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planters at end of old park road

Planters at one end of Old Park Road. How effective have planters been in discouraging rat-running?

Traffic count data recently published on the Cycle Enfield website gives a clear picture of the sheer amount of traffic using residential streets in the Fox Lane neighbourhood and of the prevalence of speeding.   The data was collected prior to the start of the phased installation of planters partially blocking the ends of many of the roads that intersect with Fox Lane and will be compared with data to be collected later this month and then after the installation of all elements of the Fox Lane Quieter Neighbourhood scheme.

A car every six and a half seconds

That their streets are used by rat-runners and drivers breaking speed limits will hardly come as a surprise to residents of Fox Lane or the streets on either side of it.  But while anecdotal evidence can be dismissed by those who prefer to give car drivers a free rein, the hard data now available has to be taken seriously.

Traffic counts for each road's "worst hour", ie the hour of the day with most traffic, clearly show that these residential streets are being used as through routes.  Predictably, Fox Lane had the most traffic - up to 548 vehicles an hour or one every six and a half seconds.  Maximum hourly counts for some of the side streets were also alarming:

  • Meadway: 419 = a car every 8.6 seconds
  • Amberley Road: 402 = a car every 9 seconds
  • The Mall: 368 = a car every 9.8 seconds
  • Old Park Road: 303 = a car every 12 seconds

Speeding cars in nearly every street

Of the 22 streets where baseline data was collected late last year, there were only three where the majority of drivers were staying well below the 30mph speed limit.  In all other streets the "85th percentile" readings - the speed at which the data shows 85% of vehicles were travelling at or below - was not far short of 30mph and in ten roads was over 30mph.  It follows that 15 per cent of drivers were going faster than the speeds shown in the table below, many of them exceeding the speed limit. 

The streets with the fastest traffic were Bourne Avenue, Burford Gardens, Caversham Avenue, Cranley Gardens, Derwent Road, Devonshire Road, The Greenway, St George's Road and Ulleswater Road.  We don't know what speeds the law breakers were doing, as we don't have the complete data set as we did for last week's report about Groveland Road, but if the Grovelands data is anything to go by, there would have been plenty of drivers going at more than 40mph and some in excess of 50mph (hopefully, the 70.4mph recorded in Grovelands Road last December was an "outlier".)

(Click here if the table below does not display properly.)

Baseline data collected prior to installation of planters

  Baseline Data
Road Name Speed - mph
(direction)
No. of cars in a
1-hour period
  N/E S/W Total Time
Amberley Road 26.2 26.3 402 8am
Bourne Avenue 33.7 32.6 272 8am
Burford Gardens 30.1 28.7 106 4pm
Cannon Road        
Caversham Avenue 29 31 183 8am
Conway Road 25.7 25.3 88 8am
Cranley Gardens 30.4 27.9 75 1pm
Derwent Road 27.8 30.3 100 12pm
Devonshire Road 30   117 6pm
Fox Lane 28.9 24.5 548 8am
Greenway 30.4 29 154 8am
Grovelands Road 29.5 29.6 140 4pm
Harlech Road 27.7 27.7 66 3pm
Lakeside Road 27.5 32.2 117 12pm
Meadway 29.7 29.6 419 8am
Oakfield Road 18.8 17.8 46 12pm
Old Park Road 29.3 26.2 303 8am
Parkway 26.2 24.6 59 8am
Selborne Road 25.5 23.8 249 8am
St George’s Road 29.4 30 153 8am
The Mall 20.5 20.2 368 4pm
The Ridgeway 15.9 19 31 9am
Ulleswater Road 30.3 30.5 79 8am

Data taken from a PDF document supplied by Enfield Council. Colour coding has been added by Better Streets for Enfield to highlight the worst streets for traffic volumes and typical speeds.
Key: Green – good for all-age walking, cycling and play; Amber – will discourage some from walking or cycling; Red – a hostile, unhealthy street.

The explanatory text accompanying the data is shown below:

The table below provides the baseline data for the Fox Lane monitoring of the planters trial.

