking is moved to the residents’ demise.

For my part I welcome any measure that stops boy-racers ripping up the speed limit. I have witnessed two accidents (Old Park road/Fox Lane) where speed was the cause, and countless occasions of performance cars exercising their capabilities. En passant, and as a cyclist, I am irked by ‘professional’ cyclists who insist on ignoring the cycle lane and ride on the road as well as those who ride without lights in the dark. For the cycle lane to work effectively it really has to be policed/enforced.