What on earth is a "cycle reservoir"??

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Dadam

Senior Member
Location
SW Leeds
Context: cycle lanes. Specifically the one along Elland Road in Leeds.

A bug bear of mine is cycle paths that suddenly run out without an obvious route. Usually the default is to rejoin the carriageway but it's not always clear.

This path is on my commute, a couple of years old and overall isn't too bad an example of a segregated lane. I use it more often than not but at this end it's a bit odd.

Right so you're toddling along this lane and... it just stops. Now what? It's clearly not intended that cyclists rejoin the carriageway straight away because the only way to do that apart from hopping off the kerb is cutting through the traffic light controlled junction. There is a dropped kerb about 70 yards back but it's only to accommodate an awkwardly placed manhole cover. There's a blue sign in the picture. If it's not clear in the snip the sign says. "For Ring Road use cycle reservoir. Await green traffic signal."
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Past the black bollard that signifies the start of shared pedestrian and cycle path there is no further signage that mentions bicycles (or reservoirs!) You might think it's the start of a shared path i.e use the crossing then the pavement, and indeed a lot of people seem to do that, but there's no mention of cycles. The crossing is a pedestrian only one and the pavement round the corner is a fairly narrow one with no signage.

My assumption is you're meant to hook round the end of the traffic island and wait at the lights then take the left turn to rejoin the main carriageway. This is what I tend to do as I stop at red lights anyway but especially as it's right in front of the cop shop! But how would anybody know where to go?

I've never heard of this cycle reservoir concept. I've googled it and on the first 3 pages not one hit apart from cycle routes around water reservoirs or scientific papers about the carbon cycle. The word reservoir does not even appear once in the highway code. Bizarre.

Ironically once Google's crawlers index this page I bet this will start appearing in those results!

Google maps coords 53.775618825443594, -1.5757890366721066
 

Alex321

Veteran
Location
South Wales
 
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Dadam

Senior Member
Location
SW Leeds
Ah thanks Alex. So it's a term from an obscure (to the man in the street) cycle infrastructure design document. How do they expect said man or woman in the street to know what the hell to do with that instruction? Rhetorical question.

The one I posted doesn't really fit the definition in the document though as the idea is to allow cyclists to pass the junction at a different time to other traffic. In this case you're straight back in the main traffic flow. It's also a bit awkward if there's a load of vehicles exiting the cop shop.
 

DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
@Ad4m - I've been on that route this week and it's incomplete. As is much of the cycle lane infrastructure around Leeds currently.

It goes from the Park and Ride at Elland Road (point A) to a single point in Leeds (point B). Unfortunately if you don't need to go from A to B then the route isn't cyclist-friendly imo. In fact it's plain dangerous at times. As well as being counter-intuitive by slowing cyclists down in having lots of crossings rather than keeping them flowing.
 
A more appropriate term would be cycle "reserve". A refuge while the light changes.
 
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Dadam

Senior Member
Location
SW Leeds
Yes it looks like they ran out of money or motivation or both. Going into Leeds I'm about 50/50 whether I use the path as it's the wrong side of the road, though it does cut out a sometimes hairy right turn via the bus lane which drivers aren't always expecting non-buses to use.
 
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Jameshow

Veteran
I was on one in Sheffield a while back and it dumped in a Mazda car forecourt! (other brands are available)

Looking again it looks like it swings round behind the car dealers!
 

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winjim

Smash the cistern
I was on one in Sheffield a while back and it dumped in a Mazda car forecourt! (other brands are available)

Looking again it looks like it swings round behind the car dealers!

Yeah, you gotta get off at the spot where the garages park their cars on the cycle path, then take the back road past the sex shop and hop back onto the path just before the neepsend junction. Then take your chances at the lights by Wickes which have no priority for cyclists or pedestrians crossing the road... etc, etc
 

Sharky

Guru
Location
Kent
That concept of being able to cycle past the car stop line is quite effective. There was one set of TL's on my commute home, where you could cycle about 20ft past the TL, but still be next to the kerb. You could see the TL's change from the other direction as well, so you could make a "pre green" start quite safely. It wasn't an official reservoir /gate, but worked really well for me, especially as the road was still ascending, making starts a tad more tricky to get up to speed.

Must stress, this example is the only one I've come across. Normally I would be a good boy and stop at the correct stop line.
 
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