The story so far ...

 I (William, the blogger) took a complaint about rat-running to the Parish Council in 2019. It was then put forward to the Shipley Area Committee but they said:

We placed Leathley Avenue/Leathley Road on the reserve list for the Area Committee programme but unfortunately set against the other district priorities it wasn’t selected this year.

The issue of rat running on Leathley Avenue & Road has been in the Shipley Area Committee (Safer Roads Devolved Budget) for a number of years, and never received funding. There are four pages of requests for funding in the Shipley Area in 2019, but the budget for Shipley Area is too small. Click on some of the links on the right to see how long Leathley Road has been an issue. 

As we know, traffic measures around the Primary School were approved (and a good thing too) but Leathley Avenue & Road was ignored again.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hodgin contacted the Bradford Traffic Engineer Simon D'Vali. (Another resident did the same, but we don't know who.) A meeting in Sep 2020 eventually led to Simon putting forward a proposal in January 2021:

We are just drafting a scheme at present that we will be sharing with elected members first.  Once I have political approval for the design, I will come back to both of you and other residents.  We can tie this in with the recommended list of schemes for the Area Committee in April.  No guarantees of funding but it’s the first step.  

and in March, Jeremy got this from Cllr Whitely:

I write to let you know that your Councillors attended a meeting this week with Council officers who are supportive of a scheme to reduce people using the Leathley’s as a ‘rat run’. We offered our full support but any scheme will be subject to appropriate consultations. As you live on the road I am sure you will be made to aware of what is proposed in due course.

Regards

Cllr Jackie Whiteley

Why are rat-runners using Leathley Road? Google!

Google and other sat-navs have decided that Leathley Road and Avenue are the best way to get onto the roads over the Moors.

The proper route starting from the Station Road intersection takes 3 minutes according to Google (at 5:00):

Taking Leathley Road only takes 2 minutes (at 5:00):

(but that doesn't include queueing for a right hand turn at Station Road - Google isn't that smart). 

If we block Leathley Avenue, Google might just tell people to go along Low Hall Road, since that's only 2 minutes:

So we have to block Leathley Road in the southbound direction if we want to stop the rat-runners. (Rat-runners won't go along Farnley Road since that takes 4 minutes)

How many rat runners use Leathley Road & Avenue?

Nearly 1000 rat runners use Leathley Avenue every day. Here are the numbers in May 2019:

On Monday 13th May 2019 (orange line), 972 cars and trucks used Leathley Avenue as a rat run between 7:00am and 7:00pm. If you include the other 12 hours, that's easily more than 1000 vehicles. Most of them (maybe 2/3 or more) are southbound towards Bingley Road.

A Bradford Council Traffic Officer has also counted them:

I can advise you that the vehicle registration survey, to determine the volume of through traffic,  in Leathley Road Area was carried out on 17 July 2019 and the result is as follow:

 

On the day of the survey, during the morning peak period between 8am – 10pm, 165 vehicles used Leathley Road and Leathley Ave, as through traffic, in both directions. 44 vehicles also used Leathley Road and Low Hall Road during the morning peak period in both directions.

 

However, during the evening peak period, between 4pm – 6pm, 224 vehicles used Leathley Road and Leathley Avenue in both directions and 35 used Leathley Road and Low Hall Road during the evening peak period in both directions. The volume of the Heavy Goods Vehicles in the area was very, very small.

 

Rat Runners have been using Leathley Road & Avenue for decades.

 Here is a newspaper story from  1998!

See also:

here (link to above)

and here