East Leeds Orbital Route

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c2R
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by c2R »

The only positive thing to say about it is that it is better than driving through Cross Gates. And that the Hamburger Roundabout with the A64 isn't the worst designed one on the route!

Other nasty roundabouts on it include the tiny one already constructed to access Thorpe Park's "The Springs", and the Austhorpe Interchange's satellite roundabout itself isn't much better, being a funny shape with markings that could make it difficult to stay in lane, particularly for large vehicles

As it's been commented above, it's going to be a nightmare on the lead up to Christmas, when it opens, where people will all come out of their houses, and think that it's a bit cold to cycle down the new cycle lanes, and take a drive to do a bit of retail therapy and leisure eating at The Springs. That will mix with all the heavy goods coming out of the existing distribution centres to the east of Leeds, and I'm sure they will be joined by more sheds, and definitely more housing....... Oh, and there's some signal controlled crossings on it as well, for NMUs, and one which provides the only way in and out of a housing area called Barrington Way. So yeah, the entire scheme is pretty much a bare minimum half-a-job which will serve to open up development land but do little to get the area out of car dependency, or provide more reliable journeys from one side of Leeds to the other.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Peter Freeman »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Dec 10, 2020 13:03
Peter Freeman wrote: Thu Dec 10, 2020 12:53 It's an incredibly silly decision. They've obviously realised that a simple roundabout would, for the intersection of two such roads, soon be overwhelmed. But if signalisation is required, simply build a proper signalised intersection. And now - so you don't have to do it later. Madness indeed.
If you've reached the point where you need the stacking space of a Hamburger (remember we don't like multi-lane approaches to signals to be wider than 3 lanes as a general principle) then you're already into the fix being a GSJ, not more signals.
Most commentors in this thread have agreed that a simple roundabout will be insufficient for the A64 intersection, even if OK elsewhere on the ELOR. And, considering the lowish-quality of the A64 hereabouts and the throttling of the ELOR by its many other roundabouts, grade separation is hard to justify.

Between those two extremes are (a) roundabout signalisation, (b) hamburger as proposed, and (c) an adequately flared signalised crossroads. All three involve coming to a halt between zero and three times. Which one is lowest cost, smallest footprint, easiest to understand and use, and highest capacity? Answer: option (c).

" ... we don't like multi-lane approaches to signals to be wider than 3 lanes as a general principle " - what is the logic behind this principle? This intersection would merit flaring each approach to 3 lanes ahead, two lanes for right turns, and give-way left turn slips. Four-stage signalling, or six-stage for maximum occupancy.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Peter Freeman wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 10:01Most commentors in this thread have agreed that a simple roundabout will be insufficient for the A64 intersection, even if OK elsewhere on the ELOR. And, considering the lowish-quality of the A64 hereabouts and the throttling of the ELOR by its many other roundabouts, grade separation is hard to justify.

Between those two extremes are (a) roundabout signalisation, (b) hamburger as proposed, and (c) an adequately flared signalised crossroads. All three involve coming to a halt between zero and three times. Which one is lowest cost, smallest footprint, easiest to understand and use, and highest capacity? Answer: option (c).
It is, yes, and I despair of the fact that we build signalised roundabouts from scratch, let alone hamburger roundabouts from scratch for exactly this reason. But you can't counter this decision-making with logic, because logic didn't enter into it. Roundabouts, signalised roundabouts and hamburgers are the only language that is understood and this design wasn't chosen for a good reason, it was chosen because it's the unthinking default. This stuff is like a disease.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by wrinkly »

Coal Road closes permanently from 6 April where it crosses the new road.

The Outer Ring Road is closed today until 06:00 Monday from Wetherby Road westward. I assume, but don't know, that this is connected with the ELOR, and that the other end of the closure is at the junction with Roundhay Park Lane.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by wrinkly »

Traffic on Leeds Road (the road from Leeds to Barwick and Scholes) where it crosses the future line of the ELOR now keeps left round the future roundabout in each direction.

At the NW end of the ELOR, traffic (in both directions) on the existing Ring Road now goes round the east side of the future ELOR terminal roundabout.

Skelton Lane is about to reopen and Thorner Lane is about to close:

https://www.elor.uk/reopening-of-skelto ... mber-2021/
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by jackal »

A TfN document mentions one of the RIS3 pipeline schemes:
M1 Leeds Eastern Gateway: Upgrading the connection between the new Leeds orbital road and the M1, to support local growth and housing
The indications I've seen are that this scheme will cost hundreds of millions of pounds. But a cost effective improvement would be to add an extra pair of slips on the link roads running parallel to the M1. These intermediate slips are effectively very cheap grade separation - they allow traffic for one junction to pass over/under the other junction without having to build any further structures. (In this case the two junctions are both currently called J46, but you get the point.)

