Old A12 - Copdock

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oblong
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Old A12 - Copdock

Post by oblong »

Does anybody know much about the construction of the A12 bypass at Copdock?

The old A12 exists today with mimimal traffic and is blocked off at the end in which the old duel carraigeway can be walked along, through the under-pass of the A14 and into Ipswich's park and ride. I beleive the By pass was set to open in 1984 however it was built in stages.

Does anybody else know anymore?
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Post by FosseWay »

My grandparents lived in that area when they built the Orwell Bridge and the A45/A12 southern bypass to Ipswich. I remember as a (rather sad) child noting the appearance of a D2 section of unclassified road and badgered my parents into driving along it (despite it was not where we wanted to go, as we always went west-east). I'm sure in the early days it was still fully usable as a dual carriageway, though possibly with a non-NSL speed limit. I haven't been back there since.
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Post by t1(M) »

It has a 50 limit, except the dead end stub which is NSL (!) and is still a dual carriageway. These are some of the pictures I posted in the A1x album.
In the first picture, you are approaching the point where the through route turns off to the left.Image
The second shows the beginning of the stub (Note the juxtaposition of the "No Through Road" and NSL signs!) Image
At the end of the driveable road the old n/b carriageway continues as a cycle path (seen here looking back towards London).
Image
This leads under the A14 - note the old road markings - there was a right turn through a gap in the central reservation at this pointImage
Beyond the A14 we find the P+R station. The bridge shown here is the approach to the car park - the A14 is behind the camera.Image
Buses leaving the P+R use the old A12 line to rejoining the road into Ipswich (now the A1214)Image
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Post by Adam14 »

When the A45 part of the by-pass was opened ( 1983 approx ), it terminated on to a rounderbout with the old A12 hence the arrow markings on the photo in t1 (M)'s post. The copdock by-pass opened late 1984/earley 1985 the A45 then ended at the Copdock interchange, opening through to Claydon late 1985.
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Post by oblong »

Thanks for all contributions so far. Does anybody know when the old A12 was blocked off?

C475 is the name used for the road according to wikipedia and the highway agency. Although this isn't clear on any map or sign post.
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Post by PeterA5145 »

I recall reading on here (possibly from Truvelo) that the 50 limit has only appeared in the past couple of years. Can't imagine the local Talivans spending much time down there anyway :msntongue:
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Post by oblong »

QUOTE FROM ANOTHER BOARD:

There is a (pretty much) disused 2-mile section of unclassified dual carriageway to the south west of Ipswich. It's still used by local traffic, though it is now closed at the northern end where it's bisected by the new A14 (originally the A45 and built in the late 1980s). The nice thing about it is that as it's a dual carriageway, it still has its 70mph speed limit (at least it did when I last drove along it a few months ago!).



You can see the northernmost end here. The public carriageway now ends where the dotted section begins on the overlay map, and you must now turn left into Chapel Lane to continue your journey. The dotted section on the overlay map shows the original A12 route into Ipswich. The 'car park' shown on the aerial view of this section, on the east side of the A14, is Ipswich's first Park & Ride which opened a couple of years ago. The P&R buses use the formerly disused northern exit onto the A1214 as an access road to the site.



The southernmost end of the old A12 section is shown here, where it joins the modern A12 at a dumbbell interchange.



(NB: You can see the original road layout immediately after the modern A12 was opened in the attached image (circled), from a 1985 UK atlas I have. Notice that the A45 (A14) had not yet been built between the Copdock interchange and Claydon, and so northbound traffic bound for Bury St Edmunds was for a time diverted along woefully inadequate country roads to join the new A45 dual carriageway at Claydon.)
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Post by t1(M) »

oblong wrote:QUOTE FROM ANOTHER BOARD:
It's dated 3/6/02 on this thread
the original poster (Matt_EA_A14) wrote:(NB: You can see the original road layout immediately after the modern A12 was opened in the attached image (circled), from a 1985 UK atlas I have. Notice that the A45 (A14) had not yet been built between the Copdock interchange and Claydon, and so northbound traffic bound for Bury St Edmunds was for a time diverted along woefully inadequate country roads to join the new A45 dual carriageway at Claydon.)
I'd like to see that, but sadly the link to the attached image no longer works
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Post by sotonsteve »

