Grenoble Gardens: Ten years of traffic misery

2010 - the origins of the Grenoble Gardens problem

The one-way system that was introduced in 2010 and has caused problems for Grenoble Gardens

Just over ten years ago, in the summer of 2010, Enfield Council introduced one-way working in half a dozen side streets immediately south of the North Circular Road and to the east of Green Lanes. The traffic order, affecting parts of Princes Avenue and Tottenhall Road, Upsdell Avenue, Grenoble Gardens and Berkshire Gardens, also banned left turns into Melville Gardens from the westbound North Circular Road. The scheme is still in force today and has had some success in reducing "rat-running" along residential side streets, especially because it prevented cars turning off the North Circular to drive down Melville Gardens and Wolves Lane. However, in the case of one of the streets - Grenoble Gardens - there was an immediate negative impact, as more drivers wishing to access Green Lanes from Wolves Lane and Tottenhall Road began to drive along Grenoble Gardens, which ever since has suffered from queues of cars waiting to turn into Green Lanes.

Rat-running routes in the Tottenhall Road/Wolves Lane area

2013: The council seeks a solution

Aware of the Grenoble Gardens problem, in late 2013 the council consulted on five options, which I wrote about at the time in a report on this website.

• Options 1 and 2 involved closures of Chequers Way and/or Pasteur Gardens. The map of the proposals which I used when writing the report in 2013 is no longer available, but presumably these would have been point closures at the eastern ends to prevent rat-running towards Wolves Lane and Green Lanes. Option 3 would ban left turns out of Tottenhall Road and Princes Avenue into Wolves Lane/Melville Gardens, with the aim of preventing the same rat-run.
• Option 4 would not close any roads but would widen the junction of Grenoble Gardens and Green Lanes in order to reduce queuing.
• Option 5 was intended to slow down traffic along Grenoble Gardens and also to deter motorists from driving along it by narrowing of the carriageway, planting trees and generally making the street pleasanter for pedestrians (would this really have worked or just made the queues longer still?)

The deadline for the consultation passed and, as far as I'm aware, there were no further announcements from the council about the responses received or what the council intended to do. If the council did ever publish any information, it disappeared long since when its website was modernised.

Whatever became of the 2013 consultation?

However, complaints from residents of Grenoble Gardens have continued ever since and, if anything, are getting louder, so a couple of months ago I asked deputy council leader Ian Barnes if he could search in the council files to find out what became of the consultation. He provided me with a copy of a briefing note prepared by a council officer in February 2014 - the complete note, minus names, is reproduced in the box at the end of this report.

The note includes two tables summarising the responses. The first table is a "bulk" response from 32 residents, evidently organised by a person or persons opposed to any further changes at all and who furthermore wished to remove part of the 2010 changes so that the whole length of Princes Avenue and Tottenhall Road would revert to two-way working.

The second table shows responses other than the organised "bulk" response, revealing a much more nuanced and complex picture of people's views, but unfortunately not one that suggested an obvious way ahead - which probably explains why the note did not include any recommendations and why Enfield Council apparently relegated the issue to the "too difficult" category.

Grenoble Gardens residents are still suffering - what can be done about it?

It seems to me that the root cause of Grenoble Gardens' woes is the fact that the 2010 changes failed to deal in a holistic way with rat running in the Tottenhall Road/Wolves Lane area. It did nothing to prevent drivers using Tottenhall Road as a cut through between the A10 and A105 (Green Lanes), but meant that between Wolves Lane and Green Lanes westbound traffic, no longer able to use Tottenhall Road or Princes Avenue, is instead concentrated in Grenoble Gardens.

Blocking off Chequers Way and Pasteur Gardens would have removed this rat-running traffic and sent it along the A406, where it belongs, but the council evidently thought that there was insufficient support for this, so they kicked the problem into the long grass. But a solution along those lines is the only hope for Grenoble Gardens and also for people living in the section of Tottenhall Road to the west of the Wolves Lane junction - just stand outside the Bird in Hand pub and count the cars driving along this narrow residential street.

A possible Low Traffic Neighbourhood option to prevent traffic cutting through the entire area. The green filters would block motor vehicles in both directions, while the two filters in Wolves Lane would be open to all southbound traffic, but northbound would let through only buses, cyclists and pedestrians.

Someone who has been thinking about solutions is Oliver Bruckauf from Better Streets for Enfield, who has been looking at ways of creating a low-traffic neighbourhood, that is a residential area where all addresses can be reached by car, but drivers can't take a shortcut through it. In August Oliver posted an initial suggestion on Better Streets Facebook group. It used three strategically located "filters" to prevent cars using the area's narrow streets to bypass the North Circular Road. Cars would not be able to pass the filters, but people walking or riding bikes could. He has since posted an improved suggestion on the Tottenhall Area Community Facebook page (see the map above) designed to cut off another rat-run - northbound from Wood Green along Wolves Lane, turning left into Grenoble Gardens or Berkshire Gardens to access Green Lanes. This traffic, which belongs on the A105, would be blocked by two one-way filters in Wolves Lane, which would be open to all southbound traffic, but northbound would let through only buses, cyclists and pedestrians.

This looks to me a good starting point for discussions between people living in the area. They might end up driving more circuitous routes themselves, but just imagine how much pleasanter the whole area would be to live in. Walking or riding to the primary schools in the area would be far less stressful, kids would be inhaling much cleaner air on the way to and from school, people could open their windows without letting in the noise and fumes from cars cutting through their streets... Deputy council leader Ian Barnes has stated more than once that he's waiting for residents to come forward with some ideas for a low-traffic neighbourhood - so it looks like the ball's in their court.