M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

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jackal
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M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

Oh dear. HE have released details of their plans here and they sound rather disappointing to say the least.

There are two options. The first one is 'a two-way link across the junction to allow better connection between the M6 and A556, including a new bridge spanning the M6 motorway within the roundabout' - this presumably means a hamburger. The second one is a freeflow (hurrah!) left turn (huh?) for the northbound A556 (oh). Naturally there are also lots of new traffic lights within both options to pad the £ value of the contract. From the sound of it, neither option features freeflow for M6nb->A556nb. So after the promised 'comprehensive upgrade' (p. 36) the main route between Greater Manchester and the South/West Midlands will still go through several sets of signals :bang:

Maybe you're thinking 'well, at least it's cheap, right?'. Nope. £25m-£50m for quite minor works. Nice work if you can get it.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by avtur »

I don't quite understand this, the enclosed map shows J19 as is, i.e. it takes no account of the current works in progress linking M6 J19 to M56 J7 which are going to change the layout of the roundabout.

I'm confused :?
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by wrinkly »

avtur wrote:I don't quite understand this, the enclosed map shows J19 as is, i.e. it takes no account of the current works in progress linking M6 J19 to M56 J7 which are going to change the layout of the roundabout.
It's the wonderful way the scheme pages work on the HE site. If you click on the "Maps" tab, it just shows you a location map, not a scheme map. The location map uses generic mapping which hasn't been updated to show the current A556 scheme.

For schemes at a later stage of development than this, maps of the scheme may be findable elsewhere, for example by clicking on the "Publications" tab, when there is one.

In this case I've no idea what the purple line is or how it comes to be there. It's not related to where the new bridge would be in the hamburger option.

If previous consultations are any guide, the promised leaflet will appear on the website on the day of the first exhibition, August 17, or soon after.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by avtur »

wrinkly wrote:
It's the wonderful way the scheme pages work on the HE site. If you click on the "Maps" tab, it just shows you a location map, not a scheme map. The location map uses generic mapping which hasn't been updated to show the current A556 scheme.
.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by Bryn666 »

I take it the obvious but super expensive option of Knutsford MSA being demolished and Lymm replacing it to facilitate a bigger rebuild is a dead dodo then.

The smart motorway loses some of its benefits if J19 remains cack surely.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by wrinkly »

One of the previous A556 proposals involved slip roads to the new northward A556 passing round the outside of the service area.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

wrinkly wrote:One of the previous A556 proposals involved slip roads to the new northward A556 passing round the outside of the service area.
Yikes! Wouldn't there be less land take and expense if the services onslip went round the back of an M6nb->A556nb semi-direct ramp? Services traffic could get back on the M6 via the A556 roundabout if necessary.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by Phil »

jackal wrote:Oh dear. HE have released details of their plans here and they sound rather disappointing to say the least.

There are two options. The first one is 'a two-way link across the junction to allow better connection between the M6 and A556, including a new bridge spanning the M6 motorway within the roundabout' - this presumably means a hamburger. The second one is a freeflow (hurrah!) left turn (huh?) for the northbound A556 (oh). Naturally there are also lots of new traffic lights within both options to pad the £ value of the contract. From the sound of it, neither option features freeflow for M6nb->A556nb. So after the promised 'comprehensive upgrade' (p. 36) the main route between Greater Manchester and the South/West Midlands will still go through several sets of signals :bang:

Maybe you're thinking 'well, at least it's cheap, right?'. Nope. £25m-£50m for quite minor works. Nice work if you can get it.
The thing is none of the proposed works require additional landtake - which means it can be built quickly. ANYTHING that requires the purchase of non HE owned land (i.e. a free flow solution) is guaranteed to end up going to a full public inquiry thanks to the environmental lobby inflating costs even further plus putting back the competition date by years.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by c2R »

Very disappointing - I was hoping at the least for a Fletton Parkway Interchange style single bridge :(

And to advertise sign renewal and improvements for pedestrian access using the junction :( Pedestrians and horse riders should have separate facilities to keep them away for the interchange, which will quickly become even more busy after the bypass is opened....
Last edited by c2R on Wed Jul 27, 2016 21:30, edited 1 time in total.
Is there a road improvement project going on near you? Help us to document it on the SABRE Wiki - help is available in the Digest forum.
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From the SABRE Wiki: Fletton Parkway Interchange :


Fletton Parkway Interchange is junction 17 of the A1(M).

