Wood Green car-free plan is axed (From Haringey Independent)

Wood Green car-free plan is axed

10:00am Wednesday 1st October 2008

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Proposals to transform Wood Green into a car-free shopping haven have been scrapped.

The plan had been drawn up in a bid to breathe new life into Wood Green town centre and establish it as a successful metropolitan shopping centre.

Pedestrianisation was mooted as one part of the image overhaul which Haringey Council hopes will attract “affluent” spenders to the area.

The proposals aim to tackle what the council sees as three decades of decline.

But at a planning meeting last Thursday council officers said they had dropped the idea following opposition from residents consulted earlier this year.

Around 450 people signed an online petition amid fears that banning cars from High Road would increase traffic in the Harringay Ladder.

Eddie Finnegan, of Wightman Road, said: “Bus-only or pedestrianisation of Wood Green High Road is superficially attractive until you consider the consequences. As a Harringay resident for 31 years I know what those will be. Traffic will be atrocious and it will only get worse.”

Councillor Gina Adamou, who represents Harringay ward, said Green Lanes traders were also concerned that shutting off the high street would drive customers away.

The pedestrianisation plan had been devised to tackle the loss of trade in Wood Green.

Customers and high-quality retailers have turned their back on the area in favour of shopping centres at Brent Cross and Enfield, the council said. It suggested that pedestrianising High Road, or making it only open to buses, would make it safer and more attractive to shoppers.

Councillor Ray Dodds, deputy chairman of the planning commitee, said: “I know there are concerns, but there’s also an opportunity to do something really positive for Wood Green.

“Wood Green’s high street is dying. You go into Marks and Spencers and you can only get the end-of -the-line stuff, for anything better you have to go to elsewhere. That’s what Wood Green has been reduced to. We have to be more imaginative.”

Officers said “no commitment” would be given to a bus-only High Road without a review of the impact of traffic on surrounding streets. But they said the council’s vision includes better bus routes and improved cycling facilities.

If the plan is approved, Shopping City will be redeveloped with the possibility of a department store moving to the area. The number of fast-food outlets and budget shops would be reduced.

Public services like a polyclinics and police “shops” would be introduced and Wood Green Central Library would be refurbished or relocated to a new premises in High Road.

A decision on the plans will be taken at a cabinet meeting on October 14.

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