Residents in Belfast’s Short Strand have campaigned for years to calm the traffic on Mountpottinger Road, a key rat run for traffic using the city’s Cross Harbour M3 Motorway. A recent £275,000 road upgrade promised improvements for pedestrians, but the resurfacing scheme appears to have made the traffic situation worse. It’s time to remove all through-traffic to allow families and children to reclaim Short Strand’s streets before the shocking level of HGV traffic, which ignores a more suitable bypass, causes a major tragedy.

The Bull Run

The Short Strand community in East Belfast should be a very quiet residential area, free from traffic concerns. Due to the legacy of The Troubles it is penned in by Peace Walls, with just 3 road gateways – Bryson Street, and at either end of the main spine through Mountpottinger Road and Link.

Titanic Quarter and the M3 Motorway (the key strategic traffic corridor in central Belfast serving the Westlink, M1 and M2) sit to the north, and directly to the south a huge junction links the Ravenhill, Woodstock and Cregagh, Castlereagh, Albertbridge Roads, as well as one of just three bridges linking East Belfast to the City Centre, the Albert Bridge.

 

ShortStrandOverview

 

The four-lane Short Strand bypass should be the most preferable route for journeys between the M3 and Castlereagh Street, however a significant volume of general traffic cuts through Mountpottinger Road – most obvious at evening rush hour with long southbound tailbacks.

How bad is the situation for this otherwise sleepy residential area? Here’s a condensed 35 minutes of footage during a Friday rush hour (just after 9am) which shows the scale of the problem:

 

 

That’s 37 trucks and HGVs passing through (more than one every minute), white van man filling his boots with 41 commercial vans passing through, and an overall traffic level of around 500 vehicles per hour. The vast majority of vehicles simply enter at one end of Mountpottinger and leave at the other.

The Department for Regional Development (DRD) was at pains during the traffic reduction scheme in Belfast City Centre – Belfast on the Move – to distinguish between vehicles which had a purpose and destination in the area and those which had “no business there”. There is no more apt description for what’s happening on Mountpottinger Road. To label it a rat run perhaps minimises the scale of the problem.

The nature of these streets is very different to most of inner city Belfast. Children ride bicycles and scooters along and across Mountpottinger Road; they cross from the play-park to the shops; they roam care-free in the shadow of a constant stream of through-traffic. Collisions have occurred in the past and because of how this road is being used (or abused) a tragedy lies in wait for a local family in the future.

 

Why do drivers cut through Mountpottinger Road?

On the surface it seems strange that drivers wouldn’t use the route around Short Strand – marked in red on the map above – it’s wider, has more capacity, feels ‘faster’, and has no house frontages and very little pedestrian footfall. However some quite obvious and more subtle factors are at work which make Mountpottinger an attractive choice.

Northbound

Arriving at the Castlereagh Street junction with the Albertbridge Road, drivers are faced with a problem. The route around Short Strand involves a left turn, however the view is obscured by Bank House. Drivers can’t calculate possible hold-ups due to the volume of traffic (which can be at a standstill during rush hour) or if the lights at the Woodstock Link junction will catch them – the first of three potential red lights.

Ahead lies a wide opening to Mountpottinger Road – almost never congested heading north – and the subtle influence of being able to see buildings and hills in North Belfast.

 

Castlereagh_view

 

All the way down Castlereagh Street to this point, HGV drivers have seen the variable speed signs on the M3 Bridge peeking over the tops of the houses in Short Strand. Your destination is straight ahead, while an uncertain gamble lies to your left.

Southbound

There is less of a visual incentive to rat run when heading south, with the sweep left towards the Ravenhill junction inviting you to carry on past the immediate turn into Mountpottinger Link. Yet during the evening rush especially, stationary traffic around the Bridge End gyratory has already frustrated many drivers.

 

 

Ignoring the rat run takes you to a filter lane which has a triple whammy of frustration for impatient drivers – a signalled pedestrian crossing, an unsignalled exit and even a cycle lane to worry about – all of which means guaranteed congestion at rush hour. After that, another set of lights has to be negotiated at Woodstock Link, and the difficult-to-reach right filter lane for Castlereagh Street has a fast light sequence which can lead to long queues and delays.

