M11 extension back on the agenda

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alans
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by alans »

I mention the Wash Barrage in a previous post.

Here is some interesting info about it

http://www.marinet.org.uk/campaign-arti ... sh-barrage

Also question raised in the HOC March 1966

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... age-scheme
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by owen b »

KeithW wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:52 As for sea level the rate of rise sea rise in Southern England has been fairly steady at 1.7 mm per year since tide gauge records began in the 17th century. There is some evidence that it has risen to around 3 mm per year in parts of southern England but that effect is hard to separate from the combination of land subsidence particularly in East Anglia as a result of the draining of the fens and iso static rebound from the last ice age. Simplistically the weigh of ice in Northern Britain pushed down the land surface. It is still rising with the result that southern England is sinking with a pivot point in the northern midlands. None the less if we assume that 3 mm per annum is correct it would take over 300 years for sea levels to rise 1 metre.
But sea level rise won't remain stable at 3mm per year (either for southern England or as a global average), will it? Not with increasingly rapidly rates of the thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm, and with the increasing influx of fresh water into the oceans from melting ice from Antarctica, Greenland and other glaciers. Various credible scientific sea level scenarios have sea level rise of up to 1.89m by 2100, and even assuming the Paris Treaty climate emissions scenario (which seems very optimistic to me) gives 52cm of sea level rise by 2100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level ... rojections
I won't be buying any property or land at or close to sea level or in flood risk areas, that's for sure.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by KeithW »

owen b wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 14:16
KeithW wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:52 As for sea level the rate of rise sea rise in Southern England has been fairly steady at 1.7 mm per year since tide gauge records began in the 17th century. There is some evidence that it has risen to around 3 mm per year in parts of southern England but that effect is hard to separate from the combination of land subsidence particularly in East Anglia as a result of the draining of the fens and iso static rebound from the last ice age. Simplistically the weigh of ice in Northern Britain pushed down the land surface. It is still rising with the result that southern England is sinking with a pivot point in the northern midlands. None the less if we assume that 3 mm per annum is correct it would take over 300 years for sea levels to rise 1 metre.
But sea level rise won't remain stable at 3mm per year (either for southern England or as a global average), will it? Not with increasingly rapidly rates of the thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm, and with the increasing influx of fresh water into the oceans from melting ice from Antarctica, Greenland and other glaciers. Various credible scientific sea level scenarios have sea level rise of up to 1.89m by 2100, and even assuming the Paris Treaty climate emissions scenario (which seems very optimistic to me) gives 52cm of sea level rise by 2100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level ... rojections
I won't be buying any property or land at or close to sea level or in flood risk areas, that's for sure.

Well now as for Antarctica the land ice cover shows no sign of melting, hardly surprising given that the SUMMER temperature range is -5 to -20 C and of course the floating ice sheets already displace their own weight of water, that is what flotation means after all. There is a potential risk that some glaciers would flow more quickly but that is hardly a certainty. Note that Antarctica contains 90% of the worlds ice and that its ice coverage is rising not falling. This was not predicted by climate models
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.117 ... -16-0408.1
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/an ... rd-maximum

Now in the case of Greenland on the lower elevations there has been some thawing. In recent decades Viking settlements abandoned in the 13th and 14th centuries have been discovered as the ice retreats. They were buried at the end of the Mediaeval Warm Period.

While I have no doubt that some of the modern warming has been a result of CO2 emissions the view that all climate change is man made is not supported by the archaeological record. The end of the MWP had catastrophic results in Europe. The Great Famine began in the spring of 1315 when the unseasonably cold wet weather began and lasted until 1317. By 1316 parents who could not feed their children were abandoning them (the origins of the Hansel and Gretel story). It is estimated that between 10% and 25% of the population of Europe died in this period. Further signs of a prolonged cool period can be found in monastic records where great estates such as Fountains Abbey had to start buying in wine as their vineyards failed. By the time Henry VIII became king the English wine industry had essentially ceased to exist.