Work was completed in 2015 to increase the capacity of the free flowing sliproads between the A1(M) and A1139.

| [[Category:E English Trunk Road

... Read More
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jackal
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

Phil wrote:
jackal wrote:Oh dear. HE have released details of their plans here and they sound rather disappointing to say the least.

There are two options. The first one is 'a two-way link across the junction to allow better connection between the M6 and A556, including a new bridge spanning the M6 motorway within the roundabout' - this presumably means a hamburger. The second one is a freeflow (hurrah!) left turn (huh?) for the northbound A556 (oh). Naturally there are also lots of new traffic lights within both options to pad the £ value of the contract. From the sound of it, neither option features freeflow for M6nb->A556nb. So after the promised 'comprehensive upgrade' (p. 36) the main route between Greater Manchester and the South/West Midlands will still go through several sets of signals :bang:

Maybe you're thinking 'well, at least it's cheap, right?'. Nope. £25m-£50m for quite minor works. Nice work if you can get it.
The thing is none of the proposed works require additional landtake - which means it can be built quickly. ANYTHING that requires the purchase of non HE owned land (i.e. a free flow solution) is guaranteed to end up going to a full public inquiry thanks to the environmental lobby inflating costs even further plus putting back the competition date by years.
Maybe in the 90s but these are minor issues under the current legal framework. This is easy to see from looking at the documentation for the many schemes under construction or in prep with land take outside HE boundaries. An inquiry for a scheme of this sort would usually last only a few weeks at most, with a decision from the secretary of state a few months after that.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

c2R wrote:Very disappointing - I was hoping at the least for a Fletton Parkway Interchange style single bridge :(
Yes but that's for Peterborough - this is only Greater Manchester (pop 2.7 mil) we're talking about :roll:

From the SABRE Wiki: Fletton Parkway Interchange :


Fletton Parkway Interchange is junction 17 of the A1(M).

Work was completed in 2015 to increase the capacity of the free flowing sliproads between the A1(M) and A1139.

| [[Category:E English Trunk Road

... Read More
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by wrinkly »

Phil wrote:The thing is none of the proposed works require additional landtake - which means it can be built quickly. ANYTHING that requires the purchase of non HE owned land (i.e. a free flow solution) is guaranteed to end up going to a full public inquiry thanks to the environmental lobby inflating costs even further plus putting back the competition date by years.
Yes but there are still some schemes happening that do require new land take, and the wording used when this scheme was added to the programme in Dec 2014 gave the impression that this would be a major scheme.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by Haydn1971 »

From what I understand, the major free flow options were discounted early on in this design stage as being uneconomic. The two way link provides a right turn from M6 NB onto the new A556 and a right turn from M6 SB onto A556 towards Northwich, the free flow is A556 to M6 NB, but may have a led crossing on it yet ! Both options very disappointing after seeing early drafts of huge flyovers !
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wrinkly
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by wrinkly »

jackal wrote:
wrinkly wrote:One of the previous A556 proposals involved slip roads to the new northward A556 passing round the outside of the service area.
Yikes! Wouldn't there be less land take and expense if the services onslip went round the back of an M6nb->A556nb semi-direct ramp? Services traffic could get back on the M6 via the A556 roundabout if necessary.
I'm trying to remember what it was like. I didn't know about this proposal when it was active but found out later. It may have been the A556(M) scheme published in 1996.

Perhaps the slip roads round the outside of the service area were only to connect with a pair of roundabouts on the A5033, replacing the present south-facing slip roads to the J19 roundabout.

