Infamous Rat Runs

[graeme_t]

Coddington (near Newark) on the old A17 to get on or off the A1 avoiding the hideous A46 junction

My brother in law works at the large Knowhow warehouse, and he regularly uses this junction to get there in a morning (it's all left turns from the southbound A1), rather than try to get off at Winthorpe.

[Dave908]

There's a rat run built in to the Saddle Junction in Wigan - if you want to get on the A577 from Robin Park, you can use Douglas Street rather than going around the whole roundabout. It can save a minute or two, particularly if you time it right and the Southgate lights have just turned red.

StreetView Here

[ForestChav]

Coddington (near Newark) on the old A17 to get on or off the A1 avoiding the hideous A46 junction

My brother in law works at the large Knowhow warehouse, and he regularly uses this junction to get there in a morning (it's all left turns from the southbound A1), rather than try to get off at Winthorpe.

Winthorpe was so terribly overloaded when it was just the A1 and the pre-bypass A46 it is unfathomable to think how it was felt adding more to it would help at all.

With the A46 now being dualled all the way from the M1 to Farndon, this will add more traffic on it as either a route to Lincoln from the M1, and a link between the M1 and A1, but between Farndon and the A1 it's on an embankment so difficult to improve much.

Ideally you'd split off the A46 by pulling it over the A1 and A1133 meeting the mainline after that but this would be harder to engineer.

As for the A17, quite why they didn't take it south instead...

[Alderpoint]

Winthorpe was so terribly overloaded when it was just the A1 and the pre-bypass A46 it is unfathomable to think how it was felt adding more to it would help at all.

I avoid this when going A46N to A1N or A1S to A46S by using the old Great North Road A616/B6325 past S.Muskam. But surely you can't call an A&B road a rat-run....

[Reading]

2 ratruns 1 big 1 small

Big - A417 via Birdlip to cut corner of M4 M5

Small - this road used by seemingly all the residents of Woodley to get to Reading avoiding the A4/A3290 roundabout or 3tuns - about to be shut for 6 weeks for gas main replacement so we will see how many use it - https://goo.gl/maps/xpT8unZ7vQx

[NICK 647063]

I don’t think you can class a road like the A417 as a rat run it’s the main route for that movement, a little like the A556 cuts the corner between the M56 and M6 but as these are the signed routes I wouldn’t call them rat runs.

My idea of a rat run is a route that isn’t signed as the thought route but is used as the through route, like the example I gave near York, North lane cuts the corner between the A64 and A1237 but yet when approaching on the A1237 north lane isn’t signed and Scarborough A64 is signed towards the Hopgrove on the A1237 yet almost all Scarborough bound traffic uses north lane.

[autismuk]

Coddington (near Newark) on the old A17 to get on or off the A1 avoiding the hideous A46 junction

Yes, I've gone that way plenty of times.

Always go that way, much easier to get on at the old A1/A17 junction than the A46/A1/A17 plus about 20 others junction.

[Truvelo]

Pages Lane is used as a shortcut from Newton Road to the M6. It avoids having to wait at the lights.

https://goo.gl/maps/maqcKaHuvoJ2

[WHBM]

Long gone now, but in Kidbrooke SE London where the A2 and A20 come together, they used to run parallel. The A20 suffered from considerable congestion at the junction, but there was a pub, a typical 1930s roadhouse-style, about 1/4 mile back which had a car park which went out onto both roads. So a tradition developed of rat-running from the A20 to the A2 through the car park. This was chicaned etc to prevent this, but there was always a way through, right round the back past the empty beer barrels and such like. A few, of course, drove stupidly fast round this way.

Eventually in the mid-1980s the pub closed for the construction of the A2 Rochester Way Relief Road grade separation of the A2, and became even more of a run-through. It was also now being used by the contractor as a materials store, and someone hit one of the operatives. The next morning several loads of hardcore were dumped in the exit to block the way. This was not visible from the entrance, it was only when rounding the back of the now derelict building that it was apparent. There was no space to turn round, so reversing was necessary, and then others came round from behind and it was chaos. Slowly, over the next couple of days, the lesson was learned.

