Final Thoughts on the A660 Leeds Cycle Infrastructure

This post follows on from More Thoughts on the A660 Leeds Cycle Infrastructure. These are my final comments on what I saw riding along the A660 from the Outer Ring Road to the Town Hall.

8) Painted Cycle Lanes

In places there are traditional British narrow painted cycle lanes, which are really poor quality cycle infrastructure.

In defence of the designers, there isn’t space to do anything else at the location in Headingley shown in the image above, or even to make the cycle lanes the Absolute Minimum width of 1.5m. In that case, should there be no cycle lanes at all? Well, they are useful for filtering past stationary traffic queuing at lights.

At other locations there’s less justification for paint-only cycle lanes, for example riding north to Far Headingley.

If the hatching went, there would be space for a proper-width cycle lane, and wands.

9) Missing Link to the City Centre

Where the A660 splits into two arms at the University in order to cross over the Inner Ring Road, it was recommended to take the right fork, Blenheim Terrace, then use the shared use footway (pictured above) when the road becomes one way.

The problem is that the shared use footway gives up at Leeds Beckett University City Campus, and becomes just a footway.

There didn’t seem to be any option but to get off and push.

Work is needed to create a cycle link into the city centre.

10) Good Cycle Tracks in the City Centre

Once you’re in the city centre, there are some good bi-directional cycle tracks. We’re into ‘Mr Ambassador, you’re really spoiling us’ territory here.

For now it’s largely takeaway delivery riders using them, but once they form part of a joined-up network I hope they will be very popular.