Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
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by Lib Dem team on 9 June, 2015
Cllr Keith Holloway is pressing for changes to the road lining on the Gatley side of the Kingsway junction to reduce one of the bottlenecks.
“As you drive from Gatley towards the junction and get to Torkington Road, there’s a bottleneck,” Keith explained. “The road splits into three eastbound lanes but there’s only really room for two and half. The result is that vehicles wanting to go straight ahead often block the left-filter lane leading to longer queues.”
The changes will see the hatching in the centre of the road reduced, allowing three cars on the three lanes at the junction with Torkington.
“This isn’t going to solve all the problems of the junction, but it should make it a little better. The filter lane will still get blocked if the traffic queues back past Delamere, but when the queues only go as far as Torkington it should free things up.”
The Lib Dems have secured a major study, to be conducted over the summer, which will look at the wider traffic issues around the area and see how we might improve the junction in future. Mark Hunter held two public meetings earlier in the year and all the ideas from those are being fed into the study.
10 Comments
This is going to help with the left turn.
However, as we know, much of the problem of backing-up is caused by the lack of the right turn filter which, as the recent modelling clearly showed, can be provided without detriment to the north/south flow, by taking the time out of the east/west flow.
John – that’s absolutely true, but the modelling showed that if you take it out of the East/West flow you get much longer queues back into Gatley and Cheadle. If the queues get too long, you prevent people getting into the right-turn lane in the first place and create a lose-lose scenario.
All the Keep Clear markings reduce capacity as well.
If there was a physical boundary between the two carriageways with the Torkington junction becoming left-in left-out, traffic flows would improve and it would stop the U-turns in Gatley Road.
There’s always a balance between the needs of different people, I guess. We could put in a barrier and take out the Keep Clear markings, but then people from the Lakes Estate and Torkington/Delamere/Springfield would face much longer queues to get onto Gatley Road.
That’s the problem with the whole junction of course – almost anything that helps some people delays others.
Iain
The modelling that was presented to the public meeting was somewhat flawed. Scenarios 4 & 5 showed the effects of having right turn filters from, respectively, Gatley & Cheadle, taking the time from the east/west flow. They clearly show that there would be significant benefit for the respective turners, but an adverse effect for the other side of the junction. In itself, that is clear evidence that a right turn filter is probably achievable.
However, what the model did not present was the further commonsense scenario where both Cheadle & Gatley had filters – effectively a combination of Scenarios 4 & 5. As both can clearly work in tandem, itis only going to confirm that it is entirely workable and would bring the benefit to both groups of turners
I agree. It’s common sense to have both right turns operating simultaneously, why would you not? Planners have become obsessed with only allowing one side of a junction to operate at once.
The issue of both right turns running at the same time is one we’ve asked the planners to look at again. The answer we’ve had so far is that the junction’s too small to run them safely in that way but we think at the very least that needs to be tested.
WEL DONE councillors once again your only concerned is with Gatley when are your going to remember that residents of Cheadle have bigger problems with this junction than Gatley residents. Due to the filter left turn arrangement coming out of Gatley on average 12 vehicle leave the Gatley queue before the lights change to green allowing the Cheadle queue to move, then it is not unusual that despite having a shorter waiting time at this junction traffic coming from Gatley regularly jump the lights on RED, it is time a camera was installed on the Gatley side of these lights to stop this dangerous practise before there is a serious collision. I also think it is reasonable to shorten the time sequence for Gatley traffic to rebalance the traffic flow in favour of Cheadle remember the extra time Gatley gets due to the filter.
If you don’t get this sorted it might not just be the MP that was replaced it could be you next Cheadle residents have a voice and a vote.
Roy – Absolutely untrue that we only look on the Gatley side! We look for improvements ANYWHERE around the junction. We’re not going to ignore an improvement on the Gatley side or the Cheadle side! If we can find a way to improve the junction, we’ll press for it, wherever it is.
We secured a proper study over the summer of the junction and the traffic flows around it to look at all the issues. I don’t know if you came to the public meeting we had to look at all this, but if you did you’ll have seen how complicated it is and how changes on one side have knock-on effects and can cause other problems. We need to work round it.
We’ve raised the camera issue with TfGM and Highways England and we’ll continue to press them on it.
This issue seems to have occupied more of your website time over the years than the other issues put together. Yet – as Iain implies – any change at all can only be change without improvement. one more E-W for one less W-E and on and on. Even improved local public transport is unlikely to be economically and functionally worthwhile. There is no physical way to squeeze more customers through one checkout at busy times except open more checkouts!