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."
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
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."
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