The archaeological and historical record shows there were a series of collapses of civilisation during the Holocene which are now generally associated with climate change (cooling)

The last 3 are
1500 AD The Little Ice Age a period of cooling that exyended into the 19th century. This is why he still have Christmas Cards with scenes of deep snow and ice covered rives and lakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

400 to 600 AD The Migration Period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
This is believed to have happened when cooling in eastern europe and central Asia lead to mass movements of groups such as the Vandals and Huns into Europe where they drove out like the Goths and Saxons who moved into England, the Netherlands, Germany and eventually Rome itself.

800 BC The Late Bronze Age collapse
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse

This is associated with a cool period and drought in the Eastern Mediterranean which caused the fall of the civilisations of Greece, Egypt, Assyria and the Hittites. I make no claim to know WHY this happened but my problem is that it cannot be explained by current climate models which makes me somewhat sceptical of their infallibility.

All that said I have long been of the view that burning fossil hydrocarbons to produce energy is wasteful, they are much too valuable as a resource for making synthetic materials. This is one reason why I worked in the British nuclear industry until it was abandoned in the 1980's during the dash for gas.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by Berk »

I incline towards this. Not a denier of climate change, but it cannot possibly explain all climate change- though I guess some would argue man-made climate change acts as a trigger, or catalyst.

My Mum’s own historical research backs up the previous trends. There has been cyclical, natural climate-change. In the late 20./21. Centuries, there’s probably been an assumption that as the climate has changed, it can be purely ascribed to industrialisation, and globalisation.

But when you compare the Antarctic ice shelf, and realise it’s growing, maybe not. Climate change may only affect certain regions, or parts of the world.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by owen b »

KeithW wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 16:17
owen b wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 14:16
KeithW wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:52 As for sea level the rate of rise sea rise in Southern England has been fairly steady at 1.7 mm per year since tide gauge records began in the 17th century. There is some evidence that it has risen to around 3 mm per year in parts of southern England but that effect is hard to separate from the combination of land subsidence particularly in East Anglia as a result of the draining of the fens and iso static rebound from the last ice age. Simplistically the weigh of ice in Northern Britain pushed down the land surface. It is still rising with the result that southern England is sinking with a pivot point in the northern midlands. None the less if we assume that 3 mm per annum is correct it would take over 300 years for sea levels to rise 1 metre.
But sea level rise won't remain stable at 3mm per year (either for southern England or as a global average), will it? Not with increasingly rapidly rates of the thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm, and with the increasing influx of fresh water into the oceans from melting ice from Antarctica, Greenland and other glaciers. Various credible scientific sea level scenarios have sea level rise of up to 1.89m by 2100, and even assuming the Paris Treaty climate emissions scenario (which seems very optimistic to me) gives 52cm of sea level rise by 2100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level ... rojections
I won't be buying any property or land at or close to sea level or in flood risk areas, that's for sure.

Well now as for Antarctica the land ice cover shows no sign of melting, hardly surprising given that the SUMMER temperature range is -5 to -20 C and of course the floating ice sheets already displace their own weight of water, that is what flotation means after all. There is a potential risk that some glaciers would flow more quickly but that is hardly a certainty. Note that Antarctica contains 90% of the worlds ice and that its ice coverage is rising not falling. This was not predicted by climate models
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.117 ... -16-0408.1
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/an ... rd-maximum

Now in the case of Greenland on the lower elevations there has been some thawing.
Interesting, but does not remotely answer the question I put to you (based on your previous comment) that "sea level rise won't remain stable at 3mm per year, will it?" Your answer mostly relates to Antarctica, which up until now has only been responsible for a relatively small proportion of sea level rise (which is expected to change in future), and then long and completely irrelevant comments about historic climates which have virtually nothing to do with modern day level sea rise and which I will respond to on the global warming thread : here viewtopic.php?f=14&t=402&p=1018000#p1018000

