Welcome to Kirkstall – your worst traffic light nightmare!
If you’re in your car or on a bus in Kirkstall, expect to spend some serious time stuck at traffic signals – there are so many you can’t avoid them.
Is there another area of the city that has so many lights in such a relatively small area?
A quick count of traffic lights comes up with these astonishing figures:
We may be one or two out. But we think the figures are reasonably accurate. That’s an awful lot of lights – you’ll not get anywhere in a hurry in Kirkstall!
Check out our map of Kirkstall’s traffic lights below:
All makes for incredible reading really, doesn’t it?
Six lights
We reckon to get from Kirkstall Lane, past Kirkstall Leisure Centre, past the new Kirkstall Bridge Shopping Park and onto Broad Lane, you’ll have had to pass through SIX sets of traffic signals alone.
There’s been A LOT of development in the area over the past decade (Morrisons and Kirkstall Bridge are just two) and that’s only going to increase once Kirkstall Forge becomes active and the Tesco site gets developed (and lets not forget an expanded Matalan store near Morrisons.
We’re not anti-development here at The Dispatch. It brings much-needed jobs and (hopefully) nice shops for us all to go to. It’s great Kirkstall is acting as a commercial focus for people in west Leeds and beyond.
But there has to come a time when planners say ‘enough is enough’ and declare Kirkstall’s roads as full as they can be.
So what’s the answer in transport terms? More cycle lanes? Better public transport? A supertram or trolleybus might be good but they cost money and there’s simply no space to accommodate them.
There are no easy answers in such a car dependent society.
Traffic lights can only go so far to alleviate the problem, but one thing’s for certain, the roads in this part of Kirkstall are now full to capacity …
The Wild West is a regular opinion and comment column. Views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of West Leeds Dispatch.
I can’t help wondering if a traffic study was made of the likely impact of the new Kirkstall Bridge development. Driving from Bramley down Broad Lane past the Brewery halls of residence is becoming a nightmare.
Agree with the article 100%. This part of Leeds is utter hell on Earth and it is scandalous that permission was ever given for this development.
In my 40 plus years living in Leeds I have never known it just so difficult to travel a relatively short distance. I really do feel that we are rapidly approaching a transport crisis in this city. It is time our elected representatives did something about it.
My office is in Kirkstall and I have to pass through this whole traffic system numerous times every day.
It has been a very busy area for the past few years due to shockingly bad traffic planning, but it has now become a joke following the opening of Kirkstall Bridge Shopping Park.
The addition of the new traffic lights means the whole area is at standstill even at off-peak times. The traffic lights do not let enough traffic through and are often out of sync meaning no traffic can progress from either side.
It used to take me 5-7 mins to progress through the system but it has been 15-20 mins every day in December.