Reminds me of a mock up M11 Junction 11 revamp I made a while ago.

Reminds me of a mock up M11 Junction 11 revamp I made a while ago.

If you're putting a stackabout in there, why not take the easy way out and plug the A1307 into it

I've come up with a new St Albans bypass, which involves upgrading the route back to A5 status (from M1 Junction 9 to London) and reusing part of the A4147 with it. The new build is DC with roundabouts to save money (gotta have the best of both worlds ). The old route through the city will remain A5183.

Simister

Looking at this - very simple layout revision - M60 to be mainline so this will maintain the ring road. M62 trumpets to the M60 and curves off then the M66 motorway can trumpet from the M62.....

Issue solved. with no destruction of the towns- but there would be chaos for a while !

Seeing recent discussion on the M65 made me wonder how the motorway could be linked up to the A629 to form a new route across the Pennines.

This has been particularly challenging due to the terrain, however the routing I have come up with is this:


I have tried to follow valleys where possible to reduce gradients, which would mean a motorway would not be possible - at most a D2 would probably be built.

There are three intermediate junctions on the route. This is assuming the road is D2, with the junction close to the M65 being sited as there would be a spur off the motorway (this could be removed if it was a motorway). The other junctions have link roads, the one at the A56 due to the Transpennine route going over the A56 on a viaduct due to the proximity of the reservoirs.

Why consider them to be slips? Why not consider all the mainlines to be turning right (or left in the States)?

Here's something I thought up having made a trip through Bath recently, taking the A36 from Bristol down to the south coast. It's clear that the route could use some improvements, and the section of A36 heading out of Bath towards Warminster is probably the worst section of the entire road. Therefore to solve this problem and give Bath a bit of relief from traffic, along with providing a section of much-needed dual carriageway to provide a decent overtaking opportunity, I present the A36 Bath Southern Bypass!

A simple fork off the A4 starts the new road off, and access is provided in the opposite direction via a half-diamond junction with the A39 shortly after. These two junctions are the only grade-separated part of the road. There are two further roundabout junctions, one with the A367, and the second tying the road back into the existing A36 to the south of Freshford. There are no other connections to the road - all local roads would either pass under or over the new road, although I haven't shown this on the map. D2 for its duration, it would be a great relief for the existing road and Bath itself, although I'm well aware of the difficult terrain in the area, and it's clear that at least two bridges would be required over the two streams south of Bath.

It's a nice map, but surely there's several problems with doing a Bath bypass in isolation :
i) you'd encourage use of the A36 as a long distance through route, so you need to resurrect a plan to upgrade all the way to Southampton, otherwise you dump even more traffic onto inadequate sections of the A36 further south
ii) other routes south of the M4 between the M5 and A34 are mostly poor or worse, so any decent new route is going to attract traffic diverting from poorer routes (eg. A37/A362 traffic south of Bristol might divert to the A4/A36)
iii) surely a through route to the M4 (ie. a Bath eastern bypass) is a higher priority than a south western bypass - I don't think a south western bypass would relieve Bath very much
iv) money, environmemtal issues, very up and down topography etc.

Doesn't seem particularly necessary to me, as the road is S2 to the northwest, a large at grade roundabout should suffice.

If grade separation is required though just go with the traditional roundabout interchange and have the A4 TOTSO. Then you might as well turn the other two roundabouts into roundabout interchanges as well.

On the whole though, the section running out of Bath is by far the worst section of the road in terms of design, and the speed that it can be taken at, so if there were to be some form of improvement to any part of the road, I would personally say there is the best place to do it.

You're right about attracting additional volumes of traffic from other routes though, but then again, that shouldn't really be a reason to not upgrade a road, it's just something that needs to be taken into consideration with the design. The long stretch of D2 would not only provide additional capacity but allow for safe overtaking of slower vehicles where currently that's incredibly difficult.

About the usefulness of the bypass in relieving the centre from traffic, I'm looking at from the perspective that A36 traffic has to go through the entire city and out the other side, whereas north-south traffic just has to loop round over the river. A northern bypass would provide a similar benefit to the new A36 route as that traffic has to fight through the whole of Bath as well, but I'm not sure how much use that would get.



Not a bad idea, and if you threw in an A4 bypass of Saltford with it connecting up to the roundabout at Keynsham as well, you could have continuous D2 from the Avon Ring to right around Bath!

I also followed the route down to Southampton, it shouldn't be too hard to dual it all the way, although Salisbury would be difficult, either go a long way around or do a lot of demolition (the usual story really).

I agree, there are large sections of the A36 that are already S3 anyway so those bits shouldn't be too hard to do. Were this to happen though they'd definitely need to do something with Salisbury, and I'm not sure what would be the best solution there. There's so many roads in and out of the place that the best option would surely be a full ring road.

The A36 though is by and large a pretty good route anyway, and a couple of D2 sections here and there each a few miles long would really do the trick I think.

Why not go the whole hog and extend the M27 along the A36 corridor, serve Lulsgate Bottom, cross the Severn Barrage, then up to Trefforest...

And get the M3 to it's true aim - Exeter!

If most of the traffic is heading to the M4 rather than Bristol then an eastern bypass would be more useful. A link to the A4 at Batheaston as was originally intended would solve most of the problems.

This is where they went wrong - they built a Batheaston Bypass when what was required was a Bath Eastern Bypass!

Ha!

Ah...

I'll get my coat now.

That's a red card offence. It'll be an early bath for you.

Well I've gone ahead and started a series of maps demonstrating how I would completely revamp the A14. Preferably it would all be to motorway standard but in this day and age you might not be able to have everything. :/ Anyway, here's the first phase:



This route isn't too far off what the Highways Agency planned a few years ago, except that I've preserved more of the original route so that all modes of road transport get their fair share of thought put in. Here are the other classification changes:

- A14 north of Huntingdon upgraded to A604(M)
- A14 west of Huntingdon redesignated A141
- A1(M) extended down to M14

A new link between the remaining section of A14 and the new M14 would be constructed just south of Huntingdon. The A1307 would be extended along the old A14 to meet the A14 at Huntingdon. It would be converted to S2 with the remaining space reserved for cyclists, pedestrians and horses to create a more pleasant environment for those with properties dotted along the route. A bit like the way the M74 replaced the A74 in Scotland, except FAR better maintained.

As far as the M11 and A428 go, these streams of traffic would be split up, one Directional T for the former and a roundabout for the latter. All connections with the A1307 would be removed for good.

Looks a lot better than the current plan to upgrade the A428 and A1198! Though you do appear to be drifting quite close to Grafham...



I think some form of connection would need to be made here, this is one of the major routes into Cambridge from the north from what I remember...? Unless you add an A1307 junction onto the M11 somehow?