Regarding sea level rise : "The contributions to sea level rise since 1993, based on 2018 figures, divide into ocean thermal expansion (42%), melting of temperate glaciers (21%), Greenland (15%) and Antarctica (8%).[6]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
Your answer only relates to Antarctica, which is only responsible for 8% of recent sea level rise, with a brief acknowledgement of melt from Greenland. The comments relating to Antarctica are significantly wrong (which I'll come to). You fail to address the remaining contributions ie. the other 77%. You also fail to acknowledge that as global warming accelerates, rates of sea level rise will increase, and the causal mix will change (ie. the share of sea level rise attributable to melting ice from Antarctica and Greenland is likely to increase).

Your comment : "as for Antarctica the land ice cover shows no sign of melting" and then later "its ice coverage is rising not falling", that's not true. "A 2018 systematic review study estimated that ice loss across the entire continent was 43 gigatons (Gt) per year on average during the period from 1992 to 2002, but has accelerated to an average of 220 Gt per year during the five years from 2012 to 2017" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#Antarctica
There are significant parts of Antarctica which are above freezing in summer, notably the Antarctic peninsula. And you refer to the floating ice shelves : as these melt, their buttressing effect on the land ice weakens, enabling the land ice glaciers to flow more quickly.
And then to cap it all, you bizarrely refer to two articles which are about sea ice extent, which as you say yourself has only a negligible direct effect on sea level as it melts or forms. It's not sea ice melting which causes sea level rise, it's land ice melting, so I'm not sure what you think the relevance of articles about sea ice is when we're discussing rising sea levels arising from melting land ice. And in any case, Antarctic sea ice has been at record low levels over the last three years or so : http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC ... ceArea.gif
Last edited by owen b on Sun Nov 11, 2018 18:10, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by owen b »

Berk wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 16:24 I incline towards this. Not a denier of climate change, but it cannot possibly explain all climate change- though I guess some would argue man-made climate change acts as a trigger, or catalyst.

My Mum’s own historical research backs up the previous trends. There has been cyclical, natural climate-change. In the late 20./21. Centuries, there’s probably been an assumption that as the climate has changed, it can be purely ascribed to industrialisation, and globalisation.

But when you compare the Antarctic ice shelf, and realise it’s growing, maybe not. Climate change may only affect certain regions, or parts of the world.
In fact human activity explains close to all or slightly more than all global warming of the last 50-100 years or so. In other words, without human interference the climate would probably be flat or if anything very slightly cooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attributi ... ate_change

Could you please post a link to your Mum's historical research? I'm interested, seriously. I'd be especially interested if she's published some peer reviewed climate science.

The Antarctic ice shelves are not growing. There's not much trend at all over the last few decades. Over the last three years or so Antarctic sea ice extent has been historically low. http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC ... ceArea.gif

Climate change affects all parts of the world to a lesser or greater extent. Of course some areas have seen particularly high rates of warming (Arctic area, high latitude land areas), and some environments are particularly sensitive to climate change eg. Arctic fringes, coral reefs, desert and rainforest margins.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by lefthandedspanner »

KeithW wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 23:23
lefthandedspanner wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 17:58
dkgy wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:12 Lets not forget that in the new post-Brexit world, we're going to have to get stuff in via a lot more ports. The stuff from outside the EU that currently comes into Rotterdam, taken off and shipped to the UK via Calais-Dover and the M20 might well need to come into container ports on the East Coast of England - and I'd imagine Immingham has capacity spare. Plus all the other cross-channel traffic will need to be spread a bit more widely around the UK's various RoRo ports if the added red-tape at Calais slows down key imports.
My (admittedly cynical) prediction is that the government will persistently refuse to fund development for ports due to chronic tight-fistedness, allow the problem to fester and shortages to get steadily worse for years to come, then when it becomes a real emergency they'll realise they can use it as a cue to seize absolute power and will do so immediately.
There is no need or expectation for the government to fund ports, they are commercial operations that make money. Felixstowe, London Gateway, Immingham and Teessport were not government projects they were funded built and operated by Limited companies.
Absolutely. But the state does need to fund the transport infrastructure required to support them; if it takes hours for freight to get anywhere once it's left the port, and traffic on the main frieght routes grinds to a halt at the slightest disruption, the port is not commercially viable.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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lefthandedspanner wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 19:12
KeithW wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 23:23
lefthandedspanner wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 17:58

