Town Centre/Bridge

Reminds me of the World's End. Columbus would be turning in his grave.

 

Building materials increasing by 25% certainly haven't helped

 

The footfall should be no different to how it was when the crossing was in place - the bridge shouldn’t make a difference to the volume.

Closing the underpass and around the bingo hall makes sense anyway, but the rest inc. the bridge should be open.

 

No it won't make a difference to the volume but I mean the whole design of the bridge and a large part of the expense was to have a wide enough deck to handle the football traffic.

The slip roads and all that area needs pedestrian crossings on it for me. Even when it isn't a match day there will be a fair amount of people crossing the road to get to the bingo, to get to the housing estate and to get to the Metrodome that it easily justified it.

Personally, and I know it's expensive, I'd be moving Pontefract road across to create a double width pavement all the way down to Oakwell I front of the houses and no pavement on the opposite side where machine mart etc are. I'd get rid of the dedicated lane for the market gate carpark as the traffic doesn't justify it and I'd have a much wider 'landing' area when you come off the bridge and. Some coming away from the town, the traffic levels don't justify two lanes from Swasch gamund way (that my best effort at spelling it) so reduce them both to 1 each and you've made a much much safer crossing area with two large landing areas on either side of the road in front of the bingo. Then again because it's been narrowed you'd have a much wider footpath under the flyover and pedestrian control the exit and you're away.

 

It was designed to cater for football crowds. Specifically. is a bit disingenuous,

Market Gate Bridge will link the existing public transport and parking provision to The Glass Works – the redevelopment of Barnsley town centre. It will be fully accessible and will accommodate footfall on matchdays.

 

I worded it badly. I meant the design of it was specifically for football as in its size.

 

When i was bus driving we called it German Way a lot easier to say and spell lol

 

The footpath on Machine Mart side was widened I believe to accommodate a cycle lane, the motor home place was kicking off about it.

 

I completely forgot about that. Very short sighted move imo. Should have been narrowed and the other side made wider where pedestrians are likely to be

 

Yes they did.

 

It was built to link the transpennine to the bus station so cyclists would have access to more routes

 

I get that but again it's short sighted, the same work could have easily been done on the opposite side of Pontefract road and made that pavement (and cycle path) Extreme wide to cater for matchdays

 

This cost around 12m to build and took around 18 months if I recall correctly and had similar comments about length of time and costs.

 

Lincoln?

 

I prefer ours to Lincoln

 

Yeah

 

But they’re stood waiting for the level crossing gates to lift?. Am I missing something in saying what’s the point of the bridge if the level crossing is still in use?

 

No you’re not TBF.
This is built literally next to the main station so most are by time I’ve walked over the barriers will lift.
This line though can sometimes have barriers down for upto 40 mins in an hour due to the volume of trains so it can back up quite significantly.

 

I can remember when the town centre used to clog up when the Jumble Lane crossing was closed. I believe one of the benefits that was supposed to accrue with the closure of the crossing was a more frequent train service through Barnsley. I'm guessing covid and the impact it had on train services will have had a negative impact.

 

Personally I think there should be some crossing on pontefract road for a match day as it can be bad crossing