One of the problems with the existing A1 is the number of local access points. You don't fix that by re-creating the same problem on its replacement. So yes, it is a deliberate choice not to have them.Berk wrote: ↑Fri Nov 29, 2019 00:52It’s amazing how some people can take a stance this is a brand new motorway that has never existed before - and therefore doesn’t need any junctions.
Of course you’re not going to have direct access, or junctions everywhere, but there are so few of them on the A1(M), it looks like a deliberate choice not to have them.
If you upgrade the A1 to a motorway you are creating a high speed route for strategic traffic. Local junction-hopping between villages, of the sort that happens out of necessity on the current A1, has no business there. It would be impossible to justify a junction for Darrington on economic, social or town planning grounds. The A1(M) has a small number of widely-spaced junctions because that is the right way to design a rural trunk road motorway.
J38 and J40 are less than 8 miles apart, so a motorway upgrade between them, with an intermediate junction in the vicinity of Barnsdale Bar, will put the interchanges 4 miles apart. That's quite close enough and closer, indeed, than you're asking for.At least, not any closer than 10 miles. 5 miles might’ve been more appropriate. The motorway grew out of the trunk road, it wasn’t purpose-built (like the M1, M6 etc.).
Pontefract is served by M62 J32, the A162 at Knottingley and the A639 at Barnsdale Bar. There are free-flowing connections from the A1 in both directions to M62 J32; from either direction it is a speedy journey through M62 J33 to the A162 interchange at Knottingley; and if you're approaching from the south you're highly likely to leave the A1 at Barnsdale Bar.There’s actually a very good reason for having a junction close by. Pontefract does not have an A1(M) junction. The only junction it has is J32 M62 (or 33 at a pinch). So it would provide more choice, and avoid a circuitous way round.
If you built a new junction at Darrington, you'd need to build a new road to Pontefract from there. No significant amount of traffic leaves the A1 at Darrington to get to Pontefract because first, in both directions, you've already passed an earlier exit that would have got you there, and second, it's an unclassified road that's largely built up. It would be a junction primarily for Darrington, which isn't remotely big enough to require one.
It's also worth asking why you think Ponte Carlo needs more motorway junctions. It has a population of about 30,000 - the same size as Bicester and about three quarters the size of Bishop's Stortford. Those places have just one junction on the strategic network and manage OK with it. Why does Pontefract need a fourth?