Speed Data: People will drive their cars at varying speeds along residential roads, some thoughtful to their surroundings and others less so. When looking at speed data for particular roads, we need to have a system to understand what the typical speed might be. Therefore, the speeds shown in the table are what are referred to as the ‘85th percentile speed’. This is used nationally to determine the effectiveness of the speed limit and is the speed at whichthe data shows 85% of vehicles are travelling at or below. Thisdoes leave a minority that will be driving their cars in excess of the speeds shown. These results are taken from data typically gathered over a 7-day period, collecting information 24 hours a day.

Volume Data: We have reviewed the data over the period of collection and for each road selected the hour of the day which has the highest volume of traffic (i.e. the worst hour). This volume data includes vehicles travelling in either direction.

What happens next?

So far, only some of the planters shown on the diagram below have been installed.  Before the remainder are added,  "interim monitoring" will be carried out.

fox lane qn revised design publicityThe final design of the Fox Lane QN - Click on the image to download the leaflet

Interim monitoring

Now that the latest set of planters have been installed (w/c 25th Feb), we will conduct some additional monitoring to compare against our baseline data. The phased approach also enables us, as part of this interim monitoring, to gather data to help understand whether traffic is getting displaced from those roads with planters, to those roads without. This all helps build a better picture of the impact of this trial, to help inform future schemes. The interim monitoring will take place during w/c11th March and w/c 18th March (to enable time for the measures to take effect). We will then review this data and can then look to install the final phase after that.

A longer explanation of the council's phased approach to the quieter neighbourhood has been posted on the updated Letter to Residents of the Fox Lane area page, including a commitment by Cycle Enfield lead officer Richard Eason that "we remain committed to trialling other ideas if the data we gather suggests the planter approach is not having the desired effect".

Should this prove to be the case - and feedback from residents (so far only anecdotal) suggests that the planters have had little or no effect on either speed or volume of traffic - the campaigning group Better Streets for Enfield will be pressing the council to trial a more radical solution using the Low Traffic Neighbourhood principles.

This is an updated version of this report

This article was updated on 6th March and several revisions were made:

  • A  new paragraph was added to emphasize that the traffic counts shown in the table were for a one-hour period, not for an entire day.
  • The colour coding of two streets in the table was corrected.
  • A link to the Cycle Enfield letter to Fox Lane area residents was added.

Log in to comment
Adrian Day posted a reply
06 Mar 2019 12:39
303 vehicles an hour for Old Park Road is a vehicle every 12 seconds - the vast majority are rat running. And too many are speeding.
Basil Clarke posted a reply
06 Mar 2019 15:01
I've revised the original article to make it clearer that the traffic counts shown in the table were for a one-hour period, not for an entire day, and show vehicle freqencies as high as every 6.5 seconds.

Additionally, there were a couple of errors in the colour coding of the table and I've added a link to the updated Letter to Fox Lane areas residents page on the Cycle Enfield website.
Basil Clarke posted a reply
06 Mar 2019 15:19
Better Streets have now published their own commentary on the baseline data . One comment that stands out:

On traffic volumes, Simon Munk, Infrastructure Campaigner for London Cycling Campaign, told us, “If the distribution of traffic through the day is fairly standard, then anything above 100 [cars in the busiest hour] isn’t going to be great for all ages, all-abilities cycling, anything over 200 is over the LCC and Dutch CROW level for needing protected space for cycling, anything over 500 is over Department for Transport guidance for the ‘Strategic Road Network’. In other words 100ish is good, 200ish is OK for most folks but won’t be a kids paradise, and 400+ is ‘Woah there, Nelly!’, particularly if speeds are also over 20-23mph for the ’85th centile’.”

Karl Brown posted a reply
07 Mar 2019 11:04
It’s an interesting snapshot but most likely needs to be treated and considered with a little caution. I’m going to struggle with an 85th percentile at 29.3mph being one to “discourage some walking or cycling”, whereas 29.5 mph is “hostile and unhealthy”. Remember 15% of traffic will exceed the indicated speed so in pretty much EVERY case, with the exception of speed humped Oakfield and The Ridgeway, I’d be looking at “hostile” from a speed viewpoint, ie pretty much 1 in every 6 cars will be breaking the speed limit, and that despite bends, parked cars, pedestrians and other factors the Highway Code indicates should mean you should slow even further for.