The current configuration, with the intermediate slips missing, is a real bugbear of mine as it forces traffic that wants to get to one junction through both junctions. See also the recent changes to M54 J1.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Bryn666 »

The annoying thing about M1 J46 is they deliberately demolished half of it barely 5 years after it opened to tack on the Thorpe Park bit. You could, for a long time, see the burned off lining where the slips used to rejoin.

The amount of tinkering the M1-A1 link has seen since it opened gives the distinct impression that the planning of it was very sub-par and no long term vision was at any point catered for.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Bryn666 wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 13:04 The amount of tinkering the M1-A1 link has seen since it opened gives the distinct impression that the planning of it was very sub-par and no long term vision was at any point catered for.
J45 and J46 were fine as built. The problem is that the additions to them were badly designed.

J45 was built with a segregated left turn for the future dual carriageway, but the designers of the DC were traffic light fundamentalists and removed this sacrilegious freeflow.

The new bit of J46 should have been built as a full access J46a, with J46 reduced to south-facing slips and links to J46a. So you'd have six slips in total, with four of them south-facing (which is where most traffic for the J46 complex comes from). But in their infinite wisdom the designers didn't include the second pair of south-facing slips. Now everyone's surprised that four slips won't be sufficient to serve what is effectively two major junctions.

As well as the J46 extension being terribly designed the approach to it from the ELOR is an explosion of at-grade junctions - there are five within a kilometer from Manston Lane to the southern rbt of the dumbbell. The EWOL proper isn't great but it's not that bad. If the "Eastern Gateway" scheme has any ambition it will completely bypass this mess, perhaps linking the EWOL proper across the railway to another extension of J46 to the North.

So yes, things are very much not as they should be, but I don't at all blame the designers of the M1-A1 link. They weren't to know the horrors to be unleashed...
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Bryn666 wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 13:04The annoying thing about M1 J46 is they deliberately demolished half of it barely 5 years after it opened to tack on the Thorpe Park bit. You could, for a long time, see the burned off lining where the slips used to rejoin.
Not much of it was demolished - J46 was designed from the outset to allow for the current junction layout. The stubs for the new north-facing slips, and the underpass, were built as part of the motorway, and the original north-facing slips to the main roundabout were laid out in such a way that they could easily be extended to the new roundabouts.

The issue with the design is that it was meant for access to an expanded business park, but it's now being used as the new main junction for the Outer Ring Road, via approximately one thousand new roundabouts. Still, it's nice that the unsuitable urban alignment of the Outer Ring Road through Crossgates is being replaced with an entirely new unsuitable urban alignment. (I'm joking, the new road will be much better, but like all bypasses these days it's not everything you might hope and dream of.)

I'm not sure I have much appetite for bypassing it entirely to the north - I grew up in walking distance of here and I've already seen enough of the countryside I knew being turned into retail parks and empty office blocks - but something better must be possible. I wonder what's being planned since there's evidently no space left for further changes.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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A solution could be A64 dualling and junction improvements for the a64 A1 m1 collision. I don't hold out much hope though Chris that there wont be more car dependent urban sprawl coming to east Leeds.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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c2R wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:20A solution could be A64 dualling and junction improvements for the a64 A1 m1 collision. I don't hold out much hope though Chris that there wont be more car dependent urban sprawl coming to east Leeds.
That might require junction improvements at the A64/ELOR disaster, which is being built from scratch as a signalised hamburgered roundabout. A bit of grade separation there probably wouldn't go amiss. But the scheme slated for RIS3 is specifically for connecting the ELOR and M1.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by c2R »

Yes, agreed. But of course nothings really been joined up as can be seen from the existing tie in disaster as well as the other plans that were previously submitted and rejected to connect the mllr to Thorpe park rbt 1! Still, should be visiting the area next weekend so looking forward to seeing progress!
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by quantinghome »

jackal wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 13:46
J45 and J46 were fine as built. The problem is that the additions to them were badly designed.

J45 was built with a segregated left turn for the future dual carriageway, but the designers of the DC were traffic light fundamentalists and removed this sacrilegious freeflow.

The new bit of J46 should have been built as a full access J46a, with J46 reduced to south-facing slips and links to J46a. So you'd have six slips in total, with four of them south-facing (which is where most traffic for the J46 complex comes from). But in their infinite wisdom the designers didn't include the second pair of south-facing slips. Now everyone's surprised that four slips won't be sufficient to serve what is effectively two major junctions.