Overall, both north and south routes though Mountpottinger involve just two sets of lights – one of which is an infrequently used toucan crossing – and a good chance of a beating queues. The more appropriate bypass has three signal-controlled junctions, three chances to hit a queue, and also means mixing with ‘strategic traffic’ funnelling through a mega-junction with multiple destinations.

The Mountpottinger rat run is a gamble with extremely favourable odds at rush hour, and no worse than evens at any other time.

 

Radical intervention

Local residents’ campaigning for traffic calming measures recently seemed to pay off. Road humps have been a feature for many years, yet these have failed to tackle the underlying issue. When a road re-surfacing scheme was announced for 2013-14, it was a chance to give serious thought to reducing the attractiveness of Mountpottinger Road to through-traffic. The main change was a puffin crossing at the play park beside The Strand Bar, widely welcomed as bringing “benefits for all road users and pedestrians in the local area.

However, the enhanced channelisation of the road – providing a central hatched area to create turning boxes for vehicles – was a clue that the needs of vehicle movement and safety was being elevated above the need to reduce traffic volume and speed. Channelisation simply allows vehicles to smoothly travel past stationary vehicles waiting to turn right which might otherwise halt traffic flow. Instead of making Mountpottinger Road a quiet street where people could cross anywhere, installing a puffin crossing was an admission of defeat – we can’t do anything about the flood of traffic, so here’s one good crossing point.

 

 

And the overall result of the road improvements? Residents will tell you the traffic levels are as bad as ever, and HGVs rattle through all day every day, hardly noticing the road humps as they heave their loads.

The problem is DRD didn’t proceed with an explicit aim to remove through-traffic – instead it ended up aiding and accelerating the typical through-journey, skewing the risk/reward balance in favour of rat-running.

What is required now is a far more radical intervention, with the sole aim of displacing strategic through-traffic back onto the strategic route around the area and reclaiming the streets for local residents, families and children. A 20mph zone should be introduced tomorrow, but physical changes to the streets are badly needed.

My preferred street redesign (intended to kick off discussion) is based on three key principles:

  1. Remove *all through-traffic (see 2)
  2. Retain the Metro 5A bus service through Mountpottinger Road
  3. Provide a design solution with the least inconvenience to local vehicle movements

 

Dissuasion at the entrances

The visual attraction to straight-ahead rat-running from the Castlereagh Street junction must be eliminated. To begin with, any scheme intending to reduce traffic levels on Mountpottinger Road will mean two exit lanes will be unnecessary, so the road should be tightened to one lane in, one lane out.

 

Albertbridge_Junction_1

 

Shifting the ‘entrance lane’ over to the right will break up the visual invitation to fly straight ahead, and some structural planting, trees etc. will add to the feeling of a barrier. However the goal is not to close the entrance – so as to inconvenience local residents – but to plant a seed in drivers’ minds that this is a residential street, not a ‘main road’. Earlier signage on Castlereagh Street can flag up ‘No through road’ or ‘Unsuitable for HGVs’ to further dissuade use.

 

Albertbridge_Junction_2

 

At the Mountpottinger Link end, the sweeping filter lane allows HGVs to trundle through at speed, again tipping the risk/reward balance towards rat-running.

 

Short_Strand_1

 

Removing this filter lane, and designing a tighter turn into Mountpottinger Link will allow residents and buses to access the area, but will be slower – making it more difficult for trucks and articulated lorries to negotiate. The straight-ahead option becomes far more attractive in drivers’ minds.

 

Short_Strand_2

 

On their own, design changes at the gateways will only dissuade general traffic, but not stop rat-running. Ideally, blocking up Mountpottinger Road at some point would achieve this aim, but would fall foul of objective 3 – annoying local residents to the point of probable objections. One solution however offers a way to ‘snip’ the road without actually closing it to traffic – a Home Zone.

 

ABD0678
The Dings Homezone development, Bristol (Picture Library Sustrans on Flickr)

 

These interventions have been trialled in England (but never here) and are a way to radically alter the design of a street to provide strong visual cues to drivers to alter their behaviour, including using build-out elements and designated parking areas to create chicanes to further control speed and movement.

A Home Zone on a short stretch of Mountpottinger Road, in conjunction with work at the gateways, has the potential to solve all the traffic issues in the area at a stroke.

