Awkward Junction Part II, III, IV, V etc

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buggi

Bird Saviour
Location
Solihull
I'm part of the two wheel user group at work and as part of our re-launch we are hoping to get some animated computer wizardry done on the correct way of taking junctions.

If you have a particular junction on your route that you find awkward or that you think novices would find a bit daunting like the one i've just replied to on the other thread) and you can find it on google maps I'd very much appreciate a link to it, so that I can present them to a guy in the Comms dept at work and show him the sort of thing we're looking to do.

Cheers. Please paste links into this thread. ta
 

Armegatron

Active Member
1. Cycle path crossing a road at busy junction. This is only tricky when going left to right, as the traffic that could be joining the road from the slip is doing 50 and rarely indicates. View of that traffic is good but view from the right is obscured by hedge so I treat this in two stages so Im not preoccupied with looking in one direction. I will exit the cycle path to join the flow of traffic towards the junction, then do a right turn onto the cycle path - rather than tackling both directions in one movement.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...DWV-R-9Mynzx1Yjdp9Vxuw&cbp=12,168.86,,0,27.42

2. I want to go straight on here. The cycle lane takes you up onto the path so you have to cross at the junction. I find it quicker for me to stay on the road. The traffic island makes taking primary for the right hand lane dangerous as drivers are annoyed at not using the cycle lane and try to squeeze through regardless. Often they will overtake to left hook and enter the car park, so if Im in the cycle lane when drivers do this it would be very dangerous.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...=fML6BwRC0tlH2WpRKGWRoQ&cbp=12,92.45,,0,16.91

This shows why I dont stay in the cycle lane, drivers cut across it anyway to turn left:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...DfHMnTh8X9bmH7Rtg7Z32w&cbp=12,334.22,,0,32.83
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
Traveling east on the A505 heading into Sawston
An innocuous looking set of 2 junctions but as it's often busy & the traffic high speed it needs you to be confident & assertive, added to this drivers often use the bit of the verge to make the road wide enough to pass on the A1301. Technically not a hard set of junctions to navigate but it requires very assertive road positioning, confidence & awareness. To further complicate things there's a cycle path with woefully positioned crossing points getting the cyclists to cross the road at the points where traffic streams are merging/splitting & accelerating making them hard to use & dangerous.

Coming onto the roundabout you need to be in primary going onto the roundabout & hold a wide primary on the roundabout it's self. Get out to the right early & keep a reasonable gap from the centre line signalling early & holding your signal up until you need to go over the drain cover seen here. You have to keep an eagle eye out for fast moving vehicles coming towards you (occasionally get people doing 90mph, there's time to cross but you have to be aware) & also need to shoulder check both to your left & right shoulders. When you have a gap you then cross the road swiftly & confidently holding a strong secondary or primary with frequent shoulder checks for 100m or so after crossing if there are vehicles approaching the junction from Sawston (you need to discourage drivers from overtaking as on coming drivers may well be looking over their right shoulder so tending to the offside pushing an overtaking vehicle into you & it's much tighter than it looks for overtaking to start with).
 

Norm

Guest
Mine will become a bit of a novel, I'm afraid, as it's a number of junctions and turnings which are all within 100m of each other so need to be considered together. The difficult bit comes from this being on a dual-carriageway with me needing to turn right to get into town.

The first bit is here, although this is just after a roundabout the traffic is usually pretty slow so I get to the central white line at this point. This first junction just has a road off to the left but the lights also allow traffic to cross from the other carriageway. As the station is on the bridge over the road, there's also a lot of foot traffic round here.

Less than 100m later, you have the entrance to the station concourse, also on the left here. Because it's so close to the previous junction, under a long bridge which is distractingly noisy when trains go over, further distractions from all the pedestrians and the number of dodgy private hire cars around there, I stay out in the middle / right hand lane (depending on traffic speeds) to avoid a left hook.

100 feet later and you have the station exit here. The dick in the white van there shows perfectly why I stay out in the right hand lane there - if he pulls out on the Google Wagon like that, he's going to have no concerns doing the same when he sees a bike.

Another 30 feet and another set of traffic lights. I'm usually still out in the right hand lane here, avoiding the goons pulling out from the station but, if the lights are red, it leaves me in the outside lane to wobble away up the hill, something which seems to annoy some drivers.

After 200 feet, there's yet another set of lights with another junction off to the left just in front of them. The good news about all these lights is that, if they fall right, the traffic is pretty slow. The bad thing is that, if a driver sees a green, they will have no worries about going way over the 30 limit here. You can also see on that last image that the road surface isn't good here. I'm usually on my 26x1.5" tyred MTB because road tyres reduce the speed to keep some level of comfort here.

Through those lights, still usually in the right hand lane, and it's another small climb to see the goal of all this, a right hand filter lane to turn into Broadway and down to Maidenhead town centre.

Not much fun, that bit, and it means there's little chance that I'll ever take the Smalls into town.
 
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