Your cities Inner Ring Road (Motorway standard, or not)

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poshbakerloo

Discussion Starter · May 16, 2012

Your cities Inner Ring Road (Motorway standard, or not)

This isn't general urban motorways, as I've seen a thread for that. This is any type of road that has been designed to keep traffic from the city centre.

Show maps, photos, information etc

I guess in general they do work, some are big, some are small, and some cause the city centre to be too cut off from the suburbs!

Pretty much all UK cities and large towns have them, although they differ hugely in size and style. Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle all of proper motorway designated ring roads, or atleast partly are. The rest just have large A roads...

They were mostly built in the 1960s-70s. The really big projects were also only mostly part built. The examples here are purpose build ring roads, there are a few other places that have ring roads that are pretty much just sign posted routes, which are pretty pointless other than making nativating a bit easier etc...

I guess I'll start with the biggest...Glasgow!?
Not a particularly big city, but in the UK it has the biggest roads...I think, although some may say Birmingham.

Here is an old photo of it being built! So much destruction as you can see haha

Now its open, its of a pretty epic scale compared to most UK motorways let alone normal A Road IRRs...

Birmingham...Once the car capital, but then get half of its IRR removed...

The side that is still open...

Leeds, has a mostly motorway IRR although the east and west sides are not...

Also not as big as some of the others...

Sheffield, mostly just widened existing roads, but also some new routes...works well although cuts the centre off a bit too much...

One of the roundabout junctions...

Manchester, the south side is motorway the rest isn't.

This wasn't even mean to be the IRR, that whole of the original IRR got cancelled before it got built, and what did was meant to be a minor distributor roads haha.

After opening...all nice a quiet...

Ooh Dear...

Coventry, one of the most famous or infamous.

Pretty big, but the junctions are a bit too close together so there is real bad weaving!

Newcastle Upon Tyne...

Only had the east side built, but is different as its double decker...Although couldn't find any photos...

Macclesfield. An average sized average town, with an average, average town IRR haha

The eastern side (Silk Road) was completed in 1998 I think...

One of the flat junctions...

The end

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metasmurf

· #2 · May 16, 2012

Inre Ringvägen, Malmö Sweden

Malmö inner ring by Ytherie

Length: 12km
Classification: Motorway, Limited-access road (Motortrafikled in Swedish)
Year of opening: 1974

Inre Ringvägen was constructed as Malmö's outer ring to get traffic out of the city center. It worked as such until Yttre Ringvägen was opened in 2000 and thus lost it's function. Today it works as a local motorway for travels between suburbs. It's has quite a lot of traffic in Swedish comparison with 56 000 AADT at the busiest part. Many residential areas which are part of the Swedish Million Programme were constructed near the road, such as Rosengård, Lindängen and Almgården.

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european_driver

· #3 · May 16, 2012 (Edited)

del

snowdog

· #4 · May 16, 2012

Haha that Coventry ring road, awesome!

DanielFigFoz

· #5 · May 16, 2012

Yeah, I want go go on the Coventry one some time

strandeed

· #6 · May 16, 2012

Since Newcastle upon Tyne has already been done... I will post by other "home city" of Cleveland Ohio.

It has a few Urban Motorways, I-71, I-77 and I-90 plus several others

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896334

· #7 · May 16, 2012

The Coventry Ring Road is simply brilliant, many people really dislike it because it can be quite intimidating with the short merges, but it does a fantastic job of keeping traffic out of the city centre, and is rarely jammed up, even during rush hour. The main problems on it are the clockwise exits to J4 and J7 which can often queue back onto the main carriageway at peak times. It's a fantastic piece of road engineering and should be far more celebrated than it is!

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snowdog

· #8 · May 17, 2012

^ Exactly!

Just looked up google streetview of more from the UK, like Newcastle upon Tyre, great roads, far better than anything in Holland.

London may be a traffic chaos ( absolutely retarded bottleneck design sometimes, like the M23+A23> A23, a 3+4 lane motorway, joining with a 1x2 lane road, INTO A 1x2 lane road.), but I'm certainly impressed with the nice interruption free (inner) ring roads of the other cities.

They should learn that here, sod off with traffic lights and simply make free flowing inner city rings.

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Angelos

· #9 · May 17, 2012

London desperately need an inner ring road!

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Road_UK

· #10 · May 17, 2012

Angelos said:
London desperately need an inner ring road!

It has one, it`s called the North Circular Road (A102) and the South Circular Road (A202)

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poshbakerloo

Discussion Starter · #11 · May 17, 2012

Road_UK said:
It has one, it`s called the North Circular Road (A102) and the South Circular Road (A202)

Its not really and inner ring, in the big ringways plan it was the second ring. the first ring was only built in part

I did this to show...The blue line is what is current designated as the inner ring road, but its not a purpose built road, just a signposted route and of varing standards. Some of it is pretty big dual 3 roads but some is just single 2 land road.

