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Great Ancoats Street, Manchester (via Twitter, NorthernQuarterForum)Revamped road condemned as “death trap” after cyclist critically injured
Active travel advocates have condemned the recent redevelopment of a major road in Manchester as a missed opportunity, after a cyclist was left with a “life-threatening injury” after being struck by a motorist last weekend.
The cyclist was rushed to hospital with a serious head injury following a collision with a driver on Great Ancoats Street on Sunday. No arrests have been made in connection with the incident.
The recent redevelopment of Great Ancoats Street, finished in March 2021, formed part of a £9 million scheme to upgrade the city’s inner ring road connecting the Northern Quarter to Ancoats, New Islington and Piccadilly, a project Manchester City Council claimed would create a “European-style boulevard”.
However, residents have long expressed their frustration with the scheme – which fails to include any substantial cycling infrastructure – describing the road as “an accident waiting to happen”, a critique thrown into sharp relief by last weekend’s incident.
#WorldClass pic.twitter.com/ZJXCvf7YmM
— NorthernQuarterForum (@NQForum) December 21, 2020
“I cycle down Great Ancoats daily to work. It's busy, dirty and crowded,” Glossop resident Jonathan Atkinson told the Manchester Evening News.
“The main issue for bikes is that the four lanes of traffic afford virtually no room to cycle safely. It might sound daft, but this has been an accident waiting to happen and many cyclists have tried to engage with the council to highlight this.
“Occasionally, I use the Ancoats back streets that are currently being converted to a cycle path, but many of the streets are cobbled and unsuitable for most road bikes. After the recent Great Ancoats Street rebuild, this is unfortunately another waste of money.”
Another local described the project as “a massive missed opportunity to make the area safer for residents with adequate infrastructure.
“We were promised a tree lined boulevard. What we got was a death trap in a residential area,” they said.
When the bike lane-less plans for Great Ancoats Street were first revealed, Manchester City Council argued that a dedicated cycleway on the road would reduce traffic capacity too much, leading to protests from cyclists in July 2019.
However, the council claimed at the time that future schemes in the city centre would prioritise cycling and walking.
“I'm all for cycle lanes across the city and in our ward,” says the Labour councillor for Ancoats and Beswick, Majid Dar. “I would say it was a missed opportunity and I wish it could have been included. If we’ve got an opportunity to get main roads done and the space is there, I’m all for it.”
Despite criticism of the Great Ancoats Street revamp, funding has been secured in recent years for an £11.6 million cycle route between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria stations through the Northern Quarter as part of Greater Manchester’s Bee Network, while the North East Gateway – a continuous cycling and walking route linking the north and east of the city – will soon be subject to consultation.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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You didn't mention The Scottish Dodge, whereby if, by witchcraft, you manage to force your HD video upon the reluctant Scottish Police and they...
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Not particularly sure that follows.
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There's one that's always lurking outside our house at night.
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I should get onto the Guinness Book of Records people then, as they have the world record slowest heart rate for a healthy person down as 26bpm,...
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I made a complaint within an hour of the story being published. I have zero faith that they will amend anything....
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TBF I think that's before she saw the light and got on her bike. Not so great if her views have been informed by Mr. Briggs though.
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21 comments
Driving in Manchester had a strange thing I hadn't come across in other parts of the country - right turn filters come on first then they get turned off and replaced with a green light while the oncoming cars are then released with a green light.
That was back in the 70s and I was surprised to find that they still did it that way. There were often incidents where drivers hadn't picked up on the change and if you hadn't driven in Manchester you'd be surprised at that sequence
I wouldn't like to be a cyclist turning right on a filter only to see it wink out as you were trundling across 3 lanes of pent up frustration.
Why entrust councils with cycling infrastructure? Indeed, why give them responsibility for roads? There are numerous examples of incompetence in pretty much everything they do.
Who would you give it to? And how would you fund it?
Therei lies the rub. In an ideal world Highways England would have all road ownership with hard active travel targets to meet.
Unfortunately they are too busy infilling bridges that block green ways and future light rail connections to give a crap. See also the way they have neglected the Queensbury tunnel.
Institutionally anti-active travel.
On an operational level I've met many lovely Highways England staff. Corporately however they make local councils look brilliant - I've been trying (in my day job) to get some signage changed for ten years and they still refer back to a consultation they did in 1982!
Yup, HE are responsible for making several junctions in South Glos, where I used to live, much, much more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians; they even managed to make SGlos council look relatively good. And SGlos council were/are, abysmal.
is the picture at the top of this article for real? Is that actually cycle infrastructure somewhere in Manchester?
Take a look on Google street view and be amazed! Junction of Oldham Rd.,Oldham St. and Great Ancoats Street. Bikes appear to be directed onto the (narrow) pavement and across two (or is it five?) pelican crossings to turn rigbt onto the Oldham Road from that corner..Absolute afterthought for bikes by the look of it. It's a nasty junction in a car. I wouldn't want to negotiate it on a bike now, or as it was when it was my regular driving route into the city centre.
Seems like it has been 'improved' since the picture in the article was taken. The give way (dismount??) markings have been burnt off and the pavement is now magically ok to cycle on as shared space.
https://goo.gl/maps/yWMrEnCArpFZUWw69
I noticed the give way signs were faint when I looked this morning. Not sure if they had been burnt off or worn away by the multitudes of bikes using the super-duper superhighway.
How is it even supposed to work? The cyclist approaches the junction and without clipping the kerb goes onto the pavement and then what? Avoids the post and bumps back down onto the main carriageway?
Climbs off and walks, like a normal person, obviously.
Isn't Chris Boardman Manchesters cycling czar? Has he been involved in this or have any comment to make on the mess that it's turned out to be?
Surely there will be little faith going forward in the city councils ability to deliver on new initiatives. These schemes always cost millions and deliver nothing other than raised or widened kerbs and painted crossings.
Questions need to be asked, and answers given.
Not since the start of the year - he's got a bigger job now.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/22/chris-boardman-to-lead-n...
So, Boardman would have been Manchester cycling czar at the time of planning, surely?
Bizarre that such a project wasn't supported by purported cycling advocates Boardman and whatsisname, Burnham?
If I recall the situation correctly they don't have unbridled powers to stop the local city councils (of which there are more than one across Grter Manc) acting with extreme fuckwittery.
Correct, there are 10 metropolitan boroughs that make up Greater Manchester, and the city of Manchester itself is just one of them (also Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan).
So it's a similar situation to London, where TfL needs buy-in from the individual boroughs - but at least has the advantage of controlling some major roads which AFAIK is not the situation TfGM (and by extension Burnham and Boardman, now succeeded by Dame Sarah Storey) is in.
There were plenty of complaints and protests the project didn't follow Boardmans strategy documents at the time. The blame seems to be laid at the council then anyone else.
Yet again, a scheme which excluded cyclists, leading to danger, congestion and the deterring of many people who want to cycle. We've had pro-cycling policies nationally for many years, so why cyclists were not even considered is inexplicable, and someone from the council should be having their feet held to the fire. I'm sure local cyclists will be on the case and looking into why this crass decision was made and who made it, and taking them to task.
Best wishes to the injured cyclist, and I hope he and his family will be seeking legal advice about the council's gross incompetence and failures, with a view to sueing for damages.
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I've no doubt that Andy Burnham will have plenty to say about this.
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Perhaps.
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I think you'll find, now that Boardman has moved on to greater things, Burnham will give even less of a s**t than usual.