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ronA1066 wrote:\quote="StormA420"]So no M31 then? \/quote]
You must be joking! Cutting through the stockbroker belt where house prices outside the towns are in the £3-5 million bracket? Just to buy the land for a short length of motorway would be a billion or more before a spade went into the ground. And apart from the sheer cost, the Tories want to win the next election. Threatening to cut the M31 through there would be the quickest way to bring about a Liberal Democrat revival that would cost the Tories their parliamentary majority.
Which would be a very good thing
Why would anyone outside that immediate area care, beyond appreciating not having the south west side of the M25 permanently congested?
Because it's by far the worst bit of getting from the West of England and South Wales to Kent and the Continent. It's even a nuisance for most of the English Midlands. I'm sorry, but Birmingham, Bristol, and Cardiff are more important than a couple of millionaire banksters from Bracknell and Woking (they could always be rehoused in Milton Keynes). The alternative really should be closing the M4 and M25's junctions with local roads within the London outer suburban area, or making them country-bound only. After all, London suburbanites have excellent bus service (the former Green Line) by national standards, and they should be encouraged to make more use of them, rather than clogging up the long-distance road network with local journeys.
The only realistic road-based alternative to the M31 is to finally build the North Cross Route (which at least goes through the sort of places that vote for Jeremy Corbyn, and so are a complete political irrelevance) so that more traffic continues in on the M4 and M40 and on to the Blackwall Tunnel and the M2 and M20.
It appears from the story that Kingston Council only propose an A243 to A3 link, ie not northwards via Claygate. But that hasn't stopped Claygate residents from protesting. At least their concillors know what the plans are - nobody else knows anything about what exactly is being proposed.
The development looks like a resucitation of the pre war Malden Rushett development. The railway line from Chessington south was to continue via a new Malden Rushett Station to leatherhead (some of the embankment works were done before war intervened).
If this new road is built perhaps they will classify it as the A23 and rename the top end of the M23 the M237?
It will certainly be the fastest way from London to Brighton - Express Coaches to Gatwick already go that way with the A243 as it is. Wont Hook be fun in the morning rush hour.....
I knew I had this somewhere....a 1994 consultation document regarding the A24/A243 Leatherhead bypass. Proposals to dual between the A246 roundabout and the A243 at Malden Rushett, with the MR bypass and link to A3 mentioned.
If this ever came to fruition it would provide a decent (better?) link from S/SW London to the south coast. Effectively it would form two arms of M25 J10, eliminating the need for two links there if the junction is to become freeflow. (Similar concept to the M6 J19/20).
The A243 would be trunked, but unless an upgrade is also provided to the southern M25 J9, the queues would stretch back a mile on the mainline.
As for the northern junction, take a look at this:
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Certainly won't be happening for £20 million (1994 cost) but it's interesting to note that the delays forecast in 2006 without the improvement (30 minutes) never materialised - even today at peak times I would suggest no longer than 5-6 minutes.
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