My (admittedly cynical) prediction is that the government will persistently refuse to fund development for ports due to chronic tight-fistedness, allow the problem to fester and shortages to get steadily worse for years to come, then when it becomes a real emergency they'll realise they can use it as a cue to seize absolute power and will do so immediately.
There is no need or expectation for the government to fund ports, they are commercial operations that make money. Felixstowe, London Gateway, Immingham and Teessport were not government projects they were funded built and operated by Limited companies.
Absolutely. But the state does need to fund the transport infrastructure required to support them; if it takes hours for freight to get anywhere once it's left the port, and traffic on the main frieght routes grinds to a halt at the slightest disruption, the port is not commercially viable.
It takes hours to get from most coastal destinations by road because we have not invented matter transporters yet. Main freight routes do not in my experience grind to a halt at the slightest disruption. In any event there is nothing about Brexit that is even remotely likely to require new ports. The simple fact is that International Convention on Containers requires all signatories to temporarily allow (3 months in fact) containers to be brought into or through their territories duty and tax free. Containers will still be able to freely pass through the EU on their way to Dover.

A container from the Far East will still be unloaded at Felixstowe on the standard container route via the Middle East, Cape of Good Hope , Algeciras, Le Havre, Felixstowe and Rotterdam.

Nor will Brexit mean an end to trade with the EU, if nothing else the baseline World Trade Organisation the most that the EU could do is impose the same tariffs that are applied to other no EU countries such as the USA. Do you really think the German car manufacturers will tamely surrender the UK car market to the Japanese and Koreans or the French surrender the wine market to the Australians, Californians and Chileans :)
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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KeithW wrote: Sun Nov 11, 2018 23:24 Nor will Brexit mean an end to trade with the EU, if nothing else the baseline World Trade Organisation the most that the EU could do is impose the same tariffs that are applied to other no EU countries such as the USA. Do you really think the German car manufacturers will tamely surrender the UK car market to the Japanese and Koreans or the French surrender the wine market to the Australians, Californians and Chileans :)
Replying to this in the Brexit thread.
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Re: M1 J23a / M1 J24 for the A50

Post by mehere »

Hi guys out of Curiosity given that thev' M11' Appears to seemlesley continue bontobthe new ' A14(M), Would it not make much more sense to continue the M11 until it reaches the slightly extended A1(M) Then west of that if it hasnt already got hard shoulders at least add ALR Style refuges and class that all the way to the Cathorpe Interchange as either an Expressway ( Blue Signage ,) or build Climbing lanes where needed , build 3 lane stretches especially on the approaches to Cathorpe , heck it could even be D3 all the way to Kettering to join up with that recent widening , I would do away with hard shoulders , close farm and private access and make it a fast road, supplying new accesses and Bridleways where needed .
In fact I've often looked at the hard shoulder since I started driving and thought it was such a waste bof road space, after all if a car breaks down or has an accident on a D2 you loose a lane , no big deal just a few miles of jams and most of the time easily passed by.
Seems to me there is a golden opportunity for this new build to also install ALR and have it as D4(M), because after all the amount of traffic really outclasses a D3(m) I could forsee ALR on there pretty soon anyway .
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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The subject of extending the M11 to the Humber Bridge was first raised by the Yorkshire Post in 1986 when Humberside MPs supported the idea. However, since the motorway would pass through some lightly populated areas and would only connect with the M180, it wouldn't deliver any massive benefits. A better and cheaper idea would be to convert the A1 to D3M.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by Mark Hewitt »

