- If you live in an area that has already been leafleted, you have until the end of March to let the Council know what you think about Quieter Neighbourhoods
- The areas include "Fox Lane", "Connaught Gardens", some parts of Bush Hill Park and Winchmore Hill
- Better Streets for Enfield have drawn up some suggestions for making the most of this opportunity
Is your neighbourhood affected by too much traffic? If it’s fast or heavy enough that you wouldn’t feel confident cycling in your area, or crossing your own road, or letting your child play on the street, then you should take the opportunity provided by Enfield Council's Quieter Neighbourhoods scheme. Use the chance provided by the "Perception Survey" for your area to let the council know what the problems are and how things could be improved.
Some ideas for how to respond
Concerns
Make it clear how heavy or fast traffic affects you – such as not feeling safe crossing the roads or cycling in the area, or letting children play in the street, or walk or cycle to school.
Suggestions
Ask the Council to reduce traffic speed, but to really transform a neighbourhood they need to reduce the amount of through traffic
- Strategically close some residential streets to through traffic, so they are access-only for cars
- Do this using ‘filters‘ (like bollards or planters) that stop cars, but let cycles and pedestrians through
- Consider area-wide filtering rather than just one street.
(For more about "filtering" see this article.)
Other suggestions to slow traffic and improve your street:
- Continuous footways crossing the entrance to a street, giving pedestrians priority
- Sinusoidal speed humps to slow traffic effectively
- A 20mph zone for the whole neighbourhood
- Trees and other greenery, rain gardens, seating.
What is the Perception Survey, where do I find it, and when should I fill it in?
Enfield Council have set up an online questionnaire for people living in the 40+ residential areas that will be transformed into Quieter Neighbourhoods. Every member of your household can fill it in separately. However, there is some confusion about when the closing date is. The web page says the end of March 2018, but that can't possibly be right for the first few Quieter Neighbourhoods, which are meant to have been designed and implemented by September 2017. We believe that if you live in one of the areas that has already been leafleted - for instance, the Fox Lane area or the Connaught Gardens area, then the deadline is probably what was originally stated - 31 March 2017, so no time to waste.
How to make the most of the opportunity
We've become so used to a constant stream of cars along our residential streets that we tend to regard them as an inevitable part of modern life. If that's the case, then it's a waste of effort to even think about the problems they cause us? This survey gives you a chance to bring those problems to the surface and propose some tried and tested alternatives (unfortunately, most of the trying and testing has been abroad - but there are some local examples - just look at what closing off one end of Broomfield Avenue has done for the people who live there).
Find out more about what possibilities there are
The ideas in the box above come from an article on the Better Streets for Enfield website. It describes the problems caused by through traffic, the benefits from reducing it and the methods that have been used to do it, in particular the weird sounding, but very effective use of "modal filters". It also provides answers to some of the objections that are often raised, such as "Won't that cause gridlock on main roads?".