A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

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Stevie D
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Stevie D »

SteveA30 wrote:Are consultants and designers the same person(s)? Can you have designers designing without consultants?
Surely a consultant is anyone you buy in from outside. For certain aspects of major civil engineering projects, there may not be enough demand even in the HA to employ people with those skills full-time, so they are hired in as consultants as and when needed. If those people were on the HA payroll doing exactly the same work, they would no longer be consultants.
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Bryn666
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Bryn666 »

Given the HA don't appear to undertake their own design work everything is farmed out to consulting engineers.

In house design is a rare beast these days, even in local authorities major projects beyond basic line and sign jobs go to consultancies.

Aecom, Arup, Jacobs, Atkins, the list goes on. Despite popular opinion consultancy fees are not the biggest cost... although 10% seems to be a good starting rate ;-)
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by fras »

I think the term used to be "consulting engineers". In civil engineering when I was at university, (not doing Civ Eng BTW), it was divided up into civil engineering contractors, and consulting civil engineers. It was the latter that did the design work. Both are very honourable professions, and I doff my hat to them. What I also do remember is the Civ Eng undergrads did like a drink or two !

I should perhaps declare that before I retired, I was engaged in railway consultancy, so could perhaps be called a "poncy consultant" I think the expression used to be "if the cap fits, wear it" !

Seriously, though, I think in this country, we do spend far, far, too much money on study, and not enough on actual building. The last 30 years proves the point, surely ?
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Haydn1971 »

I suspect you are mixing up political indecision with consultants doing studies over and over... Consultants report against a brief issued by a client, if the client keeps getting budgets pulled by successive government indecision, it's a little unfair to point the finger of blame in the consultants direction.

As Bryn explains above, in house design is very rare now, larger local authorities have the capability to design medium level schemes, recent examples that spring to mind is Sheffield City Council and the £80M inner relief road - the team that did that work, were rewarded for their effort by being TUPE'ed over to AMEY - that's progress for ya.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

Might a toll motorway from the end of the M67 to M1 J35a be commercially viable? The time saving would be far greater than one typically gets on the M6(T). There must be a lot of traffic on the A628, A57 and M62 that would divert to such a road.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Peter_B5470 »

Ref the time saving - weren't "They" planning to instal traffic light at the Flouch to deliberately delay people to offset any time saving in case it encouraged more traffic?
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by c2R »

I would have thought that for Manchester destination traffic heading from the south east (e.g. the eastern coastal ports from Felixtowe round to Folkestone) the route from the M67 via Stocksbridge, Worksop, and the A1, A14, M11 is already a viable (provided you don't hit Mottram and Tintwistle at the wrong time of day) with distance approximately equal to that of using the M6 and M1. This must further be the case when you look at goods from Harwich and Felixtowe.

It would be interesting to know the breakdown on who the route users are and where they have come from on a typical day (i.e. where there are no issues on the M62, M1, A14, or M6 to distort the traffic figures).
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Conekicker »

jackal wrote:Might a toll motorway from the end of the M67 to M1 J35a be commercially viable? The time saving would be far greater than one typically gets on the M6(T). There must be a lot of traffic on the A628, A57 and M62 that would divert to such a road.
Depends how well the M62 works when it's been "smarted" all the way.

Although looking at how "successful" the M6(T) is, I doubt anyone would be interesting in running an M67(T).
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Bryn666 »

I do think there's a chance of a toll tunnel working under Woodhead but given the sheer lengths involved that's one hell of a scary lump sum to splash out.

Perhaps for long distance traffic we'd be better upgrading the A1, A50, A500, and A34 to provide much better relief for N-S movements instead of relying purely on the M6 and M1.

Finish the M65 too.

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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Ritchie333 »

Apologies for the thread bump and returning to an old rant of mine but yesterday I had to suffer the (admittedly self-inflicted by detouring to Holmfirth) misery of crawling through Mottram, Hollingworth and Tintwistle twice, once in each direction. The bypass signs are clearly visible along the road with notices to contact your local MP, and the whole place looks totally run down due to the traffic along it.

Is the scheme totally dead at the moment, or is it being stalled in design somewhere? I can't remember what the status was, it's been off, on, off, on for decades.

As an aside, I know I tend to take the "scenic" route over the fast one, but I'm not convinced that Manchester - Ashford is that much slower going via Woodhead / M1 than the M6, when you take traffic jams into consideration.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by chris486 »

Ritchie333 wrote:Apologies for the thread bump and returning to an old rant of mine but yesterday I had to suffer the (admittedly self-inflicted by detouring to Holmfirth) misery of crawling through Mottram, Hollingworth and Tintwistle twice, once in each direction. The bypass signs are clearly visible along the road with notices to contact your local MP, and the whole place looks totally run down due to the traffic along it.

Is the scheme totally dead at the moment, or is it being stalled in design somewhere? I can't remember what the status was, it's been off, on, off, on for decades.

As an aside, I know I tend to take the "scenic" route over the fast one, but I'm not convinced that Manchester - Ashford is that much slower going via Woodhead / M1 than the M6, when you take traffic jams into consideration.
It can't be totally dead because of the 'talk' about a tunnel - link here

Off-peak - and by that I mean at times like 0300 when there's no one else around, this can be an excellent route from Manchester to London. I used it this month on a Sunday evening to get back from London - a pleasant drive.


