Driving through any city centre at rush hour when you don't have to is pretty much asking to spend ages sitting in traffic.
But we've been reporting extensively on the effects of roadworks in Leeds recently, so to assess their impact properly I took a dreaded journey through the city centre at 5pm to see what it was like. To be upfront, I do think it's a positive thing for city centres like Leeds to become more hospitable to public transport, cyclists, and pedestrians than cars - you won't see me raging behind the wheel over any of them.
Though currently, our bus network can leave a lot to be desired, which leaves many people needing to get to and from work dependent on driving. Several ongoing roadworks - such as the works near the station and City Square, and the Armley Gyratory ones - have received particular attention.
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I set off from Armley, near where the LeedsLive office is located, at 5.10pm on a Wednesday evening, expecting to get immediately stuck in several traffic jams as I headed through Leeds, aiming to get onto the A660 to head to my destination. To get pretty much anywhere around Leeds, this means using the Armley Gyratory.
According to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, around 100,000 vehicles were using this junction every day pre-Covid. That's made it the target of extensive works to make the junction more effective, safer, and add better routes for pedestrians and cyclists.
The bulk of the roadworks kicked off in April 2022, and are expected to continue throughout 2023. Major junctions like the gyratory will occasionally need major work like this, and temporary traffic lights are in place around much of the junction to keep it working as efficiently as possible while lanes are closed.
But when you approach from the Armley Wellington Road side, you don't get a dedicated temporary traffic light, and instead enter the junction like a normal roundabout. This is fine most of the time, but at rush hour, traffic coming from the A58 and A643 entrances is of such a volume there's very little space for cars to get out - and a long line of cars end up backed up down Wellington Road.
It wasn't the end of the world though - I waited for about five minutes from pulling up to the junction to getting on to it, and after that it's fine. I exited onto the A58 Inner Ring Road, and then looped around to exit onto Wellington Street and head towards the station.
This is another area that has been even busier recently due to roadworks on Neville Street, Bishopgate Street and Swinegate that have closed off other routes to the station via City Square - I can attest from having dropped a colleague off at the station after work before that sometimes you can get stuck for ages down there. I moved quickly down Wellington Street though, and didn't get stuck in a traffic jam until I joined onto Whitehall Road.
It's slow going down here, so my fairly obvious advice would be: don't drive to the station at rush hour unless you absolutely have to. You move a bit quicker down here if you don't need to go all the way down the road and turn off left in the dedicated lane to Thirsk Row.
From there, I headed right through the centre up King Street and East Parade before turning right on Great George Street. There, I turned left on to Lovell Park Road, then took a slightly odd route along Grafton Street and North Street to join onto Clay Pit Lane.
This was actually a great move - I'd joined Lovell Park Road mostly by accident (I was in the wrong lane) and missed my turning but as I drove along the mostly clear Clay Pit Lane, I observed long lines of traffic queuing to merge onto the A61 and A64.
But I only really encountered a few traffic lights as I turned off Clay Pit Lane onto Woodhouse Lane and headed up to the A660 mostly unperturbed. I could continue on about how slow it is going up the A660 with the roadworks there at the moment - but I'm out of the city centre by this point.
So in conclusion: would I ever travel this route through the city centre unless I desperately needed to drop someone off at the station or somewhere nearby? No. Is it a little slow around some of the roadworks? Yes.
But was it half as bad I expected? Really not at all. Call it luck, but I didn't have any horror traffic jam experience on my route, roadworks or not - only a little expected rush hour delay here and there.
Councillor Helen Hayden, Leeds City Council’s executive member for infrastructure and climate, said: “Significant detailed planning goes into coordinating all of the infrastructure, improvements and utilities work to minimise disruption across the roads network in Leeds. Wherever possible, work is undertaken off peak, overnight, at weekends or during school holidays. Some very significant schemes have been completed in the last four to five years.
"The improvements to Armley Gyratory will make travel around our city easier and make better use of road space, hugely improve walking and cycling provision as well as improving public transport improving connectivity for local communities to the city.
“The City Square scheme will transform the area into a more people-focussed and accessible space through what has been a traffic dominated area.
“We are continuing to closely monitor traffic flows across the city, and the “mostly small delays” people may have experienced are reflective of our ongoing monitoring particularly since the turn of the year except for those occasions where there are vehicle breakdowns, collisions or emergency utility works. Motorists who need to travel around the city centre by car are encouraged to consider a number of diversionary routes which can be found at www.leeds.gov.uk/planahead. Where possible use the Park and Ride schemes at Stourton, Elland Road and Temple Green or travel by bus, rail, cycle or walk into the city. We encourage motorists to plan ahead, use up-to-date satellite navigation for their journeys or research alternative routes. We’re grateful to those who are already doing so.
“A key part of our Transport Strategy is to increase the use of public transport and walking and cycling, encouraging modal shift away from the private car to meet our pledge of becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030.”
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