I can't say much on the subject, as I was born in the late 1980s. All I can say is that I love to see roads like this; once substandard, but now overengineered for their purpose. Maybe I shouldn't use the word overengineered, as you can't make a road too safe.
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Post by BobSykes »

t1(M) wrote:I'd like to see that, but sadly the link to the attached image no longer works
Here's a scan then from my Collins Atlas of 1982:

Image

Now that I have a functioning scanner for the first time in 3 years, I've scanned some other Collins 1982 clips in to the Old Maps gallery.[/img]
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Post by Arcuarius »

Interesting scan there.

I noticed the primary A1100 running between Copdock and Claydon. Was this road (or, more specifically, the number) a temporary measure or had it been there all along? It is now the southern part of the B1113. That single carriageway part of the A45 between Whitton and Claydon is now nothing more than a bus lane.
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Post by Truvelo »

PeterA5145 wrote:I recall reading on here (possibly from Truvelo) that the 50 limit has only appeared in the past couple of years. Can't imagine the local Talivans spending much time down there anyway :msntongue:
I can't remember when the limit was reduced but it would have been about 2 years ago. Fortunately it's still D2. Had it been bypassed nowadays one of the carriageways would be turned into a footpath/cycleway. The traffic levels simply don't justify D2 but thankfully 20 odd years ago they left the old roads intact when building bypasses.
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Post by oblong »

BobSykes wrote:
t1(M) wrote:I'd like to see that, but sadly the link to the attached image no longer works
Here's a scan then from my Collins Atlas of 1982:

Image

Now that I have a functioning scanner for the first time in 3 years, I've scanned some other Collins 1982 clips in to the Old Maps gallery.[/img]
I've seen another map of around that period simular to that and It says the southern by pass "due to open 1983" and notheren "1984" or maybe it was the other way round.

You know where the A14 meets the old A12 on that map, after copdock interchange, you will notice it looks like an T junction which is in the place of the present footpath. So did this mean access was avalible to A14 (or A45) there for a short period of time?
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Post by Adam14 »

Mr_Storm wrote:
I noticed the primary A1100 running between Copdock and Claydon. Was this road (or, more specifically, the number) a temporary measure or had it been there all along?
The A1100 was there long before the by_pass. It is a simalar story with The A1093.
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Post by owen b »

You might also notice the old alignment of the A1071 at its eastern end. It was diverted to its modern course sometime in the 1980s. Martlesham on the A12 is also missing its late 1980s bypass in that extract.
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Post by Arcuarius »

Adam14 wrote:
Mister_Storm wrote:I noticed the primary A1100 running between Copdock and Claydon. Was this road (or, more specifically, the number) a temporary measure or had it been there all along?
The A1100 was there long before the by_pass. It is a simalar story with The A1093.
The only reason why I ask is that it seems such a short route not deserving of a seemingly important, easy to remember number as A1100. Bit of a waste of a good number, I think.

Still, it's B1113 now.
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Post by c2R »

It's interesting that the bridge opened first, wasn't tolled, and that it was built at all, given that a northern bypass would have probably been cheaper.
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Post by Adam14 »

Mr_Storm wrote:
The only reason why I ask is that it seems such a short route not deserving of a seemingly important, easy to remember number as A1100. Bit of a waste of a good number, I think.
I dont know why that number got chosen, luck of the draw I suppose.

c2R wrote:
It's interesting that the bridge opened first, wasn't tolled, and that it was built at all, given that a northern bypass would have probably been cheaper.
When the bypass was first planned in the mid 1960's, the optioin of routing the road arond the north of Ipswich was considerd. Another point of interest is that Orwell crossing was orginally plannned to be a tunnel.
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Post by KevS »

I seem to recall that the southern bypass when first built tapered off into a single carriageway just after the A137 turn. It then finished on a temporary roundabout on the A12.