 

Mountpottinger_1

 

At the southern end, Madrid Street could be quickly redesigned as a through-road, requiring northbound traffic on Mountpottinger Road to stop and give way. The entrances to the Home Zone could be placed on the right hand side of the road to further confuse users arriving for the first time. Now instead of a fast through-road, general traffic would need to make a significant diversion along Lisbon Street to the left and Edgar Street to the right.

The Home Zone itself could be designed with a single lane, allowing only one vehicle to cross comfortably at a time. Signage for the home zone could include ‘No through-traffic’, ‘Buses, access and parking only’ as more ways to make people wishing to drive through feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. Metro bus services would be the only through-traffic to regularly use the Home Zone – not ideal, but socially important for the area. 10 buses per hour would be an acceptable trade-off to remove hundreds of other vehicles.

 

Mountpottinger_2

 

The Home Zone area would be paved to indicate to drivers that this area is not a road for driving at speed, but is for a different purpose. At the northern end a mini roundabout could facilitate movements to/from the Home Zone and between Mountpottinger Road and Beechfield Street.

Drivers arriving expecting to scurry through the area at speed would be met with a series of visual and physical obstacles to progress which, encountered once, would plainly stop any thought of future rat-running.

The benefits of a Home Zone solution include:

  • Radically altered streetscape to remove propensity to rat run through the area.
  • The impact on local residents would be minimal.
  • Risk/reward of rat running tipped away by slower journeys and embarrassment of travelling through a clearly residential place.
  • Bus services can continue to move through Mountpottinger Road.
  • Access retained for emergency services, municipal and utility services, residents parking and local movements.
  • Walking, cycling and street play is promoted through a more pleasant road environment and radically reduced traffic levels.
  • Local vehicle movements across the Home Zone are still possible, if not as attractive as before.
  • Two alternative local routes (Lisbon and Edgar) are available on either side.

Any possible delays to Metro 5A service due to these streetscape changes would be offset by a more reliable journey times at rush hour, with tailbacks eliminated at the junction towards Castlereagh Street. An agreement would need to be reached with Translink to ensure that non-operational services – empty school buses and terminated services – returning to the Short Strand depot would use the bypass route rather than the Home Zone.

The Short Strand faces a daily invasion by impatient drivers, a shameful situation which makes a serious or fatal collision seem inevitable in the near future. The quality of life for residents, young and old, is unnecessarily affected by noise, vibration, fumes and physical danger, and the main authorities with a role in changing the situation – DRD, Belfast City Council to name but two – will fail us by ignoring the problem. A Home Zone-centred street redesign has the potential to make a difference, but a better solution may be out there – it’s time to start that discussion. Through-traffic has no place on these streets, and for the good of Belfast we need to take a stand and recognise the need for change. Short Strand residents could draw some inspiration from their counterparts in the Amsterdam neighbourhood “De Pijp” over 40 years ago..

 


It’s very clear that people who cycle in Belfast do not want 4,000+ taxis to hassle them in bus lanes. But the elephant in the room in this debate is sizeable – a £100m elephant in the shape of the forthcoming Bus Rapid Transit system. Now that we know just how wrong the public consultation on bus lanes was, isn’t it time to re-evaluate the effect on the largest group of bus lane users – bus passengers?

BRT

Image owned by RobertG and is licensed for reuse under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. See this image’s original location on Wikipedia Commons.

Infrastructure work on the new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system for Belfast has already begun. The new routes are due to begin operation in 2017, with bold promises from the Department for Regional Development (DRD) on the change they will bring for the city:

“BRT will create a new and dynamic bus-based public transport system for Belfast. [It] will provide a modern, safe, efficient and high quality service which encourages people to travel by public transport instead of car.” [DRD]

Bus transit was chosen over light rail/tram due to cost and flexibility (among other factors) but one thing that stands out about the Belfast system is that it will be almost exclusively on-road, sharing space with general traffic. Many BRT systems around the world use dedicated (even guided) running tracks, giving the system a guaranteed time advantage over general traffic.

[vimeo 12472119 w=600 h=450]

Bus Rapid Transit: Bogotá from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

The speed, reliability and comfort of the BRT services will provide an attractive alternative to private car use.” [DRD]

In a sense this is a qualified £100m gamble by DRD – a Rapid Transit-light or Metro-plus option whose success will be almost entirely based on the attractiveness, speed and reliability brought by off-board ticketing, junction priority and clear bus lanes. A BBC News report in January 2014 on BRT public awareness events became an unfortunately ironic reminder of the current issues with taxis in bus lanes:

So what is the purpose of a bus lane?