It also raises for me a significant aspect: the supporting text gives much weight to the impact on cycling and walking. At the commencement of the process, in two workshops, the focus was on impacts on those living on these streets. So, in all, this work is the objective to make better places to live, from which there will inevitable be benefit to active travellers; or is it focused on active travellers, from which us residents will gain some long needed peace and quiet?

There’s certainly an overlap but we shouldn’t t be fooled into thinking these are necessarily two sides of the same coin. I’d suggest the council started with one and later moved to the other.
Larry Roberts posted a reply
08 Mar 2019 14:51
Doesn't look like the monitoring stats for Lakeside Road will be of any use...either the council forgot to attach the metal box (unlikely) or its been pilfered (as before)
Karl Brown posted a reply
10 Mar 2019 16:34
As with Lakeside the new strips for Old Park Road which appeared on Friday (?) are monitoring box-less.
On the plus side, the strips are no longer at the elbow and pinch point of the road, rather being in the middle, and so would have given a better reflection of speeds experienced.
Cursing a southbound black Golf on Friday who was evidently aiming for take-off speed I was amazed to see the driver hit the brakes when close to the strips and then release once over them. It was as if they cared about something.
Karl Brown posted a reply
11 Mar 2019 11:46
OPR's speed strips now have a lovely monitoring box which in turn is secured to a nearby tree with a thick chain. You clearly can't be too careful.
Charles Auty posted a reply
15 Mar 2019 15:27
Sadly the speed strips/counters on Fox Lane are set just north of the Derwent Road junction and below the Grovelands Road junction. These two points mark the beginning and end of the widest and highest speed section of the road. I live in the mid-point and am woken almost every morning by the same car(s) reaching max acceleration as they pass my house (normally i love the sound of a V8). The southern counter is at a braking point after that speed run and immediately before a significant narrowing in the road - hence the slower speeds recorded. If they put the speed bumps at those two locations they won't slow anyone down. We need a speed bump just above or below the Lakeside Road junction.
David Hughes posted a reply
16 Mar 2019 21:13
There are now two speed strips on Conway Road, one perhaps 40 metres beyond the mouth of Ulleswater Road if you are travelling South-West toward the tennis courts and another beyond the tennis courts, and one on Harlech Road toward the lower end. Seems about right to me.

The reaction of drivers to the first of these is interesting: a few slow down almost to a stop (I assume knowing what they're for), others drive without a pause, some at a reasonable speed, some too fast in my opinion. [It's hard to estimate the speed of traffic accurately from the pavement, most people over estimate.]

I didn't check Ulleswater Road today, but the last time I cycled up it there were no speed strips. Odd if it's still like that? Will take a look asap, but I'll be a bit preoccupied tomorrow.
Basil Clarke posted a reply
20 Mar 2019 22:53


Someone has painted over the messages on the planters at the ends of Selborne Road, the Mall and Amberley Road. What could be the motive for this act of vandalism against council property?

Normal, everyday vandalism? No, far too neat.

Someone who doesn't think that rat-running cars should be "welcomed" in their neighbourhood? No, they would have replaced the welcome message with something less welcoming and not necessarily polite.

Someone asserting his right as a red blooded Englishman to drive wherever he likes as fast as he likes? Surely not, red blooded Englishmen would never dream of breaking the law by defacing something paid for out of taxpayers' money. And they're all gentlemen.

So it's a complete mystery.
John Phillips posted a reply
21 Mar 2019 09:19
No mystery!!
Rat runners are not welcome. The original plans showed 20MPH signs. Enfield Council has always favoured motorists over residents.
Darren Edgar posted a reply
21 Mar 2019 12:31
Disgusting and pathetic. Can't believe some loser actually went out of their way to do that.