I had to take the road bike in for fixing today, so used a short section of the CSH today between the Outer Ring Road and Foundry lane..
Now I'm sure that City Connect will tell you that this section "is not finished yet", but most of this section was completed months ago and hasn't seen a workman since. I'm also not trying to compete with the excellent article linked to earlier in the thread where this part of the route has been reviewed.
Please also bear in mind that my pics were taken at 10am(ish) on a Sunday morning - traffic levels on here during the working day are hugely different.
The first thing you notice is that there are no signs to differentiate between the adjacent footpath and the CSH. As a consequence most of the peds I encountered today were walking on the "wrong" bit of tarmac.
Off to a good start with no cars parked on the inbound section at the Barwick Rd shops. I'm still deeply uneasy about where the CSH crosses road junctions as you need to have owl like all round views to be sure that a car turning off the 40mph dual carriageway is going to give way.
Down the hill and you are aware of how narrow the CSH is. There is no room for a faster cyclist to pass a slow one. There are also quite a lot of ironworks, etc still in place, despite claims that they'd be moved:
The handlebars on my road bike show how narrow the CSH is here. Imagine this on a hybrid with flat bars? On the left you have a drop off kerb to the footpath, on the right a strip of grass verge then the dual carriageway.
Inbound you pass a petrol station and tyre centre - where as at other junctions it is at least marked giving cyclist priority there is nothing here. It's unclear why there is such inconsistency.
At the next junction (formerly the Melbourne Roundabout), the inbound side crosses Cross Gates Road using some old cycling insfrastructure (1990s?) from when the junction was previously remodeled. This is optimistically signed as a 'shared space', even though there is barely enough room for a cyclist to pass between the roadside barriers penning you in.
Over this road and the trees are overgrowing the cycle path meaning cyclists have to duck.
I then crossed over York Road to a section where work has yet to start and where frankly it's difficult to imagine where they are going to fit a seperate cycle lane in:
On the far side of the hedges in the mid distance, there is a bus stop, shops and parking spaces - it will be interesting to see how the CSH is shoe-horned in here.
Looking away from Leeds, there is a bit of elderly cycle infrastructure that I can't ever recall seeing a cyclist using, presumably on account of it's general uselessness, given that there is an on road cycle lane up to the lights for anyone heading up the A64?:
This short length of cycle path ends at the lights with no instructions on where to go next. Presumably not off the kerb at the end?
Anyway, bike dropped off, I decided to walk home back up the "outbound" side of the CSH/A64.
Immediately outside Killingbeck Police Station is a handy on ramp arrangement for cyclists coming up Foundry Lane onto the CSH outbound. This is a good piece of cycle friendly planning. It's a shame that almost immediately afterwards there is a traffic light in the cycle lane, and you can see the amount of debris gathering there too:
Round to the recently opened fire station and we have another lot of ambiguity over who has right of way on the access road (there are traffic controls on the 'emergency' lane out of the fire station, as you can probably just see):
The next junction is a rats nest of bits of tarmac going here there and everywhere, again lacking signs or directions as to who goes where. I couldn't really get a photo showing all it's ridiculousness due to the scale of it.
However, just past the junction the layout suggests that cycle path and the footpath have swapped sides, supported by signs indicating the the cycleway is now on the lower section on the left:
But at the next junction, all the markings indicate the opposite, that the cycle path was on the right hand side raised section after all!
Notice the bus stop in the above photo?
When we get there it's unclear where peds are intended to go. The layout suggests they can go to the bus stop, but that it's a dead end for them - the layout suggests (supported by the signs further on) that it's the cycle way only that continues up the hill. Or does the cycle way become a shared space beyond there?
Again, no signs to indicate what is correct which will only lead to confusion. At this point I was passed by a cyclist using the 40mph dual carriageway (as he was entitled to be).
Up to the top of the hill, past the shops with a sign for the cafe in the middle of the CSH and on to what is probably the worst junction on this section:
The CSH spits you out into the mouth of a busy junction, with traffic coming off the 40mph road across you from directly behind your shoulder and across a ghost island, through often queuing traffic waiting to join the main road and back into the CSH (behind the silver car).
There are no markings suggesting who has right of way and this junction has been like this for at least 6 months. Are drivers expected to spot the cycle path sign and anticipate that they should give way to cyclists crossing the mouth of the junction..? This really is an accident waiting to happen.
I really wanted the CSH to be something so much better than what we've been given. The real question is why is it so poor given the huge amount of money that has been spent on it?
), the kerbstones are laid in such a way as to suggest 4-wheeled-motorised priority.
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