Text of letter to Gareth Powell, MD Surface Transport, Transport for London, dated 25 March 2019
Dear Gareth,
Junction of Alderman’s Hill, Powys Lane, Cannon Hill and Forestdale N14
Firstly, can I thank you for your ongoing support and partnership in helping Enfield move towards creating healthier and safer streets in line with the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, not least with the recent announcement of our successful Liveable Neighbourhood proposal for Enfield Town, which will go some considerable way to achieving this aim in this key town centre.
To those ends, if we are going to achieve the full effect of such measures, there are a number of relatively minor, but nonetheless significant barriers to that need to be overcome.
One such example is the above junction, where there are a lack of pedestrian facilities. Indeed, the situation has deteriorated in recent years when the far-sided secondary signals on Powys Lane and Cannon Hill were replaced with closely associated secondary signals. The change, which may have benefited motorists, has made it far more difficult for pedestrians as they can no longer see the signals to help judge when it is safe to cross. In addition, you should note that the crossing is immediately next to a local park and close to local schools and so residents, young, old and those in between are regularly using the crossing.
Clearly then, we need to address such concerns about safety if we are to achieve the Mayor’s ambition to significantly increase the number of people using active travel means in London.
We have looked at the feasibility of introducing an all-red phase for pedestrians and I am happy to share the technical report with you and your officers. However, as I’m sure that you will appreciate, this is likely to be a relatively expensive option and I would instead hope that we can work together on finding some alternative and more cost-effective solutions.
I would therefore welcome the opportunity to meet on-site with you, or one of your team, so that you can hear residents’ concerns and together we can find a way
forward.
I look forward to hearing from you with some possible dates.
Kind regards.
Cllr Daniel Anderson
Deputy Leader, Enfield Council