Bus lanes are provided primarily for buses to afford them some priority on the road network in recognition of the fact that the stop/start nature of the operation increases journey times making it unattractive as a mode of transport. Bus lanes provide a better level of service for those choosing to use a more sustainable mode of travel. They are also a very visible indication of our commitment to public transport.” [DRD consultation (PDF, 1.15MB)]

Given the locations in Belfast and current operating times, it might be fair to boil it down to a much more simple level – getting people to and from work. Comparing the importance of buses and taxis in this regard in Belfast is revealing. Bus (+ minibus & coach) commuters outnumber taxi commuters by almost 6 to 1 in Belfast, but the ratio of Metro buses to taxis in the city is 1 to 15:

BelfastCommuters

BRT will naturally target a wider audience through the day, but with vehicles planned to be 18 metre articulated buses with a capacity of around 100 people, and all of the infrastructure works and heavy promotion expected, the number of bus commuters in Belfast should grow. So what will 15 taxis for every Metro bus do to average journey times in Belfast, and the future Rapid Transit system?

The taxis in bus lanes consultation (which cutely avoided any reference to Bus Rapid Transit) was surprisingly clear on the effect:

Allowing all taxis into bus lanes would see the number of vehicles using bus lanes increase. It is highly likely that this will impact on the performance of bus lanes in terms of bus speeds and journey times.” [DRD consultation (PDF, 1.15MB)]

It’s a sensible assessment – taxis allowed in bus lanes will be stopping to collect passengers (BRT’s East and West routes run along mixed residential and commercial streets), stopping to drop off passengers while settling fares, and there will be an increased weight of bus lane traffic queued at junctions. Regardless of this, DRD ploughed ahead with their option to allow all taxis into bus lanes, prioritising taxi customers to the disadvantage of bus passengers and inexplicably gifting the taxi sector a competitive advantage over Bus Rapid Transit.

The Consumer Council’s response to the Taxis in bus lanes consultation (PDF, 488k) strikes at the heart of DRD’s £100m gamble. While neither agreeing or disagreeing with DRD’s proposals, the Council felt the journey time issue hadn’t been thought through:

For [DRD] to implement these proposals whilst recognising they have the potential to increase journey times for public transport passengers appears to contradict aims and targets set by the Department in the Regional Transportation Strategy along with other policies and schemes such as ‘Belfast on the Move’. Any perceived benefit for taxi passengers these proposals may provide must also be considered in light of the potential negative impact on cyclists, users of current public transport services and potential users of the proposed Rapid Transit system proposed for Belfast.

And remember, this is based on the assumption of just 2,000 taxis being allowed in Belfast bus lanes..

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em..

No reference was made to Belfast Rapid Transit in the DRD consultation. No reference was made to similar BRT systems operating in shared space with a significant taxi fleet. No care seems to be given to bus passengers’ journey times and the overall aims of providing a compelling “alternative to private car use”. Just as with the concerns for cycling, DRD seems oddly happy to make a blind raise on bus lane access for thousands of taxis to solve an immediate problem, while gleefully ignoring any long-term negative impacts.

The consultation process does not stand up to serious scrutiny; Belfast taxi fleet numbers assessment only told half the story. The sensible move, given the level of public investment in BRT at this time of austerity, would be to shelve the plan to allow all taxis into bus lanes until BRT has a number of years to bed in. Potential impacts of sharing space with taxis can be assessed in real-time, based on a retaining the hackney cab/wheelchair accessible fleet to operate in bus lanes alongside BRT.

Judging by the reaction to every challenge to their consultation process (during and after) Departmental officials clearly don’t see an issue here. DRD are showing a remarkable poker face, given the incredibly weak hand they’re holding. But who can call their bluff?

A dangerous overtake by a Metro bus on Wednesday 23rd October 2013 left me shaken and angry. Metro have now responded to a complaint about the incident, which is as much a factor of poor road design as unusually impatient driving.

For many people cycling in from East Belfast, the Albert Bridge is one of the major hazard points. Roads Service engineers accept that as many as 50% of people cycling across the bridge take to the footway rather than face the horrible road conditions.

MetroBicycle

Continue reading “Dodgy overtake: Metro responds”