East Leeds Orbital Route

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c2R
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by c2R »

Chris5156 wrote: Fri Apr 12, 2019 20:27
c2R wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 21:05Also, and I didn't take a photo of this, but the pedestrian access is all wrong to the new Springs shopping centre - the pedestrian desire lines from the business park to the Springs (for lunchtime M&S/bars) lead you either down the entrance road (no paths), or across a flower bed (where there is a path, but it's just all orientated wrongly), while the main "boardwalk" type entrance leads you straight down onto the north western dumbbell of Austhorpe Interchange - which really isn't where the pedestrians are going to be coming from.
Having been a couple of times, I'd say you're right. It was designed to be reached by car and to look nice while you drive up to it. Actually walking to it is something its designers did not consider.
You'd think that this sort of thing would be pretty basic stuff for planners - consider what's actually around the site, where the pedestrians come from, where the sun comes from, where the motorway noise is. The same level of thought has gone in to the hotel - the car park is south facing and sheltered while the outdoor seating area is north east facing next to the motorway, for added evening shade and noise!
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Aren't we wonderful at design...
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Owain »

Bryn666 wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2019 08:38 Aren't we wonderful at design...
To be fair to the designers, I think it is just accepted in Leeds that a significant portion of the (student) population will just walk across the road without looking, the rest of us will dodge barriers to shave 5 minutes off the time taken to walk around them, and at least half a dozen cars will cross the line after the light has turned red.

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NICK 647063
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by NICK 647063 »

So the first part of what will eventually become the east leeds orbital road opened today, this part is known as the manston lane link road and is the first section from the M1 J46 over the York/Selby to Leeds railway line......

I had a drive of it and what can I say for now its fine as a local link for crossgates but when this becomes the A6120 I think we will see problems, what I find strange is that Leeds city council are currently changing many Junctions on the A6120 adding more lanes so that when this new road meets up with the existing A6120 it will flow with the extra capacity north of the new road, yet the new section thats built so far is a D2 with 3 roundabouts and a set of traffic lights not to mention a strange Junction with the M1, add in a new shopping park and upto 10,000 new houses over the coming years, so why if we have added lanes further up the A6120 in anticipation of this new road has the new road itself got so many roundabouts with Just 2 lanes? this will become a bottleneck around J46 when the full route is complete, not to mention the huge traffic light controlled roundabout planned with the A64, while its nice to see progress it seems we have not learnt from the A1237 around York, yes this road is D2 but Leeds is massive compared to York and yet we are still building roads that won't be wide enough and putting loads of development on them, not to mention roundabouts!
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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I absolutely agree - can you just imagine what this will be like on a busy weekend on the lead up to Christmas when all the shops are occupied and the houses built and the eastern bypass plugged in....
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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It will be absolute chaos for a city the size of Leeds it’s not great, given all the development planned along it, it really should be D3 minimum.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Truvelo »

This sums up just about everything wrong with modern road design. We need to look back 50 years to see how it would have been done properly :@
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by M19 »

The phrase "demand management" has a lot to answer for, replacing "predict and provide" which seems to have become a dirty phrase. Hence, roads tend to be heavily underengineered perhaps for this reason under the belief that if it's designed badly enough, people will avoid them. "New Realism" is the official paradigm.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by KeithW »

M19 wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 00:51 The phrase "demand management" has a lot to answer for, replacing "predict and provide" which seems to have become a dirty phrase. Hence, roads tend to be heavily underengineered perhaps for this reason under the belief that if it's designed badly enough, people will avoid them. "New Realism" is the official paradigm.
To a point however since the 70's councils have been increasingly burdened with costs they cannot avoid and which have been foisted onto them by central government. In legal terms councils are required by law to provide minimum levels of adult social care and education services. Adult social care, mostly looking after the elderly and those with physical or mental handicaps used to be a responsibility of the NHS but was transferred to local authorities with part of the support grant supposed to pay for this. The problem is that as the population ages the costs have increased a great deal and the grant has been reduced in real terms. At the same council tax increases are capped. Unlike central government councils cannot legally borrow money for such deficits. What this means is that spending on things that used to be a core local government responsibility such as road maintenance and investment, library services, household waste collection and policing are in effect being cut year on year.

The bottom line is that as a council if you don't have the money you can't spend more on roads no matter how much you would like to, that is what 'New Realism' means. In the case of Middlesbrough pretty much the entire highways budget is being spent on basic road maintenance. I suspect Leeds has much the same problem.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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KeithW wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 09:14The bottom line is that as a council if you don't have the money you can't spend more on roads no matter how much you would like to, that is what 'New Realism' means. In the case of Middlesbrough pretty much the entire highways budget is being spent on basic road maintenance. I suspect Leeds has much the same problem.
Exactly. ELOR is largely funded by the developers of the business and retail parks and the housing schemes.

Also note that the section running past the retail park has passive provision for three lanes. But I agree that junction 46 will likely need some significant change in priorities.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by SteveA30 »

Another new road to avoid, like the A29 pseudo bypass, except once for tick box purposes. That will be early on a summer Sunday morning, long before Sunday opening messes things up.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Update on the associated junction upgrades on the north Leeds ring road. The widened junction at Roundhay Park Lane has now opened with final road markings and traffic lights operating.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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So now the roundhay works are completed the main works should be starting, it was down as main works start September 2019 so we should see something happening very soon!
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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NICK 647063 wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 19:17 So now the roundhay works are completed the main works should be starting, it was down as main works start September 2019 so we should see something happening very soon!
There may be enabling works (utility diversions etc.) but you won't see much until next spring when the next earthworks season starts.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by NICK 647063 »

So I passed here on the A64 today and all the hedges and trees have gone, site clearance well underway, a few properties on the A64 have been demolished, quite a change since I last passed last week, the new route is all fenced off and apparently the main earth works start within the next few weeks, nice to see the main part of this project underway and it really will be a big change for the East Leeds area.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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I have just been looking at this for work related purposes and noticed on the detailed drawings that the junction of the ELOR with the A64 will be a hamburger junction.

I always thought hamburgers were used on existing roundabouts, is this the first to be built as part of a brand new scheme. My view would be if the modelling said it was needed at the start, surely a GSJ should be provided.

Fully aware that this scheme is predominately developer funded, but I am sure that French or Spanish would have gone GSJ, they even go GSJ on single carriageway bypasses.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Bryn666 »

A303Chris wrote: Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:39 I have just been looking at this for work related purposes and noticed on the detailed drawings that the junction of the ELOR with the A64 will be a hamburger junction.

I always thought hamburgers were used on existing roundabouts, is this the first to be built as part of a brand new scheme. My view would be if the modelling said it was needed at the start, surely a GSJ should be provided.

Fully aware that this scheme is predominately developer funded, but I am sure that French or Spanish would have gone GSJ, they even go GSJ on single carriageway bypasses.
You have to remember it's Leeds. The self-titled "motorway city of the seventies" is so desperate to shed that name that they now build sprawling at-grade junctions that take up more land than a flyover or underpass would. The only reason the 2008 era IRR Stage 7 is on a viaduct is because of the topography, otherwise that too would have been all sprawling at-grade horror.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by c2R »

I think it was discussed at the time at the exhibitions and consultations that everyone agreed that it was madness, but that it was going to be built that way in any case.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

Post by Peter Freeman »

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.
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Re: East Leeds Orbital Route

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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.
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