Inner Ring Road

All this debate and I've never seen modern pictures of traffic on the RR. A picture from the bridge at the top of Bishop Street looking towards the roundabout at around 5pm would be interesting - but lots of pics from similar vantage points would be of value too. Neither Mike nor I can get to take them ourselves. Remember the saying, a picture is worth 1000 words.

But that again would only cover the issue of traffic - it would in no way help prove or disprove all the other points about usage of the city centre as a whole, the confusion and fear it puts into the uninitiated at the junctions, its ugliness, the amount of land its rendered almost unusable.... I could post the photos and the response would just be"But a different system would be worse". And the main problems are on the roads leading to the RR - never upgraded to cope with the upgraded road system they would ALL eventually lead to. And you can't get into the city centre without using at least one of them. Which is the main difference of the pro and anti sides. If you use it as a bypass round the city centre you will probably like it. As a pedestrian/cyclist or someone wanting to actually go into the city centre it's a massive ugly pain in the backside

I agree with you entirely. The ring road was still under construction when I learned to drive and I was taught to use it properly by the instructor. I have never had a problem with it at all. It is almost second nature using the junctions to get on and off. Even when I visit Coventry 18 years after leaving I find it easy. I think the problems arise with people who have not been brought up with it, especially visitors who seem frightened to death by it. They are prone to stopping at the intersections and dithering, which is precisely what you shouldn't do. I much prefer using it to the awful roundabouts around Coventry that get blocked because there are several sets of traffic lights blocking progress and defeating the whole object of a roundabout.

OK, then remind us of the pedestrian/cyclist access points photographically. Also the access for those using wheelchairs/mobility scooters. Here in Accrington, and living only only half a mile from the town centre, I am restricted to only one route on my scooter whereas as a cyclist or pedestrian I could use a number of them. A pavement scooter doesn't mix at all well with traffic.

Monday was insane. The junctions can't handle a lot traffic as there's too much conflict between coming on and off, and the roads it feeds into can't handle it, either. The A45 junction is like it almost every night.

I've never known anything other than the ring road. It was completed a long time before I was born and have been used to being driven on it and driving on it my entire life. I don't have any more problems using it as any other road and I know how it should be used. I approach the junctions with the instinct of accelerating rather than braking, as on the whole it tends to be the most successful thing to do if possible (though it often isn't at peak times on the junctions I use as they're practically at a standstill). The other week I was travelling along some unfamiliar country roads. The speed limit said 50. 20 yards further down the road was a 90 degree bend that had I been approaching at that speed I'd have been in a hedge. It is nature to approach unfamiliar things more cautiously. It is an innate trait bred in over thousands of generations as those with it survive longer. As a decent sized city we should hope to attract visitors, both business and pleasure, and therefore expect some of the RR users to be unfamiliar with it and more cautious of it. I've been on a coach trip picked up at White St, who hadn't visited the city before completely baffled and at a loss on where they were supposed to be going. A professional driver with experience driving abroad and through central London regularly and OUR city centre confused them, leaving them cursing under their breath and in need of a passenger to explain where to go. You have a road that makes people unfamiliar with it feel unsafe then you're going to hurt your own economy. Do you make visitors to your house run a gauntlet through your porch to be let in, or do you think that might make them feel a bit unwelcome and reluctant to visit again?

All I can say, AD, is that when I am in a strange city I do proceed with caution if there is an unfamiliar junction, but I don't dither!. I do feel that the Coventry Ring Road model should have been employed elsewhere as it would be preferable to the mess some places have created. Birmingham's inner ring road is a hotch-potch of junctions, but the ones that work best seem to be on the Coventry model, notably around the tunnels. Slow down there at your peril! I would add that navigating in strange cities is a hell of a lot easier now than before we had Satnavs.

Fair point, but it can be a bit of a shock to people when they see people trying to come onto the RR in the same stretch where they are trying to leave it - it's quite a rare set-up which catches people unawares and I think is one of the main causes of 'dithering'. It is interesting that you choose that section of Brum's ring road, seeing as that is the one that was massively altered to improve pedestrian access and is largely seen as being a massive improvement and breathed new life into that area of the City Centre, most notably Brindley Place. Anyway, best to leave this alone for a bit. Don't want to be putting people off going around the same topic over and over.

Pictures building of Ring Rd. LINK

I've just been catching up with the Coventry Telegraph's 'Letters' page. The confirmation to the idea of a pedestrian crossing at the top of Bishop Street fills me with horror. It assumes that ALL drivers and pedestrians are ALWAYS sober, rational and paying attention to the road. We don't live in an ideal world. It doesn't allow for a harrassed parent on the school run with two children in the back seats screaming their heads off. It doesn't allow for a driver unfamilar with the ring road trying to decipher sometimes incoherent instructions from a sat-nav. I do hope they put their minds to an alternative.

So that's how we should make decisions is it? Well, what about drunk people on the bridge falling all over the place and falling over the edge onto the roadway? What about kids chucking stuff off the bridge at cars? What about a psycho throwing someone off the bridge onto the road? BTW, the last two have happened.

I did say both drivers and pedestrians. I also suggested we don't live in an ideal world so planners should consider people (drivers and pedestrians) acting irrationally. Just last week a car driver taking a short cut almost finished my contributions to this forum. He managed to stop just 2ft from my mobility scooter. His short cut was a road open only for buses to pick up passengers. The car appeared from behind a bus - and was accelerating in a manner that didn't match the road conditions. I had a tirade of abuse thrown at me for being in HIS way in a road where he shouldn't have been in the first place. On a scooter one cannot jump out of the way. Two older people have been killed along this 100 yard stretch over the past 2 years. I was almost the third. The road is in the CENTRE of Accrington NOT on a fast dual carriageway.

Alas the first has also happened. I think it was about 20 years ago (somebody trying to walk along the hand rail). Peter.

But going by that we shouldn't even bother trying and should just hide indoors. There will be idiots, and as much as you try and make it so their idiocy has as little effect as possible they will find a way. I've heard far more problems for both pedestrians and motorists from bridges and subways on the RR than I ever have for at-level crossings. Take the one by the station - the pedestrians much prefer it to the subway which was a muggers paradise and to my knowledge has had no accidents. Even the ones on the J7 sliproad, which even I think are unsafe as from one side you can't see the lights until you're practically there and the other you're coming downhill off a 40mph road while negotiating a junction that takes a great deal of attention, plus if someones runs across the road from the right you can't see them as they're covered by the overpass. Especially as there is student accommodation and a club right next to it. But again to my knowledge there has been no accidents (although I don't expect that to last). Whereas the basin bridge. Two people seriously injured in cars when kids threw concrete blocks over the side and through peoples windscreens, a woman thrown off it by her partner who was hit by a car and killed, stories of people being attacked while using it because the stairs and ramps are so well concealed. There is no such thing as a foolproof (or idiotproof) solution. But this crossing is no more dangerous than what it replaces albeit in a different way, and given the stories highlighted above massively reduces the scope for potential incidents. I'm sorry about your experiences and can understand why you feel the way you do. But if you'd been attacked in a subway or on a bridge you'd be clamouring for the visibility of an at-level crossing and take the risk of an idiot driver.