ReissOmari wrote: ↑Tue Nov 14, 2023 16:52
Telent 4G's are so ugly. Much prefer the sleekness of Elite's (apart from the ones where the boards slowly turn green!!)
Yes I'm no fan of them either but unfortunately West Yorkshire has given Telent the signal maintenance and renewal contract so now the place is going to be filled with the awful things another annoyance is despite the 4Gs having proper boards now they are still installing brand new installations with the boards taped to the heads here and there
Though I've seen some installations where they've opted for Elite TLED for some reason. Wakefield has ended up with a few Siemens Helios sites too here and there. Which is super rare because Wakefield has never ever used Siemens kit before. Only stuck to Peek and Microsense in the past.
Do you have to wait to turn right here if the signals are red?
No:
- there's a stop line before this position at the traffic heads behind the camera, so surely the signal in front is not relevant
- there's a stop line in front of the ahead signal, but not one for the right turn
Yes:
- the light in front clearly has a right-turn filter lamp
- you'd be crossing across a ped crossing if you did turn right; so where's the phase protecting that?
My conclusion is the stop line at the ahead signal has been painted in error. It's amazing to me that mis-painting a single line can cause all this confusion.
Do you have to wait to turn right here if the signals are red?
No:
- there's a stop line before this position at the traffic heads behind the camera, so surely the signal in front is not relevant
- there's a stop line in front of the ahead signal, but not one for the right turn
Yes:
- the light in front clearly has a right-turn filter lamp
- you'd be crossing across a ped crossing if you did turn right; so where's the phase protecting that?
My conclusion is the stop line at the ahead signal has been painted in error. It's amazing to me that mis-painting a single line can cause all this confusion.
Aside from the apparently-erroneous stop line, I really can't see what's confusing, and I'm not sure I see a lot of the points raised.
It just looks like a bog standard 'wait in the middle of the junction' gap-accepting turn with the added help of an indicative arrow that's presumably demand dependent.
Surely the pedestrian phases must also run in their own stage holding all traffic phases at red as well, given the layout? It could run the right arrow as a filter (very unusual, but not unique), but I very much doubt it and I'm not sure it'd be of value given you'd still need to run a pedestrian-only stage for the other three crossings.
Edit: looking again, perhaps the nearside secondary is causing an issue. If it actually is a genuine issue, that is.
Do you have to wait to turn right here if the signals are red?
No:
- there's a stop line before this position at the traffic heads behind the camera, so surely the signal in front is not relevant
- there's a stop line in front of the ahead signal, but not one for the right turn
Yes:
- the light in front clearly has a right-turn filter lamp
- you'd be crossing across a ped crossing if you did turn right; so where's the phase protecting that?
My conclusion is the stop line at the ahead signal has been painted in error. It's amazing to me that mis-painting a single line can cause all this confusion.
Aside from the apparently-erroneous stop line, I really can't see what's confusing, and I'm not sure I see a lot of the points raised.
It just looks like a bog standard 'wait in the middle of the junction' gap-accepting turn with the added help of an indicative arrow that's presumably demand dependent.
Surely the pedestrian phases must also run in their own stage holding all traffic phases at red as well, given the layout? It could run the right arrow as a filter (very unusual, but not unique), but I very much doubt it and I'm not sure it'd be of value given you'd still need to run a pedestrian-only stage for the other three crossings.
Edit: looking again, perhaps the nearside secondary is causing an issue. If it actually is a genuine issue, that is.
I've driven up Hill St for years, I've never noticed that stop line before, and I'm not quite sure why it's been painted, it hasn't always been there. It is a bit of a strange junction as there's two right turns in which both use the right turn filter arrow.
Before that line was painted, people did used to come out of the Grand Central car park and stop there for whatever reason. But it's no different to any other junction, the secondary light is in a warrented place, plus it's on the opposite side of the road so never understood why people stopped there. As usual it seems Birmingham City Council have used their smartest employees idea and have just fluffed up as usual and painted a stop line where it's clearly not needed (all lights are red when pedestrians cross).
Whilst not a botch as such just confusing this head in Pontefract has now been moved to here on a new pole. My guess is traffic was stopping there thinking it was a signal for the crossing and the tunnel hoods weren't working. Though that secondary head has always been there since the older instalations perhaps because the crossing was added on the newer set people got confused. That junction is all wrong anyway it's this approach that needs the PBU crossing. The other side has a crossing already further up. I'd say all approaches should have crossings with PBUs.