The red line is what was actually built of the original inner ring road but got cancelled, it was built to motorway standards, but is only classed now as an A road...

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makaveli6

· #12 · May 17, 2012

Kārļa Ulmaņa avenue in Riga.

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Road_UK

· #13 · May 17, 2012

poshbakerloo said:
Its not really and inner ring, in the big ringways plan it was the second ring. the first ring was only built in part

I did this to show...The blue line is what is current designated as the inner ring road, but its not a purpose built road, just a signposted route and of varing standards. Some of it is pretty big dual 3 roads but some is just single 2 land road.

The red line is what was actually built of the original inner ring road but got cancelled, it was built to motorway standards, but is only classed now as an A road...

The red line on the west-side is the A40, linking Central London with the M40 and M25, the red line on the right is the A102 North Circular Road leading to the Blackwall Tunnel and A2. The blue circle is the inner-inner ringroad, mostly congested on the north side at King´s Cross only. Since they have introduced the congestion charge, it has lost its basic purpose of being a ringroad, as traffic has been relieved considerably.

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Spookvlieger

· #14 · May 17, 2012

Brussels inner ringroad are just big avenues laid out in a pentagon, The center part is tunneled but rises a lot between intersections.

Northern side of the pentagon:

Eastern side:

Intersections always look like this:

Vintage pic of the same place before the road was below ground and now also those tramlines are premetro (underground tramwork) or metro lines.

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Road_UK

· #15 · May 17, 2012

I love that road in Brussels with all these tunnels. Very clear digital signposting as well, with digital and non-digital road maps of the circular to show where you are. Well done Brussels!

Verso

· #16 · May 17, 2012

But it's not in the shape of a heart as Brusseleers claim.

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Spookvlieger

· #17 · May 17, 2012

Charlerloi has a unique elevated one way motorway inner ringroad (R9) wich is also very small. R3 is the outer ringroad of the city.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Map_Charleroi_transport-fr.svg

http://e2.img.v4.skyrock.net/e29/vincentdvt/pics/2963477461_1_3_c9UQIQI3.jpg

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Spookvlieger

· #18 · May 17, 2012 (Edited)

Hasselt has probably one of the smallest complete ring roads in the world. It's only 70.000 inhabitants big. It has a 3 lane ringroad, 2 lanes for cars in one direction and one lane in the opposite direction for its unique bussystem. At some parts the busline can be accessed by car to reach buildings on that line.

Green is ofcourse the inner ring, red the outer ring, wich handles almost all of the traffic.

http://s1.hbvl.be/ahimgpath/assets_...rkeerplaatsen-in-hasselt-id508427-620x415.jpg

Picture of the bus lane adn left the lane for the cars in the other direction:

http://www.autofans.be/sites/default/files/images2/interview-wm-groene-week-2.jpg

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Mateusz

· #19 · May 17, 2012 (Edited)

Speaking of the Inner Ring Road in Sheffield.

It could do with an extension. However this would be a costy option. Sheffield could bleed on it

hno: What I mean is substituting Sheaf Street with a tunnel from St. Mary's Road to Derek Dooley Way.

Any plans for extending Outer Ring Road ? Wikipedia says that were some ideas for reviving it...

Barnsley has it's own ''inner ring road''. As well as a long outer bypass... Some more details about this ''ring road''

Map: http://g.co/maps/8h7qv
It includes West Way and Harborough Hill Road. It was built in 1980s while at the same time some streets within a town centre got pedestrianised

Some pictures:

Unfortunately I can't find any good pictures of Harborough Hill Rd...

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poshbakerloo

Discussion Starter · #20 · May 17, 2012

Mateusz said:
Speaking of the Inner Ring Road in Sheffield.

It could do with an extension. However this would be a costy option. Sheffield could bleed on it hno: What I mean is substituting Sheaf Street with a tunnel from St. Mary's Road to Derek Dooley Way.

Any plans for extending Outer Ring Road ? Wikipedia says that were some ideas for reviving it...

Barnsley has it's own ''inner ring road''. As well as a long outer bypass... Some more details about this ''ring road''

Map: http://g.co/maps/8h7qv
It includes West Way and Harborough Hill Road. It was built in 1980s while at the same time some streets within a town centre got pedestrianised

I don't think there are any current plans to extend the outer ring road, I think they are thinking about it, but nothing happening about it right now. The inner ring is fine, but I do think they should sort out that awful 1 way system from st marys road to the station!

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