I think maybe the A556(M) route started at a fork on the M6 north of the A5033 and ran initially east of the present A556. It crossed the present A556 about a third of the way from J19 to Mere and thereafter followed a route roughly similar to that now being built. At the A556 crossing there was a half-dumbell with north-facing slip roads, so that traffic from Manchester to Northwich could turn off onto the present A556 and continue via the J19 roundabout, and vice versa.

I think I first tried to work out this layout from the description in the draft orders, and later saw a map of it on the then Macclesfield BC's website.

Amazingly, interactive maps from the former local plan of the former Macclesfield Borough Council can still be accessed online!!

http://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/ce/localplan/macclesfield/

Zoom in on the Tabley area!
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by M19 »

Major in the eyes of HE is doing something that involves anything more than replacing a cat's eye. Fifty million quid rearranging queues of traffic is not good value. If the stats suggest that it does then the peeps in the traffic data massaging...erm modelling department must be hitting that square peg hard to force it through that round hole.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by wrinkly »

M19 wrote:Major in the eyes of HE is doing something that involves anything more than replacing a cat's eye. Fifty million quid rearranging queues of traffic is not good value.
Remember that the same batch of schemes involved conversion of M1/M62 Lofthouse and M25/A3 Wisley to free flow!
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by fras »

Its the usual British spatchcock. Tell everybody you're going to do something to improve the situation, make a fuss about how good it all is, but do very, very, little in practice. I always said Jn 19 would be the Achilles Heel of the A556 scheme.The M56 end is free-flow, so Jn 19 becomes the bottle-neck. The original design was just dreadful, frankly, no improvement at all on the current junction. For God's sake, this is London-Manchester we're connecting here, not some small town in Middle England !
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

wrinkly wrote:
jackal wrote:
wrinkly wrote:One of the previous A556 proposals involved slip roads to the new northward A556 passing round the outside of the service area.
Yikes! Wouldn't there be less land take and expense if the services onslip went round the back of an M6nb->A556nb semi-direct ramp? Services traffic could get back on the M6 via the A556 roundabout if necessary.
I'm trying to remember what it was like. I didn't know about this proposal when it was active but found out later. It may have been the A556(M) scheme published in 1996.

Perhaps the slip roads round the outside of the service area were only to connect with a pair of roundabouts on the A5033, replacing the present south-facing slip roads to the J19 roundabout.

I think maybe the A556(M) route started at a fork on the M6 north of the A5033 and ran initially east of the present A556. It crossed the present A556 about a third of the way from J19 to Mere and thereafter followed a route roughly similar to that now being built. At the A556 crossing there was a half-dumbell with north-facing slip roads, so that traffic from Manchester to Northwich could turn off onto the present A556 and continue via the J19 roundabout, and vice versa.

I think I first tried to work out this layout from the description in the draft orders, and later saw a map of it on the then Macclesfield BC's website.

Amazingly, interactive maps from the former local plan of the former Macclesfield Borough Council can still be accessed online!!

https://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/ce/localplan/macclesfield/

Zoom in on the Tabley area!
What a find!

Image
Zoomed in a little more:
Image

It does indeed look like the plan was to close the south-facing J19 slips, with these movements via a half dumbbell near the services.
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by jackal »

A smaller scale version of the plan above, with only the northbound changes and a 'quarter dumbbell', would be a very efficient way of providing freeflow M6nb->A556nb. This would be similar to the aforementioned Fletton Parkway Interchange, with A556sb->M6sb continuing to use the filter at the roundabout.
Image
It is basically the same as the other plan but with about half the planned content crudely deleted with MS Paint :) (The blue line is just the current onslip being kept as it is.) I find it hard to believe that this scaled down version of the plan would really have been prohibitively expensive for such an important route - maybe £100m or so?
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Re: M6 Junction 19 'improvements'

Post by Johnathan404 »

CBRD is quite big these days, and some of those working for highway authorities are no-doubt aware of it.

I honestly feel this junction carries a design brief of "see what Chris has to say about THIS".
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