[Truvelo]

Speaking of pub car parks there was one near me which I remember as a kid using to turn left to avoid a set of lights. This roundabout was a set of lights back then and the pub was situated in the northwest corner of the junction. The pub car park was later partitioned to stop traffic cutting through it. Traffic can still build up approaching the roundabout during peak times and Crystal Drive is the new ratrun to avoid the junction but only if turning left at the end as turning right can be a real pain.

https://goo.gl/maps/tmE3uBJAUEE2

[Owain]

It's probably not so bad now that the bypass has been built, but when I lived in Lancaster the hellish one-way system could be avoided northbound by either:

a) leaving the A6 by turning in Bowerham Rd, before following Dale St, Quarry Rd, Moor Ln, Edward St, Alfred St, and St Leonard's Gate to access the bridge over the Lune to Morecambe, allowing you to skirt the one-way system to its east

or, b) leaving the A6 in Scotforth by taking any of the roads linking to the A588 Ashton Rd, then cutting through the (private) Haverbreaks Rd to reach Aldcliffe Rd, before using Brook St and Dallas Rd to skirt much of the one-way system on the western side

On the return journey southbound, using the M6 or Quernmore Road and Postern Gate Road would take you miles out of your way, but allowed for a pleasant traffic-free drive before heading back into Lancaster on the southern side.

All options were better than the one-way system during rush hour!

[Ambosc79]

Pub car parks? How about a hotel garage:

https://www.instantstreetview.com/@52.7 ... h,-0.7p,1z
There's one entrance
https://www.instantstreetview.com/@52.7 ... h,3.46p,1z
And there's the other.

It used to come in handy when I was a cab driver: if I had dropped off in the Square/High St area and then got sent a job in Wyle Cop/English Bridge/Abbey Foregate I could go round the back to Princess St, down Belmont Bank, through the Lion garage and emerge on Wyle Cop- saving having to go all the way round the one way system (could take 1/2 hour) or pay to use the Kingsland bridge.

(If the owners are on here, I did not do it often, just occasionally when town was stupidly clogged up and either the dispatchers or the computer kept sending me back that way. I know quite a few of us did it but I'm not encouraging it...)

[Lockwood]

I once suggested the village of Middleton Stoney was only created so we didn't have to queue at the top of the A34.

(Like button)

[Bfivethousand]

Pages Lane is used as a shortcut from Newton Road to the M6. It avoids having to wait at the lights.

https://goo.gl/maps/maqcKaHuvoJ2

The Scott Arms has got several rat runs avoiding it of course - Jayshaw Avenue cutting the left turn from Birmingham into Newton Road; Sundial Lane from J7 to Queslett Road; and you can even count Pinfold Lane & Chapel Lane which brings traffic from Aldridge and Streetly in to J7 without going close to Scott Arms.

[Truvelo]

Pages Lane is used as a shortcut from Newton Road to the M6. It avoids having to wait at the lights.

https://goo.gl/maps/maqcKaHuvoJ2

The Scott Arms has got several rat runs avoiding it of course - Jayshaw Avenue cutting the left turn from Birmingham into Newton Road; Sundial Lane from J7 to Queslett Road; and you can even count Pinfold Lane & Chapel Lane which brings traffic from Aldridge and Streetly in to J7 without going close to Scott Arms.

I used to use Chapel Lane until they buggered it up with humps and bumps a few years ago. I use Skip Lane now.

[hoagy_ytfc]

The classic for me was always heading straight on as you approach Cannard's Grave from the south, on the A37 near Shepton Mallet.

These days, though, the narrowness of that route etc, and the improvements to the "long way round" via the roundabout, means that one may as well always take the official route now.

