Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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c2R
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Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by c2R »

Hot on the heels of the A602 route strategy, Herts have published detailed design plans for the A120 Little Hadham bypass - a 3.9km offline S2/S2+1 road costing almost £30m

http://www.hertsdirect.org/services/tra ... ltbA120BP/

The main surprise really about the route is that it veers back south to meet the current A120, rather than taking a more northerly route to join the Bishop's Stortford bypass.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by JohnnyMo »

c2R wrote: The main surprise really about the route is that it veers back south to meet the current A120, rather than taking a more northerly route to join the Bishop's Stortford bypass.
Considering it will end about 750m from the Bishop's Stortford bypass it does seem penny pinching
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by Chris5156 »

Great that a bypass is now on the cards, but with a straighter route you could reach the Bishop's Stortford Bypass with about the same length of new road! The A120's course will be remarkably lumpy if this goes ahead in its current form.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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Chris5156 wrote:Great that a bypass is now on the cards, but with a straighter route you could reach the Bishop's Stortford Bypass with about the same length of new road! The A120's course will be remarkably lumpy if this goes ahead in its current form.
Going round the Bishops Stortford bypass currently feels like it takes forever :wink: with 8 roundabouts already, adding an extra junction would slow things down.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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Big Nick wrote:
Chris5156 wrote:Great that a bypass is now on the cards, but with a straighter route you could reach the Bishop's Stortford Bypass with about the same length of new road! The A120's course will be remarkably lumpy if this goes ahead in its current form.
Going round the Bishops Stortford bypass currently feels like it takes forever :wink: with 8 roundabouts already, adding an extra junction would slow things down.

indeed... But more roundabouts are potentially coming anyway with the latest district housing plan proposing in-fill to the bypass in all directions, with further accesses onto the bypass to "distribute the traffic".
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by Big Nick »

So what happens in 30 years when the bypass is chock full of residents travelling from home to work or shops and the bypass needs bypassing.... :roll:
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by M4Simon »

c2R wrote:
Big Nick wrote:
Chris5156 wrote:Great that a bypass is now on the cards, but with a straighter route you could reach the Bishop's Stortford Bypass with about the same length of new road! The A120's course will be remarkably lumpy if this goes ahead in its current form.
Going round the Bishops Stortford bypass currently feels like it takes forever :wink: with 8 roundabouts already, adding an extra junction would slow things down.

indeed... But more roundabouts are potentially coming anyway with the latest district housing plan proposing in-fill to the bypass in all directions, with further accesses onto the bypass to "distribute the traffic".
HCC need to decide on the purpose of the A120. The A1184 was built by developers for the purpose of providing access to new housing (I was involved in that scheme many years ago), but the A120 was very definitely a bypass - if I recall correctly the areas north of town were protected from development. Clearly that has changed!

If they're not careful, any benefit from Little Hadham will be lost due to additional journey time around Stortford.

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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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M4Simon wrote:
c2R wrote: indeed... But more roundabouts are potentially coming anyway with the latest district housing plan proposing in-fill to the bypass in all directions, with further accesses onto the bypass to "distribute the traffic".
HCC need to decide on the purpose of the A120. The A1184 was built by developers for the purpose of providing access to new housing (I was involved in that scheme many years ago), but the A120 was very definitely a bypass - if I recall correctly the areas north of town were protected from development. Clearly that has changed!

If they're not careful, any benefit from Little Hadham will be lost due to additional journey time around Stortford.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Yes, I completely agree - I've responded to the housing consultation accordingly. Unfortunately, the housing consultation and housing in general is the responsibility of the district council, not the county council. So East Herts have essentially in their local plan have washed their hands of any infrastructure (water or transport) while at the same time proposing a large amount of new housing).

The immediate proposals are here:
http://www.eastherts.gov.uk/media/pdf/c ... tation.pdf
http://youtu.be/FVkGlnwRi94 (orientation is A120 West at the top, with the stortford bypass at the western end to the left and right.

The longer term whole district proposals are here:
http://www.eastherts.gov.uk/media/pdf/0 ... cument.pdf

Cheers
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by A303Chris »

Thats always the problem with 2 tier set ups, the district planning often goes against the counties Highway Authority's advice. That is one advantage of being in a unitary.

I often use the A120, A10, A414, A1(m) to go from South Mimms to Colchester or vice a versa to miss out the delays on the M25 / A12. Apart from the end of the dual carraigeway at Braintree the only other place I get delays is here.

In a perfect world it would be dual, and connect to the Bishops Stortford bypass which would also be dualled. But a Sc bypass is better than none at all.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by WHBM »

Is this bypass the elimination of the longest remaining stretch of S1 on a Primary Route ?

https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.884372,0 ... 57,,0,8.31
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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WHBM wrote:Is this bypass the elimination of the longest remaining stretch of S1 on a Primary Route ?

https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.884372,0 ... 57,,0,8.31
I would have thought there's miles of S1 primary north of the border! I'm sure I've also been over longer signal controlled bridges in Yorkshire and other parts of the country....
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by Truvelo »

It's inevitable that eventually the unbuilt land within a bypass will be developed. The worst catastrophe is when the bypass is breached and development takes place outside the bypass. Hopefully that won't happen here.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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Consultation on road improvements at Standon has opened here:
http://www.hertsdirect.org/services/tra ... ndimprove/

With consultation leaflet: http://www.hertsdirect.org/docs/pdf/a/a120leafletv6.pdf

I'm surprised that Herts are progressing this so quickly, as construction on the bypass at Little Hadham hasn't started yet. This is pretty much a no-win scheme for the council as residents living on the existing road want the bypass, but residents not living on the existing road don't want the bypass as they are afraid of in-filling up to the new bypass. The council want to improve journey times, but don't want to make the route attractive enough to then be petitioned to extend it across to Stevenage, which is why they are proposing S2. Furthermore, making the A120 more attractive will add to pressure on the existing Bishop's Stortford bypass, which is operating above capacity in peak periods. Not that their proposed housing developments in-filling to the Bishop's Stortford bypass will help with this either.