I should also point out the following

*Between the opening of the southern bypass in 1982, and the opening of the eastern bypass in 1983, the road was actually a primary (possibly trunk) unclassified route! As the scans show, the A45 still took the Bixley Road/Heath Road route to the east of the town before multiplexing with the A12 on Colchester Road and Valley Road to the north. The bypass was signed (A12, A45). I think it took the A12 number once the eastern bypass was opened, then the A45 number when the western bypass opened in 1985, and then of course was renumbered for the third time in twelve years when the A14 came into being in 1994!

*The junction of the A12 and the A1093 to the east (which I could have sworn was primary), controlled by traffic lights at that time, was replaced with a roundabout when the eastern bypass was completed. The new A12 would follow the northern part of the old A1093 with three roundabouts in Martlesham before going past Brightwell and Foxhall on a new road. It's this stretch of road which is closed southbound at the moment thanks to a bridge strike. The A1093, after going back to single carriageway would then meander through villages before emerging on the A45 at Levington.

*The old A45 (now A1156) Felixstowe Road only had minimal rerouting, with a short length of road joining up to the Seven Hills interchange with the bypass. The old route is still open to drive between Nacton and Levington and has a short length of dual carriageway which I think is still NSL.

*Nacton Road was widened between the bypass and the airport to take account of the traffic which would leave at what is now A14 J58 to get to the industrial estate - it was also the main exit for the eastern docks traffic. When Ransomes Way was built, linking Felixstowe Road with Nacton Road, along with the Europark, the same section of Nacton Road was widened again and now given the number of A1189. There have been several attempts over the years to make this section dual carriageway, especially now that the large Ravenswood Estate has been built on the site of the airport.

*The A137 had also been diverted. A new dual carriageway Bourne Bridge was built at the southern end of Wherstead Road. Before, the A137 would have carried on past The Ostrich pub up Bourne Hill with the B1456 to the Shotley peninsula diving off to the left. After 1982, a roundabout was built at the junction with the B1456, and A137 traffic would swing right up a new road leading to the junction with the bypass. This road, mostly three lanes wide up the hill is often the first road that is seen from the intercity line coming into Ipswich.

*The A1071 was rerouted at the same time as the Copdock bypass was built as mentioned above. It was diverted from Hadleigh Road onto a new road on the rough alignment of Poplar Lane, which had been used for years as a rat run anyway. It now emerges at a traffic light junction with London Road and Scrivener Drive by the Post House Hotel.

*On the western side, a junction was built with Sproughton Road. The original plan was to build a junction with the B1067 Bramford Road, but this would have resulted in demolition of several houses on Bramford Road and Henniker Road, as well the loss of a popular recreation ground at the western end of Bramford Lane, so that idea was quickly dropped. Like the Nacton Road junction, the Sproughton Road turn was used mostly for traffic for the industrial estates.

*Finally, the old A45 used to continue, as seen on the scan, up Norwich Road, before becoming dual carriageway just north of the junction with Whitton Church Lane. The now A1156 was diverted along a new road, Bury Road, just after the junction with White House Road, going past the new Asda and coming out at the trumpet junction with the new bypass. For years Old Norwich Road used to just stop in a huge pile of asphalt, just as the chevrons on the road indicated that the dual carriageway was about to start. Today there is a bus gate.
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Post by Arcuarius »

Fascinating stuff.
KevS wrote:For years Old Norwich Road used to just stop in a huge pile of asphalt, just as the chevrons on the road indicated that the dual carriageway was about to start. Today there is a bus gate.
It could be argued that it still does at the bottom of the hill. There's a wide piece of tarmac where on one side of a length of kerbing is a standard S2 bus lane. The asphalt piles lie on the other side. All there is to signify the direction of the road is two small chevrons (diag 515) high up on two posts. Surely a keep right sign would be better?
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