At 5pm On Saturday I had to travel from Headingley in North Leeds to the M621 in south Leeds - 5 miles. This journey took an hour, the inner ring road and surrounding roads in Leeds were gridlocked. I thought the reason was beacuse Leeds United were at home and the ground is next to the M621. This was partly to blame, but two other issues were causing problems.
The inner ringroad on the carriageway in to the City is being worked on and the outside lane of three is sometimes coned off. On Saturday all three lanes were open and the lane closed signs were flipped over - fine if you are heading in to the City, but heading out the signs could be seen through the frame and it appeared the outside lane of our carriageway was closed! This is near a major roundabout so drivers thought a lane on the roundabout was closed and were moving lanes!
Secondly the newly installed lights for our exit on the roundabout near Elland Road were on sequence of green for 15 seconds, red for 1 minute 45 seconds - I presume to get traffic away from the ground. The irony was there was barely any traffic leaving Elland Road and for most of the time our lights were on red and no traffic could be seen.
Leeds have just failed in a bid for a tram system and gridlock is envisaged. Maybe the traffic engineers could look at sources of gridlock other than volume of traffic. The problems on Saturday were both their own making. A simple rephasing of lights could have solved this - surely intelligent lights have been invented which monitor the traffic speeds and sequence the lights accordingly.
|
I also live in Headlingley and know what you mean. Many a time I've walked to and from University along the main road (A660) and discovered that the car I walked past 2 miles back is still behind me.
The best way to reach the M621 from Headingley at that time is to take the outer ring road. Distance wise it's a lot further but there's never as much traffic.
Mind you, I drove out at just before 1pm along the route you describe and had no problems whatsoever.
|
|
|
Leeds have just failed in a bid for a tram system and gridlock is envisaged.
A tram system is not the answer to a commuters prayer.
They take up a lot of road space (normally dedicated) and can carry little more than a conventional bus and a bus is so much more flexible.
No. The tram, at the moment, is flavour of the month with city centre planners and therefore must be the preferred option as far as they are concerned - regardless of how much more money they cost us.
|
I never understood how a vehicle that can't steer around obstacles was ever considered a good option for city streets. How much chaos could you cause by parking in a spot that a tram can't get around? I know I moan about the tube but at least it doesn't interfere with other traffic.
----
Life is complex; it has real and imaginary parts.
|
|
|
|
I remember encountering a long tail back on a dual carriage way once. only to find it was all due to a few lane closure signs 800,400,200,NOW, which had not been removed, there was no lane closeure much to the annoyance of everyone.
A lot of heavy braking going on at the back of the queue no doubt leading to a lot of near misses or worse.
When I got home I phoned the police and told them. I rather doubt they took the matter seriously. If they did anything they would have got onto highways who would no doubt have take about 3 days to get to the site to correct the fault. If the police had sent a patrol car with a few big sheets they could have covered the signs up or picked them up and removed them, whichever...but the police theae days prefer to pass things on to other departments.
|
|
I'm quite pleased the tram scheme got rejected. You could buy a lot of buses for 500 million quid.
|
|
|
|
_COLON_no_upscale()/cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/fallback/coming-soon.jpg)