Not sure if this is considered botched but this junction in York has a left turn filter with no dedicated left turn lane, usually odd things like this get removed when Mellor junctions are replaced. What's more of a concern is this farside secondary that for some reason was added after the junction was replaced, risking a head on collision when right turners assume oncoming traffic also has a red.
L.J.D wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 16:40This installation looks like such a big botch.
I assumed when I first saw it that traffic lights had been added to an existing roundabout. Nope, apparently it was designed like that, it used to be a normal T-junction - and building this involved flattening several gardens. Why would you put in a small signalised roundabout, if you've got the space and money for a complete rebuild of the junction? Almost anything would be better.
SteelCamel wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 23:57
I assumed when I first saw it that traffic lights had been added to an existing roundabout. Nope, apparently it was designed like that, it used to be a normal T-junction - and building this involved flattening several gardens. Why would you put in a small signalised roundabout, if you've got the space and money for a complete rebuild of the junction? Almost anything would be better.
My guess is it's so people can exit their driveways along the route and go back on themselves if they need to turn right out. Seeing how they are all left out only. But surely there's a better way of doing it than that botched up mess. I'm guessing that's why the phase is seperate too because that movement is a rarely used one. Still hideous looking though. There's a few others the exact same along that road too.
SteelCamel wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 23:57
I assumed when I first saw it that traffic lights had been added to an existing roundabout. Nope, apparently it was designed like that, it used to be a normal T-junction - and building this involved flattening several gardens. Why would you put in a small signalised roundabout, if you've got the space and money for a complete rebuild of the junction? Almost anything would be better.
My guess is it's so people can exit their driveways along the route and go back on themselves if they need to turn right out. Seeing how they are all left out only. But surely there's a better way of doing it than that botched up mess. I'm guessing that's why the phase is seperate too because that movement is a rarely used one. Still hideous looking though. There's a few others the exact same along that road too.
Think you're spot on - the roundabouts on this section seem to have been introduced when it was dualled. Short of providing a frontage road (which would probably involve the demolition of the houses you're trying to provide access to, some kind of back-streets access road (no space and probably creates undesirable rat runs) or providing so many central reservation gaps that it would practically be S4, I'm not sure what else you could do. I assume they more-or-less operate like T-junctions. All the lanes have separate detection loops so presumably they can be fairly clever with the phases.
L.J.D wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 16:40This installation looks like such a big botch.
Not sure I see the need to separately signal the u-turn movements like that, especially if flows are low like they're likely to be - use the storage space on the roundabout to reduce the number of stages it needs to run. I can see some benefit to the 'proper' right turns being held back while both ahead movements run if the flows are notable, especially with the roundabouts being so small, but I think I'd be keen to use an ahead filter instead in this case. I know we discussed these fairly recently, but something like this.
SteelCamel wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 23:57
I assumed when I first saw it that traffic lights had been added to an existing roundabout. Nope, apparently it was designed like that, it used to be a normal T-junction - and building this involved flattening several gardens. Why would you put in a small signalised roundabout, if you've got the space and money for a complete rebuild of the junction? Almost anything would be better.
My guess is it's so people can exit their driveways along the route and go back on themselves if they need to turn right out. Seeing how they are all left out only. But surely there's a better way of doing it than that botched up mess. I'm guessing that's why the phase is seperate too because that movement is a rarely used one. Still hideous looking though. There's a few others the exact same along that road too.
Think you're spot on - the roundabouts on this section seem to have been introduced when it was dualled. Short of providing a frontage road (which would probably involve the demolition of the houses you're trying to provide access to, some kind of back-streets access road (no space and probably creates undesirable rat runs) or providing so many central reservation gaps that it would practically be S4, I'm not sure what else you could do. I assume they more-or-less operate like T-junctions. All the lanes have separate detection loops so presumably they can be fairly clever with the phases.
Yes, that's when they were built - it used to be a very busy short stretch of S2 sandwiched in between D2/S4 and caused huge amounts of congestion. However, there wasn't much space to work with without demolishing loads of houses and property prices are pretty expensive around there so it was all a bit of a compromise to improve the safety by having everything left turn only, but without the cost of building full sized roundabouts.
They did end up buying and demolishing a lot of the houses, though the spare land freed up meant they could sell it to developers to build on.
I like it and think it is innovative, providing the safety features of a D2 in a relatively narrow space. I would like to see the same model applied to the likes of the Saintfield Road 50mph S4 - https://www.google.com/maps/@54.5316461 ... ?entry=ttu - a central reservation, LILO and occasional small roundabouts. (I often turn left and turn around at the next traffic light junction when needing to turn right from this petrol station or KFC nearby)