Glenn A wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 15:45 The subject of extending the M11 to the Humber Bridge was first raised by the Yorkshire Post in 1986 when Humberside MPs supported the idea. However, since the motorway would pass through some lightly populated areas and would only connect with the M180, it wouldn't deliver any massive benefits. A better and cheaper idea would be to convert the A1 to D3M.
Well quite, I never quite saw the point in it when the A1 is nearby and seemingly only warrants D2!
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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Mark Hewitt wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 15:46
Glenn A wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 15:45 The subject of extending the M11 to the Humber Bridge was first raised by the Yorkshire Post in 1986 when Humberside MPs supported the idea. However, since the motorway would pass through some lightly populated areas and would only connect with the M180, it wouldn't deliver any massive benefits. A better and cheaper idea would be to convert the A1 to D3M.
Well quite, I never quite saw the point in it when the A1 is nearby and seemingly only warrants D2!
A D3M upgrade of the A1 to the M62 would be a lot cheaper, and would also remove pressure on the M1.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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Glenn A wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 19:12
Mark Hewitt wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 15:46
Glenn A wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 15:45 The subject of extending the M11 to the Humber Bridge was first raised by the Yorkshire Post in 1986 when Humberside MPs supported the idea. However, since the motorway would pass through some lightly populated areas and would only connect with the M180, it wouldn't deliver any massive benefits. A better and cheaper idea would be to convert the A1 to D3M.
Well quite, I never quite saw the point in it when the A1 is nearby and seemingly only warrants D2!
A D3M upgrade of the A1 to the M62 would be a lot cheaper, and would also remove pressure on the M1.
If all you want is a motorway route you actually you don't need to upgrade as far as the M62 you can use the M18 to the M62 J35.

However if you want a good route from East Anglia to the M62/A1(M) picking up traffic from Norwich and Boston I would prefer a HQDC upgrade of the A47/A17 and A15. In terms of improving the seriously sub standard road connections of Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire it would provide a much bigger bang for the buck and remove traffic from the A1 and congested Cambridge area.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by Al__S »

the A1 should be a minimum of D3(M) from the M25 to the A720, but that's a discussion for another thread...

The M11, however, should swap which side of Cambridge it runs up from Great Chesterford and head all the way to Norwich. What you would then number J9 to J14 is anyone's guess, but whatever you did it would make more sense than running a motorway from Cambridge to Hull via Wisbech, Boston and Lincoln. Utterly crackers.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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In the real world what upgrades are either planned or seriously proposed the area bordered by the A1, the new A14 and the M18/Humber/M62?
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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Al__S wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 22:20 the A1 should be a minimum of D3(M) from the M25 to the A720, but that's a discussion for another thread...

The M11, however, should swap which side of Cambridge it runs up from Great Chesterford and head all the way to Norwich. What you would then number J9 to J14 is anyone's guess, but whatever you did it would make more sense than running a motorway from Cambridge to Hull via Wisbech, Boston and Lincoln. Utterly crackers.
Might I suggest reusing the M10 number between Great Chesterford and Girton? As for a motorway connection to the M18/M62, the best option would be to upgrade the A1 north of Peterborough given that the new A14(M) expressway will lead onto the A1(M) at Brampton.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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Al__S wrote: Fri Nov 30, 2018 22:20 the A1 should be a minimum of D3(M) from the M25 to the A720, but that's a discussion for another thread...

The M11, however, should swap which side of Cambridge it runs up from Great Chesterford and head all the way to Norwich. What you would then number J9 to J14 is anyone's guess, but whatever you did it would make more sense than running a motorway from Cambridge to Hull via Wisbech, Boston and Lincoln. Utterly crackers.

