
Birmingham City Council is consulting on a scheme to stop HGVs using Water Orton Lane by implementing a bus and cycle gate at the junction with Kingsbury Road. The consultation closes on Friday 13th Dec, and can be found on the Birmingham BeHeard website: Water Orton Lane and Cottage Lane scheme.
Key features of the scheme:
The scheme will change the ends of Water Orton Lane and Cottage Lane where they meet Kingsbury Road. The Google Street View screenshot at the top of this article shows the current view of the junction from Cottage Lane, which is already one-way except for a cycle contra-flow. Kingsbury Road carries motor traffic from Minworth Island on the A38 to the M42. A residential area centred around Cottage Lane is separated from Minworth village by Kingsbury Road, while Minworth is surrounded by a Severn Trent water treatment plant and some industrial estates. Water Orton Lane is used as a rat-run for cars as well as HGVs, making it a hostile environment for active travel.
Water Orton Lane (directly ahead in the Google Street View) will have a bus and cycle gate, enforced with ANPR cameras, while Cottage Lane will be made accessible only for cycles and pedestrians. The pedestrian crossing over Kingsbury Road at this junction (hidden behind the hedge on the left of the Google Street View) will be changed from a staggered crossing to a direct crossing, with a dedicated phase to permit people to cross the road. All motor traffic will have a red light while pedestrians and cycle users have green.
The lane configuration on Kingsbury Road will be changed to reflect the banned right turn in to Water Orton Lane, and this will provide more capacity at this junction for motor traffic travelling towards Birmingham. Presumably buses that would previously turn right from Kingsbury Road into Water Orton Lane will use the U-turn facility at the Minworth Parkway junction slightly further along Kingsbury Road.
Our comments:
Our comments depend in part on how cycle users will be expected to cross over Kingsbury Road. From the information in the consultation it is not clear if cycle users will need to get onto the pavement and use the pedestrian crossing, or if the existing traffic lights for cycle users on Cottage Lane will be retained. We think that the best solution is to keep the cycle users separated from pedestrians, with dedicated crossing facilities at this junction where there is ample space.
If the dedicated cycle lights for Cottage Lane are retained:
The scheme will make an important contribution to encouraging active travel in this area, creating a route that is direct, comfortable and has an advantage over motor traffic for journeys between the two residential areas. Minworth Junior and Infant School sits on Water Orton Lane, just south of this junction, and the scheme would enable school children to walk and cycle to school safely across this main road. The elimination of rat-running motor traffic would also improve air quality for children in the school.
If cycle users on Cottage Lane are forced onto the pavement, to use the pedestrian crossing:
The scheme would still be a big improvement for active travel in this area, but the junction probably would not be used as intended by the designers. Most people do not like taking unnecessary diversions, and many cycle users would choose to watch for the pedestrian phase, or the bus gate on Water Orton Lane, and cycle across the junction from Cottage Lane when the crossing or the bus gate had a green phase. This would generally be safe behaviour in this location, but the design would be encouraging cycle users to break the rules. As this junction is likely to see high active travel use by children, it would be setting a bad example for those children. We think that it is a bad idea to design cycle infrastructure that will not be used as intended and which might encourage poor decisions.
We have asked Birmingham City Council for some clarification on the proposals here, and will update this blog post if we receive that clarification.
Cycle users exiting Water Orton Lane:
We think that there should be a 'beg button' for the bus gate lights on Water Orton Lane. We assume that the bus gate will have sensors to call a green light when a bus approaches, and cycles will be too small to set off that sensor. Having a 'beg button' for cycle users would be more reliable than a separate sensor for cycles, as has been used on some other cycle tracks in Birmingham.
We don't think that there should be an advanced stop line (ASL) at this location. Buses are not frequent enough here that there rarely be more than 1 bus at the bus gate, and the buses will mainly be turning left while cycle users will mainly be going straight on. ASLs can provide an advantage to cycle users at locations with regular queues of motor traffic, but here it would be better for cycle users arriving after a bus to wait behind it.
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