Sheffield Tramlines

Parkey

My only complaint is in the design of some of the cycle facilities that are to be built in parallel with the next phase of the Nottingham tram. Cycle tracks on the pavement instead of lanes on the road. These tracks are great if you like being obstructed by pedestrians, avoiding pavement furniture and having to stop and give way at every side road. The alternative is to ride on the road and get a tram running up your backside, unable to overtake and making that angry "ding ding" noise.

Apart from this I'm a big fan of trams, especially the Nottingham system.

reutercrooks

Michuel wrote:

pigman wrote:

i've ridden the sheffield tramlined roads and the problem is that you have a nice area to the left that keeps you away from traffic. Then suddenly as you approach a tramstop, the kerb juts out, meaning you have to cross the kerbside rail. Middlewood road is a main road, meaning a right angled traverse is usually not feasible. the feasible choices are
1. stop, get off and manually reposition the bike
2. stay to the left of the lines and risk clipping your pedal at the tram stop, falling and looking a right berk
3. crossing whilst travelling forward (like michael did) and again looking a berk.

I've seen some well seasoned roadmen fall off. i personally adopt the "ride between the lines" approach and sod 'em
incidnetally, I think the worst road is White Lane, gleadless.

dondare wrote:

Tramlines do make roads dangerous for cyclists and this is not something to just accept.
I have never encountered any yet and so if I cycled to a place that had them (or they were introduced in London) it would not be possible for me to have learned how to deal with them. The road infrastructure should be safe fo all users at all times and hazards such as this should be tackled by their removal or redesign; not by expecting cyclists to know how to "pop" over them.

Exactly.

Tramlines make the situation worse for cyclists. In Sheffield, Manchester there are miles of them. It's not just one bit of metal in the road but the metal is everywhere. As I said rain makes them deadly.

I understand that Sheffield's tramway system is unprofitable and they can't extend it. I think Manchester also is at a loss.

There is real danger in tramlines for cyclists. Especially the inexperienced, the young and the old. To say cyclists must miss them if they don't like them is in effect excluding cyclists from road access.

I cannot understand why the CTC did not oppose them.

the inexperienced, the yong and the old. evryone else manages to navigate them, Whats so special about you?

Michuel

reutercrooks wrote:

the inexperienced, the yong and the old. evryone else manages to navigate them, Whats so special about you?

There's nothing special about me. I came off on tramlines at 13:00 with light raining while riding 23mm tyres.

Just now it's 19:30, black outside and raining for 3 hours. I'm glad I'm not riding on the Oughtibridge/Stocksbridge - Sheffield road at this moment.

sufferingpete

I have fallen off on the tram tracks 3 times now.

Once just trying to cross them before I knew how dangerous they are.

The second time I tried to cross at about 45 degree to the track and still fell off. I thought at this angle they would be ok.

The third I was alongside a bus that pulled out and had to cross them whilst riding parallel.

My advise is don’t cross them unless you have to.

But in certain areas of Sheffield the curb juts out near to the track giving you no alternative.

Jamey

I also cycle in Croydon and managed to jam my front wheel (700 x 38c) in a section of tram track a couple of weeks back.

It wasn't even wet. It had been dry all day and I was cycling home, had to cross the track at about a 45-degree angle and bam, front tyre gets stuck. God knows how I managed to stay on the bike. It was like when you see those motorcycle accidents where the bike gets thrown into the air and seems to be flexing diagonally yet somehow the rider pulls it back and stays on.

Except when that happens it's their skill that allows them to stay on, whereas in my case it was pure luck.

wjhall

And lo, I understand the Ordsall curve is now actually on the to do list. Why they did not do it that way in the first place is beyond me. Apparently, Greater Manchester were in favour in the 1980s, but Manchester City Council against, because they wanted an underground. (All quotes from "Rail" magazine story.)

Quite why a city council should object to the addition of a railway curve just because it has underground fantasies is also beyond me. I suppose it is a comment on the quality of UK local government.

The general relevance of this is a reminder that many UK cities actually have internal railway networks, and that these should be exploited as much as possible, for their speed, and the fact that they are off road, before turning to on road rapid transit solutions. (Or as is usually the case, not so rapid transit...) . In particular schemes to downgrade railways to trams, or tram-trains, or busways, should always be approached with scepticism, despite being once again the flavour of the month in government circles.

John Hall

wjhall wrote:

I am sure I saw a well known CTC campaigner praising bendy buses in C+ on the basis that they were not trams. So there is obviously a race memory of tramlines as a source of problems.

Acutally the Manchester tram is largely based on conversion of two railway lines from neighbouring towns, so why it could not have been kept as a railway and routed across the city centre on the existing railway, which is not all that far from the on road route, is not at all clear. Then it would probably have been faster, and not subject to congestion such as the getting stuck in bus queues as describe in the press last year.

Fashion I suppose.

As many people have pointed out, trams are not intended to go anywhere fast, because they run in streets, and their are limits to how fast you can go in streets. In fact on of the road safety advantages of trams in the street sections is that they run steadily at about 15mph on a fixed track, instead of hurtling at 30 mph from one traffic light to the next like buses do, but this does mean they do not get anywhere very quickly, for that you need a dedicated route - or railway as they are known.