Roads are gridlocked: ‘It was not surprising that many drivers looked for alternative routes’

• YOUR correspondent (Where are the urban planners for our city? December 3) put their finger on one problem at the heart of Islington’s traffic problems, namely the (to be polite) ill-considered new layout of Highbury Corner.

At the time of the consultation on this many people, myself included, could easily see the congestion problems it was going to cause and therefore opposed it.

But I got the strong impression that it was a consultation in name only and our views were being collected only because there was a requirement to do this; and that there was always an intention to disregard them.

It was said then that the new layout would add no more than four minutes to the journey time through the junction.

When I look at mid-afternoon traffic backed up along St Paul’s Road almost as far as the turn to Canon­bury station and along Highbury Park, well past the school, I can only assume that the four minutes was calculated as an average over the 24 hours.

At busy times it can take 30 minutes or more. It was not surprising that many drivers looked for alternative routes.

Obviously these took them through residential streets and the residents were not happy. I would not be happy if the street where I live was one of these alternatives.

We are all nimbys by nature. But the answer is not the wholesale closure of streets in the name of making them more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.

It needs something cleverer than that which recognises that Islington’s network of main roads – all of which are also residential streets – is not large enough to carry all of the borough’s traffic without producing points of near gridlock with accompanying heavy pollution.

Let Islington Council therefore start by identifying those streets which, prior to “people-friendly streets” (LTNs), functioned as secondary main routes, reopen them in existing LTN areas and exclude them from any new LTN areas.

Next start planning urgently for the restoration of Highbury Corner to its former layout. While doing this they might meditate upon the huge waste of taxpayers’ money spent on the present foolishness along with the destruction of a number of mature trees. Surcharge anyone?

ALISON
Address supplied