I want to share what we received by the Concil regarding possible disruptions to the local area due to the Kaleidoscope festival:
'To facilitate the Kaleidoscope festival, the top section of Alexandra Palace Way (in front of the Palace between Palm Court and the East Roundabout) will be closed to all traffic & pedestrians from 20:00 Thursday 20 July 2018 through to 10:00 Sun 22 July 2018. During this period the W3 bus will be diverted from Wood Green via Turnpike Lane onto Hornsey High Street.
Further to this, for public safety reasons the east side of Alexandra Palace Way (from Alexandra Station up to the East Carparks) will be closed to all traffic on Saturday 21 July.
There are no planned changes to the 184 bus route or services into Alexandra Palace Rail and Wood Green Underground stations.'
Please get in contact if this create any issue.
Replies
Various local residents have been getting exercised about the effects of these arrangements on local people. In particular, I and others emailed Transport for London ten days ago asking for more adequate signage for the diversion of the W3 bus than there was for the Firework Festival last November. This email was copied to the ceo of Alexandra Palace, Louise Stewart, who has been very supportive, and said she had contacted TfL about the issue on receipt of my email. As it turns out, the signage is no better than it was for the Firework Festival.
The second concern is about the south slope of Alexandra Park being closed off for 8 days before and during the Kaleidoscope Festival. Walking through the Park is a healthy, pleasant and quick means of travelling between the Alexandra neighbourhood, Crouch End and Muswell Hill, and many people do it on a daily basis to get to and from work or school. No doubt there are health and safety reasons for these arrangements, but the amount of activity at any one time devoted to setting up the festival seems to be very small, from what various of us have seen.
If this year's festival is a success - which I very much hope it will be - perhaps next year's will be extended to more than one day, and the setting-up period increased correspondingly.
Many thanks for this, Alessandra. It is very frustrating that the W3 bus will be suspended in this area for 2 days and 3 evenings/nights, when the festival only lasts one day.
I remember when I was a child in Oxford, during the annual St. Giles' Fair, the bus routes that normally crossed the St.Giles area split in two for this event. So eg the no.2 bus coming up to the fair from the south would then return the way it had come, and another no.2 coming up to the fair from the north would return the way it had come! I don't suppose they do that now ...
It is Annabel.
We have received further information on the event which I think residents shodul also be aware:
Full info: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lhzpsadgGZshcxiOXnvps-qHmHreCaGu
Thank you very much Stephen, I didn't know there is shared drive we coudl upload files !!
Thanks for these posts, Alessandra and Stephen. I went across the park this morning to Crouch End, and sure enough the south slope was fenced off - except for, I think, 3 entrances. So it is not as closed as appears on the illustration. But I could not get out at the bottom of the south slope. There was no work being done towards setting up the festival at all - this was 10am in the morning - the only people there were a few joggers and people doing exercises. I wonder if they really need to close it off so totally, and so early in the week? And I wonder when the three entrances will be closed.