As well as the J46 extension being terribly designed the approach to it from the ELOR is an explosion of at-grade junctions - there are five within a kilometer from Manston Lane to the southern rbt of the dumbbell. The EWOL proper isn't great but it's not that bad. If the "Eastern Gateway" scheme has any ambition it will completely bypass this mess, perhaps linking the EWOL proper across the railway to another extension of J46 to the North.

So yes, things are very much not as they should be, but I don't at all blame the designers of the M1-A1 link. They weren't to know the horrors to be unleashed...
ELOR has a long history though - going back to the Seacroft-Crossgates Bypass proposal in the early 1990s, the same time as the design of the M1-A1 link was happening. I can't see that sufficient space has been provided at J46 to provide a proper link to the ELOR route, irrespective of the number of junctions built along the MLLR.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Achmelvic »

Reality is that the M1-A1 link was built in the late 90's as cheap as it could be, I assume because of the nature of the PFI deal, and we've paying the price in congestion ever since.

Examples include:
Weaving between J42 and J43 due to the M1 TOTSO
Removal of the existing GSJ that allowed Pontefract Road traffic to leave & join the A639 dual carriage and forcing all traffic through a tight dumbbell at J44
J45 & J46 lack of capacity as discussed above
Poor lane layouts at Hook Moor both northbound and southbound.

Congestion occurs all of the above pinch points due to how cheaply the M1-A1 link was built, it's a perfect example of 90's poor design.

That's not to say I wish it hadn't been built at all, just that it could have been so much better done.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by jackal »

quantinghome wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 13:57 ELOR has a long history though - going back to the Seacroft-Crossgates Bypass proposal in the early 1990s, the same time as the design of the M1-A1 link was happening. I can't see that sufficient space has been provided at J46 to provide a proper link to the ELOR route, irrespective of the number of junctions built along the MLLR.
There are three issues with the current arrangement:

1. Frequent junctions along William Parkin Way (is this what you mean by MLLR?).
2. Relatively low capacity dumbbell.
3. Lack of links to mainline between northern and southern part of junction 46.

1 obviously isn't an M1-A1 design issue.

2 sort of is, but I don't think it can have been planned at the time that the junctions would serve the ELOR and have major developments directly off it. It would be fine if it was just doing one of those things, which is surely what the designers expected.

Regarding 3, if as Chris says the plan was not to have the links between junctions, then I agree it was badly designed from the off. Even so I feel it wouldn't have been hard to retrofit the links once it became apparent what was being expected of this junction. You don't need a lot of space for them. See this for instance: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.39376 ... a=!3m1!1e3

It should still be possible to retrofit the links, but that still leaves issues 1 and 2. I expect they'll do something crap like replace the dumbbell with a big signalised gyratory or hamburger and call it a day.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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jackal wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 15:01I expect they'll do something crap like replace the dumbbell with a big signalised gyratory or hamburger and call it a day.
#stackingspace
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by NICK 647063 »

Chris5156 wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:31
c2R wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:20A solution could be A64 dualling and junction improvements for the a64 A1 m1 collision. I don't hold out much hope though Chris that there wont be more car dependent urban sprawl coming to east Leeds.
That might require junction improvements at the A64/ELOR disaster, which is being built from scratch as a signalised hamburgered roundabout. A bit of grade separation there probably wouldn't go amiss. But the scheme slated for RIS3 is specifically for connecting the ELOR and M1.
To be fair when I attended the public exhibition they said traffic on the A64 was to increase by 35% with the new road between ELOR and A1(M) surely this should be dualled although I think they want to avoid attracting any extra traffic into Leeds that way as the A64 into Leeds will have a huge increase with all the new east Leeds development……. As for the A64 ELOR junction it was 50:50 which road was going through the roundabout as the A64 is predicted to have the higher through flow.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Bryn666 »

Chris5156 wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 16:04
jackal wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 15:01I expect they'll do something crap like replace the dumbbell with a big signalised gyratory or hamburger and call it a day.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by quantinghome »

Does anyone know what the plans are for the 'Eastern Gateway'?

WIlliam Parkin Way has passive provision for three lanes according to the planning application. This may explain the slightly odd marking of the roundabout at the M1 end.

I imagine the lanes on the main J46 roundabout could be revised at little cost to give more capacity for ELOR-M1 traffic.

Other than that does anyone have an info an actual plans (not speculation)?
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by c2R »

I haven't seen any actual plans for what happens next at the interchange. However, even with the additional lanes at the dumbbell roundabout, it's going to be carnage when the road is completed and all the houses are built and people's shopping habits return to normal.
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