Finally, the northern route is both hilly, crosses a scheduled ancient monument, and is a longer route for traffic who may decide not to use the bypass unless the existing road was stopped up, while the southern route is also hilly and would probably require the A10 junction moving further to the south.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by ravenbluemoon »

I worked on the survey for this bypass a few months ago - definitely needed, wasn't surprised it was S2 given the roads either side... but the climbing lanes will be very necessary given the hills in the north of the village (walking up and down them all day wrecked me!).

I do believe there was an early plan to join the bypass further along the Stortford one, cutting that corner off, not sure why they decided against it.

I can't open the files on my phone, but I presume they didn't go ahead with the idea of continuing the east end of the bypass to the little Tesco roundabout to the south of the current A120 one? That roundabout would have needed serious widening...
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by JohnnyMo »

c2R wrote:Consultation on road improvements at Standon has opened here:

Finally, the northern route is both hilly, crosses a scheduled ancient monument, and is a longer route for traffic who may decide not to use the bypass unless the existing road was stopped up, while the southern route is also hilly and would probably require the A10 junction moving further to the south.
I vote for the Northern route ( A507-A10-A120 ), but expect it is the least likely.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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ravenbluemoon wrote:I worked on the survey for this bypass a few months ago - definitely needed, wasn't surprised it was S2 given the roads either side... but the climbing lanes will be very necessary given the hills in the north of the village (walking up and down them all day wrecked me!).

I do believe there was an early plan to join the bypass further along the Stortford one, cutting that corner off, not sure why they decided against it.

I can't open the files on my phone, but I presume they didn't go ahead with the idea of continuing the east end of the bypass to the little Tesco roundabout to the south of the current A120 one? That roundabout would have needed serious widening...
With the Little Hadham bypass, yes, there was an earlier plan to join to the Stortford bypass directly, but this was decided against, as was any continuation of the bypass to the east to join with the little Tesco roundabout - as it currently stands, it's planned to be a giant hump shaped bypass!
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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JohnnyMo wrote:
c2R wrote:Consultation on road improvements at Standon has opened here:

Finally, the northern route is both hilly, crosses a scheduled ancient monument, and is a longer route for traffic who may decide not to use the bypass unless the existing road was stopped up, while the southern route is also hilly and would probably require the A10 junction moving further to the south.
I vote for the Northern route ( A507-A10-A120 ), but expect it is the least likely.
The northern route only really makes sense if there is ever a plan to continue the road across to Stevenage - which the council are clearly against - their current preferred route is to improve the A602 between Ware and Stevenage and improve the A120...

Also, I think that if a northern route were built, something significant would need to be done to stop up the old road to prevent traffic continuing to use it, as it would still be a more direct route for the main traffic flows.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by owen b »

c2R wrote:the southern route..... would probably require the A10 junction moving further to the south.
Why? Couldn't the existing A10 / A120 roundabout be enlarged/realigned to accommodate the new bypass and the local road into Standon / Puckeridge? I don't see anything in the way of a southern bypass route linking with the A10 there.
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

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c2R wrote:Hot on the heels of the A602 route strategy, Herts have published detailed design plans for the A120 Little Hadham bypass - a 3.9km offline S2/S2+1 road costing almost £30m

http://www.hertsdirect.org/services/tra ... ltbA120BP/

The main surprise really about the route is that it veers back south to meet the current A120, rather than taking a more northerly route to join the Bishop's Stortford bypass.
JohnnyMo wrote:
c2R wrote: The main surprise really about the route is that it veers back south to meet the current A120, rather than taking a more northerly route to join the Bishop's Stortford bypass.
Considering it will end about 750m from the Bishop's Stortford bypass it does seem penny pinching
Sorry, but if there's one thing that's really sticking in my craw lately, it's describing road schemes in metres, and k's, and NOT in yards, and miles. Despite the fact that distances, and speed limits can only be lawfully signed in miles.

Unless the law is changed, like in Ireland, stick to yards, and miles please. Otherwise we have a situation like they had in Ireland.

(Just to make clear, I'm not having a go at members here, per se. Many authorities are guilty of it too.).
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Re: Herts - A120 Little Hadham bypass

Post by JohnnyMo »

Berk wrote:Sorry, but if there's one thing that's really sticking in my craw lately, it's describing road schemes in metres, and k's, and NOT in yards, and miles. Despite the fact that distances, and speed limits can only be lawfully signed in miles.

Unless the law is changed, like in Ireland, stick to yards, and miles please. Otherwise we have a situation like they had in Ireland.

(Just to make clear, I'm not having a go at members here, per se. Many authorities are guilty of it too.).
Accepting roads are signed in Imperial measurements they are, AFAIK, actually designed & built in metric measurements. I have from about the age of 7 been using both.
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