Tag Archives: traffic evaporation

Haringey Transport Strategy vs. Green Lanes Report, or, deference (again) to traffic

Posted on by
1

I’ve just had the pleasure of reading the London Borough of Haringey’s Transport Strategy 2018: Draft for Public Consultation, and also the final report for the borough’s Green Lanes Area Transport Study. Friday 22nd December – tomorrow – is the last day to comment on the draft Transport Strategy. What’s to be said?

The Strategy is full of worthy goals – improved public transport, better walking and cycling environment, reduced traffic, cleaner air. Gotta love it for that. These are all stated in extremely general terms, but a load of implementation plans are promised: a Walking and Cycling Action Plan, a Parking Action Plan, a Sustainable Transport and Travel Action Plan, and a Local Implementation Plan. Given all the virtuous aspirations expressed in the Strategy, one is tempted to sit back and wait for equally virtuous, but more specific, Plans.

This reverie of a green and pleasant Haringey lifts quickly on reading the Green Lanes report where, to pollute that image, the rubber hits the road. Continue reading →

Traffic evaporation: are you serious?

Posted on by
Reply

Some reflections on shopping, the school run, filters, and the possibility of actual and significant traffic evaporation.

Last night I attended the first of the information sessions for the consultation on the Green Lanes Area Transport Study, and I am afraid I was not always patient. While some people become less temperate when sitting alone at a computer keyboard, but I become more so – I am better able to edit myself. So if any of the project staff who were present at the event reads this, please accept the apologies of the tallish middle-aged American bloke who was exasperated that a large study of traffic has almost nothing to say (except on the one case of Wightman Road) about traffic reduction, and limits its analysis with the assumption that the overall number of car trips is fixed.

I am an economist, and, while economists disagree with one another about many things, our fundamental starting point is that people make choices between alternatives.  Continue reading →