Transport and Roads

Stage 3 of the Connecting Airedale: Shipley-Bradford Corridor Transport Improvements includes the section of Canal Road/Valley Road (A6037) and Manningham Lane/Keighley Road (A650) between Bradford and Shipley.

This element of Connecting Airedale is an integrated package of measures to increase the capacity of Canal Road/Valley Road and reduce congestion along the corridor. It includes the further development of Manningham Lane/Keighley Road as a Quality Bus Corridor and is intended to address a series of current and potential future problems in the Canal Road corridor.
These include worsening peak traffic congestion on both these roads. The transport improvements will provide capacity to accommodate housing growth, deliver regeneration and unlock development sites along the corridor.

Although significant improvements have been made to bus facilities on the A650 in recent years through the introduction of bus lanes and bus priority at traffic signals, buses still get caught up in congestion and a reduction of traffic levels on the A650 combined with further bus priority facilities between Shipley and Bradford will reduce delays for buses.

The package includes:

• Better bus access in the corridor achieved through enhanced bus priority measures on the A650 Quality Bus Corridor.
• Better road links through highway improvements to Canal Road to make the network flow better, opening up development sites in the corridor and enable better public transport flow along the A650 Quality Bus Corridor.
• Improvements to cycling and pedestrian facilities

Various concept options have been appraised for the Canal Road improvements including dual two-lane/single carriageway and online/offline alignments. The options were analysed in terms of transport benefits, including capacity, and cost (construction and land). This analysis identified the need for a dual two-lane solution to provide the required capacity for existing problems and for the plan led growth.

The scheme will make Canal Road/Valley Road more attractive to traffic which currently uses Manningham Lane/Keighley Road by adding highway capacity to the bottleneck section of Canal Road (between Station Road and Gaisby Lane) and improving capacity at key junctions. This will in turn improve access to strategic development areas of regional importance and enable further improvements to bus priority to be provided on Manningham Lane/Keighley Road.