[wallmeerkat]

Cairnshill Park and Ride is used by some as a rat run between the Saintfield Road and Purdysburn Roads (and on to the A55)

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.5460971 ... a=!3m1!1e3

You can see where they ended up stopping up the road. People still use it though, going round the car parks, which can be annoying when you're in and trying to get parked and onto a bus and you have a stream of school run SUVs cutting corners

[Moore_O]

Way back in the 1970s and early 80s we used regularly travel between Cambridgeshire and Hampshire, using the A1 and the M3. I was quite young, but remember it being quite a tortuous process getting between the two roads, passing several landmarks including The Comet pub, and a roundabout in Denham where there was a railway carriage. I also remember the signs for Virginia Waters, and the various thoughts that name triggers (lady tennis players, etc.). We used to stop in Windsor Great Park for our lunch.

After the M25 was built, you'd expect the journey to be simplified and shortened - possibly even to the extent that we'd no longer even need to stop... but no. Not for us.

My Dad didn't like the route taken by the new motorway - reckoning the extra miles weren't worth it, so continued to cut the corner for many years - leaving the A1 early - to wend his way through suburban Hertfordshire - a process made all the more difficult because he was also too tight to buy a new atlas, and the fact that after they finished the M25, lots of the roads we were trying to follow changed numbers.

It can't possibly have saved any time, but it saved a few miles. Strange priorities, but there we are. Hope that counts as a Rat Run.

[Duncan]

If travelling from my flat just off the A3 Battersea Rise to home in Sussex, the Wandsworth One-Way System is nearly always clogged up from East Hill onwards, and often going up West Hill as well, even though it widens from one lane to three by Holy Trinity Church, so my normal route is Windmill Road-St Ann's Hill-Swaffield Road-Kimber Road-A218 Merton Road-Granville Road-Sutherland Grove, then rejoin the A3. However, as West Hill is now often as bad as East Hill, I usually continue across Sutherland Grove into Girdwood Road, then Skeena Hill and Beaumont Road, to rejoin the A3 by Holy Trinity Church.

There was supposed to be a scheme to make the Wandsworth One-Way System two-way, by diverting the A3 southbound/westbound along Armoury Way as well as the northbound/eastbound, but that seems to be stalled. Not that it would help me, as I would have to go round the Wandsworth Roundabout, which I never find pleasant. Do any Sabristi (WHBM, Truvelo?) know if this scheme is still going ahead?

[lefthandedspanner]

Coming home from work I routinely cut through the industrial part of Huddersfield, from Wakefield Road near town centre to the dualled section of Bradford Road via St. Andrew's Road, Great Northern Road and Alder Street, in order to avoid the horrendous peak-time queues on the narrow southern section of Bradford Road. I don't usually see many other people doing this, maybe I'm just unduly impatient.

Another couple I used was when I worked in Halifax and had evening courses at the engineering centre just off St. Andrew's Road, Huddersfield. To get to Ainley Top and avoid the queue at the end of the Elland bypass I'd exit at the junction for Elland town centre, follow Victoria Road out of town then go up through Blackley (with its unexpectedly sharp, steep and completely blind uphill bend that has resulted in a HGV ban) and join the roundabout alongside the traffic coming off the motorway, which got more time on green than any of the local roads.

Then to get into Huddersfield itself I used to exit the roundabout heading towards Brighouse, then take a right turn onto Grimescar Lane, the old Halifax road that runs through the woods. At the first set of lights I'd turn left onto Spaines Road and join Bradford Road into town. And to get onto St. Andrew's Road itself, I'd join at the southern end, where it meets Wakefield Road; although this was a longer route, there were often long tailbacks from the Wakefield Road junction, and approaching from the north it could take 25 minutes to go less than half a mile.

The whole twisty circuitious 12 mile route would take about 40 minutes at peak times. If you followed the main roads, it would take an hour and a half.