East Leeds Orbital Route

The East Leeds Orbital Route (ELOR) is a new dual carriageway/ring road north east of Leeds. It has been built as part of the East Leeds Extension – an expansion of the city.

This screenshot of OpenCycleMap shows the ELOR.

I rode ELOR from the Moortown roundabouts to the end of it at the M1 and The Springs shopping centre. These are my thoughts on it.

1) Building a New Dual Carriageway is Absolutely Wrong

South and east of Roundhay Park, the ELOR is a brand new dual carriageway. It becomes the new Ring Road, although the old one is also still there. In other words, it is a very big expansion of road capacity.

Meanwhile, the Emissions Reduction Pathway for West Yorkshire shows a 21% reduction in private car use is needed by 2038 to achieve the county’s net zero goal.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) produced the Emissions Reduction Pathways document that says a reduction in private car use is required. WYCA also provided £90 million of the total £147 million spent on the road expansion represented by ELOR.

Highways magazine points out that ELOR is a ‘predict and provide’ scheme. It will generate more traffic, and therefore higher transport emissions; it is incompatible with the emissions reductions that need to be made.

Leeds should be building 15-minute neighbourhoods, where the need for travel is reduced. When people do need to travel, sustainable transport should be the easiest and cheapest option, whether that’s walking or cycling to local destinations, or getting the bus or the train into Leeds.

2) How Can the Dual Carriageway be Re-Purposed?

If you accept that building this dual carriageway is wrong, what should be done about it?

The obvious thing would be to reduce the carriageway open to private cars to one lane in either direction, and give the other lanes over to buses. Frequent services and cheap fares should also be provided.

3) Does the Cycle Infrastructure Take People Where They Want to Go?

ELOR is very much designed for cars, in terms of where it is and where it goes. It’s for fast trips and medium to long distances. It’s an outer ring road.

The cycle infrastructure has to be viewed in that context. Whatever the quality, it’s only going to be useful for a limited number of trips.

When travelling by bike, people will want to go to local destinations such as shops, education and employment; plus, into the city centre. ELOR might help people do that in a few instances, but not very often.

You can see from this video that it’s a bleak place, not on a friendly, human scale.

The Springs shopping centre (photo at the top of this section) is on the ELOR, near the junction with the M1. There are cars as far as the eye can see. It doesn’t look inviting for walking or cycling, and no cycle entrance is apparent.

4) The Cycle Infrastructure

The infrastructure itself is done to a good standard.

On the new dual carriageway part of the Ring Road, it is a footway and separate 2-way cycleway, with a level difference (main photo at the top of the page). Personally I would prefer a colour difference too, as in the Netherlands where cycleways are red and therefore instantly recognisable.

The crossings are signalised.

Some of the crossings on the new dual carriageway take quite a while because of the vast expanses of tarmac and the wide arms of the roundabouts.

5) The Older Cycle Infrastructure

The single-lane ring road between Moortown and Roundhay Park has cycle infrastructure nearly all the way. Some of it is good segregated infrastructure, and some of it is shared use as shown in the image above.

6) Where the ELOR Cycle Infrastructure Doesn’t Link Up

There’s elaborate cycle infrastructure at the Moortown roundabouts, but they don’t link up to the ELOR cycleway.

Leaving the Meanwood roundabouts you get a bit of shared use, then the infrastructure seems to run out altogether with a ‘Cyclists Rejoin Main Carriageway’ sign. The ELOR cycleway starts suddenly at Shadwell Walk.

There are bridges at intervals, that will link the cycleway to future developments outside the Ring Road.

Nevertheless, because of the scale of the ring road it will sever the new housing estates outside it from Leeds city centre.

My return trip was via the A64 and Wyke Beck Way. Cycle Superhighway 2 (or more accurately Cycle ModeratelyDecentHighway 2) runs alongside the A64, but there’s a gap from ELOR to the A64 with no infrastructure.

This means riding in mixed traffic on Barwick Road, which is quite busy and hostile.

Summary

1. Building this dual carriageway will increase transport emissions, and is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
2. They should reallocate road space to buses now.
3. It’s good that they built cycle infrastructure, but if cycling were the main focus, this route wouldn’t be the priority.
4. The cycle infrastructure is done to a good standard. I would prefer a colour difference between cycleway and footway.
5. The older cycle infrastructure isn’t quite as good as the new stuff.
6. The ELOR cycle infrastructure doesn’t link up properly with other routes.