Lots of luck justifying building a D3(M) from Morpeth to the Scottish border, once you get past Alnwick traffic counts are below 10,000 vehicles per day. The A47/A17 from Norwich - Kings Lynn - Newark carries nearly double that amount of traffic and would take even more of it was not such a terrible road, far worse than the A1 north of Newcastle which apart from being S2 has a pretty clear run from Alnwick to the Scottish border. The worst bit is around Haggerton Castle

The M11 is the London - Cambridge Motorway which merges into the A14 and as such is rather important where it is.

There is now a D2 road to Norwich - this is the A11 which runs from the M11 J9 at Great Chesterford and then runs NE bypassing Newmarket and Thetford. The major remaining issues are the roundabouts at Mildenhall and on the Thetford Bypass. As a result of dualling being complete traffic levels on that road rose from 30k to above 40k all adding to the existing congestion on the A14 and especially the Newmarket bypass along which the merged A11/A14 traffic flows for several miles. Once the new A14 alignment opens I expect to be the next major choke point. Its already at a knife edge, even the slightest incident can produce traffic jams that take hours to clear as I know from personal experience. It has no hard shoulder , no refuges and a central reservation that is simple Armco and quite incapable of coping with an HGV crossover on a road that carries 10,000 HGV traffic movements per day and has a total AADF of 70k and rising.

Norwich is one of the most prosperous and fastest growing cities in England with unemployment at 2.5 to 4% and one of the worst served by road transport in the country. There is not a single motorway in all of Norfolk which is one of the most important agricultural areas in the country. Road connections to the North and East Midlands are extremely poor with roads scarcely better than they were in 1950.

Improving this seems a far better use of money than spending a billion pounds upgrading the road from Leeming to the Scottish border for which using normal criteria a simple dualling cannot be justified. Even if somebody was foolhardy enough to do this it would scarcely improve journey times as the real reason to avoid the A1 is the terrible traffic on the A720 from the A1 to the Forth Crossing and M9.

Driving from Yorkshire the quickest way to Perth is usually via the A66/M6/A74(M)/M74/A9
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

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KeithW wrote: Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:10 As a result of dualling being complete traffic levels on that road rose from 30k to above 40k all adding to the existing congestion on the A14 and especially the Newmarket bypass along which the merged A11/A14 traffic flows for several miles. Once the new A14 alignment opens I expect to be the next major choke point. Its already at a knife edge, even the slightest incident can produce traffic jams that take hours to clear as I know from personal experience. It has no hard shoulder , no refuges and a central reservation that is simple Armco and quite incapable of coping with an HGV crossover on a road that carries 10,000 HGV traffic movements per day and has a total AADF of 70k and rising.
Yes - I think the Newmarket bypass is the next bit to watch - in the past, it has usually felt like one of the best/most generously specced sections of the A14 and A11 corridors, but with all of the improvements elsewhere, it is now coming under strain.

I think the first thing that should be tackled - probably more pressing than adding any lanes or anything like that, is to improve some of the junctions - J37 for the A142 (Ely/Soham/Newmarket) is sometimes overwhelmed - it probably needs to be expanded from the current single bridge diamond layout to something like dumbbell/bone-about/two bridges and a roundabout.
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Re: M11 extension back on the agenda

Post by KeithW »

roadtester wrote: Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:21
Yes - I think the Newmarket bypass is the next bit to watch - in the past, it has usually felt like one of the best/most generously specced sections of the A14 and A11 corridors, but with all of the improvements elsewhere, it is now coming under strain.

I think the first thing that should be tackled - probably more pressing than adding any lanes or anything like that, is to improve some of the junctions - J37 for the A142 (Ely/Soham/Newmarket) is sometimes overwhelmed - it probably needs to be expanded from the current single bridge diamond layout to something like dumbbell/bone-about/two bridges and a roundabout.

Indeed and the A11/A14 merges should be looked at as well, There have been some nasty incidents along that stretch with a lot of last minute weaving especially eastbound.
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