Impatient drivers should avoid this route at all costs in its present form but even a modest bypass would make this a good route between Manchester and London at all times, not just in the small hours.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Ritchie333 »

chris486 wrote:Impatient drivers should avoid this route at all costs in its present form but even a modest bypass would make this a good route between Manchester and London at all times, not just in the small hours.
Yes, I agree. I'd never really considered it before as this, but the M6 goes a considerable distance away from Manchester and the A556 still hasn't been resolved - with the bypasses complete, getting to anywhere east of Stockport from London might well be a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.

For what it's worth, I did Salford Quays - Ashford via Woodhead last night in just under five hours door (well, car park) to door.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by WHBM »

Bryn666 wrote:Despite popular opinion consultancy fees are not the biggest cost... although 10% seems to be a good starting rate ;-)
A generation ago 7% of project cost used to be the rule of thumb. It's one of those things where not only has the project cost risen ahead of inflation, but the percentage of this represented by one aspect has also risen.

10% may be a good starting point, but so often we read that it is designed (10%) and then shelved. Then it comes up again, new consultancy won't use the old data but want to do it from scratch (another 10%). Then it goes into the pool. Finally a start date is proposed, but now there's another design (and another 10%).

Then there's no longer the money left to do it :(

Meanwhile, there's the role of the Project Manager (guess who) at the consultancy. You may think they are the one contributing their long experience in design efficiency. No, nothing to do with that at all. Their brief, from the partners/directors, is just to maximise the charging to the client on the work in hand, and to ensure every bit of this is justified with perfect timesheets, client variation orders attached, etc, so in the billing run at the end of the month by the accountant, nothing can be queried. Any old drongo who can be stuck on the project and justified is rolled into the team. Yes, there needs to be a solution delivered the client is satisfied with, but the mantra from the top is invoice, invoice, invoice.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by RichardA35 »

WHBM wrote:
Bryn666 wrote:Despite popular opinion consultancy fees are not the biggest cost... although 10% seems to be a good starting rate ;-)
A generation ago 7% of project cost used to be the rule of thumb. It's one of those things where not only has the project cost risen ahead of inflation, but the percentage of this represented by one aspect has also risen.

10% may be a good starting point, but so often we read that it is designed (10%) and then shelved. Then it comes up again, new consultancy won't use the old data but want to do it from scratch (another 10%). Then it goes into the pool. Finally a start date is proposed, but now there's another design (and another 10%).

Then there's no longer the money left to do it :(

Meanwhile, there's the role of the Project Manager (guess who) at the consultancy. You may think they are the one contributing their long experience in design efficiency. No, nothing to do with that at all. Their brief, from the partners/directors, is just to maximise the charging to the client on the work in hand, and to ensure every bit of this is justified with perfect timesheets, client variation orders attached, etc, so in the billing run at the end of the month by the accountant, nothing can be queried. Any old drongo who can be stuck on the project and justified is rolled into the team. Yes, there needs to be a solution delivered the client is satisfied with, but the mantra from the top is invoice, invoice, invoice.
TBH the Clients need to man up and grow a pair, fix their scope and programme and then they can put the consultants on a fixed fee. Unfortunately they won't, as they are subject to too many uncertainties and are basically clueless in how to manage their way out of their predicament hence the need for consultants and PM's.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by roadphotos »

It looks like there's some positive news on this long awaited scheme. The planning application for the Mottram By-Pass is to go ahead this year (2020) with a possible start of construction in 2021/22.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by fras »

I see the word "possible" in there, indicating it will be more like 10 years after that !!
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by A303Chris »

Latest update from the HE on the Mottram bypass.

However with no bypass of Hollingworth or Tintwistle , it just seems, IMO, a big expensive sticking plaster.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Bryn666 »

A303Chris wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 09:57 Latest update from the HE on the Mottram bypass.

However with no bypass of Hollingworth or Tintwistle , it just seems, IMO, a big expensive sticking plaster.
It'll fuel the never build anything anywheres, "look at all this expensive road has done, moved the queue 4 miles... blah blah"...
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by Helvellyn »

Bryn666 wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:24
A303Chris wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 09:57 Latest update from the HE on the Mottram bypass.

However with no bypass of Hollingworth or Tintwistle , it just seems, IMO, a big expensive sticking plaster.
It'll fuel the never build anything anywheres, "look at all this expensive road has done, moved the queue 4 miles... blah blah"...
AKA "the people who cause far less devastation than those who complain about them". Why do you think some of us have been so utterly turned against building?

In this case though my main objection is that it seems to be a series of roundabouts (surprise surprise). Maybe they'll flow better than the existing traffic.
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Re: A57/A628 Mottram Tintwistle bypass

Post by jackal »

So they're now saying a further consultation this year with a Spring 2023 start, a substantial delay compared to the schedule reported in February (see roadphotos' post above).

I hope against hope that this means the scheme has been redesigned to be less of a roundabout fest and at least somewhat compatible with the long term plans for a trans-Pennine expressway.
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