The A12 in Essex: why didn't they just build a motorway and have done with it?

[B1018 A120 M11]

Alternative thread title:

Temporary tie-ins and large-scale junction re-landscaping (once, twice, or more): the dualling of the A12 in Essex

We're familiar on SABRE with the idea of temporary termini (the currently popular thread on which originally inspired this one), that is, points where the construction of a new road, often a motorway, came to a temporary stop before being extended past the temporary terminus later as construction continued. I wondered if it was time for a thread about a related but different concept — the temporary tie-in. These are links that are also not supposed to persist, but exist for a short time during the construction of a new road. However, unlike some temporary termini, which can persist for years, be retained as roundabouts or part of rebuilt junctions, or even become permanent fixtures of the road network if the planned extension of the road is cancelled, tie-ins are often removed without any trace in quite a short space of time, and frequently no trace at all is left of them.

I now live near Cambridge and as such I have recently experienced the creation and destruction of an important temporary tie-in as an adult. When the new A14 upgrade was almost complete towards the end of 2019, but traffic was still running north up through Huntingdon and over the viaduct, cars were run on a temporary formation between the all-new blacktop of the widened A14 coming past Bar Hill, over temporary (and fairly lumpy) tarmac and back onto the old A14 formation continuing up to Fenstanton. The weekend before the new road was opened, this temporary tarmac was all ripped up, the new A14 blacktop was connected permanently to the new A14 formation running south of Hilton and on to Ellingham and the new mega-junction with the A1, and the direct connection between the new A14 southern section and the now-A1307 was destroyed for good. Within a couple of weeks, the area was re-landscaped and now, a couple of years later, although the A1307 runs close and almost parallel to the new A14 for a few hundred metres, you'd never guess there was once a direct tarmac link between the two roads — between them now lie several fences and drainage ditches, a balancing pond and quite a lot of remodelled green verge that shows no trace of the former connection. Of course, you can still pass from the A1307 to the A14 South and vice versa, but the route now requires you to move further away from the A14 first, and circumnavigate one roundabout when heading southbound, and dog-leg over two and a bridge when heading north to Huntingdon.

This got me thinking about other areas I once knew well where similar large-scale landscaping had transformed the feel of an area completely, and obliterated existing road formations or made them more indirect. And I realised that the dualling of the A12 in Essex in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was a pretty complicated affair that featured a lot of those kind of reworkings, made if anything even more complex than the construction of many of the national motorways that were built during the same period by the fact that the upgrade was not one continuous new-build project, but several, undertaken piecemeal and in a not-always-very-logical order over a roughly 25-year period. Some of it I remember, but for much of it I was too young, not living nearby, or not even born. Perhaps someone here with a more complete memory can fill in some of the gaps and bits of guesswork in what follows...?

I grew up in the 1970s near the market town of Witham in Essex, roughly halfway between the county town of Chelmsford and the roman settlement of Colchester, and in the period when the dualling of the A12 — often completely inaccurately referred to locally in those days as 'vh mo!ahwayyyiii' — was being completed piecemeal from Gidea Park to Ipswich. I don't remember an S2 A12 between Witham and Chelmsford, although most of that road is still there to this day as the B1137 — when I was little that section of the A12 had already been dualled from Springfield, on the northern outskirts of Chelmsford, past my home town, Witham, and all the way to the southern edge of Colchester. It ran in one continuous D2 or D3 formation all the way, but in the mid-1980s, the Chelmsford bypass was tied in near Boreham and the A12 was re-routed. Traffic coming NE out of Chelmsford was allowed to still freeflow via the old grade-separated carriageway onto the A12, but the SW-bound carriageway was ripped up and the through carriageway fed onto the bypass instead. To perform that reverse movement from the A12 near Boreham to Springfield today requires movement via a sliproad, a bridge, and two roundabouts, where once you could drive straight through... (that's progress for you). So what had seemed a permanent carriageway connection when I was a boy proved to be only temporary and was torn up. In fairness, the A12 really needed to bypass Chelmsford and the Army and Navy roundabout, which was a terrible, terrible traffic blackspot until the bypass opened in 1986.

Something I don't remember, though, as it happened some years before I was born, was the bypassing of Witham and (I believe separately) Hatfield Peverel. According to the SABRE A12 Wiki on this site, the Witham bypass opened in 1963 and the Hatfield Peveral bypass two years later in 1965. This is backed up by the SABRE Maps archive, on which the mid-60s Seventh Series one-inch OS mapping shows the Witham D2 bypass complete and open, but the A12 past Hatfield Peverel still as S2 with a dotted D2 bypass shown as under construction. The impression I get is that the dualling of the A12 in this region happened by first creating piecemeal D2 bypasses for the medium-sized market towns in the early to mid-60s — Witham, Kelvedon, Marks Tey, Stanway, and Brentwood further south — then by connecting these by means of bypasses for smaller villages like Ingatestone, Boreham, Hatfield Peveral and Mountnessing (mid-to-late-60s), and finally, by adding bypasses for the really big conurbations like Colchester and Chelmsford (late 70s/early 80s and 1986 respectively, which I do personally recall). The question is, was there ever a time when the old S2 temporarily tied into the new D2 and D3 bypass sections, then was tied back in to S2 again? A look at old-maps.co.uk and other old map resources such as those here on SABRE suggests this was the case, although whether it was truly so on the ground, I don't know. For example, the suggestion from the SABRE Wiki and mid-60s Seventh Series OS map is that there may have been a short time in the mid-60s when the S2 A12 heading north through Boreham opened out onto the brand-new D2 Hatfield Peveral bypass, narrowed back to S2 between Hatfield Peveral and Witham, opened back out onto the D2 Witham bypass and then closed back down to S2 again after Witham. This can't have lasted long, as it looks as though the A12 was at least D2 throughout from Chelmsford to Colchester by the early 70s — certainly I remember it as such from probably about 1976 onwards.

If this piecemeal dualling is indeed the slow and painful way it was done, there must have been a lot of temporary S2/D2 tie-ins, long since obliterated — and the reverse. I've often wondered what the road must have looked like south of Hatfield Peverel in the 60s and 70s — now there's an area that must have changed hugely during that time, with much re-landscaping. The old S2 A12 (now the B1137) runs at a different elevation to the newer D2 A12 and they are only on the same level for a very short distance. The old A12 is briefly D2 here and I've often wondered if there was a temporary tie-in here from the old S2 A12 heading north onto the Hatfield Peverel bypass when that opened in the mid 60s — old-maps.co.uk suggests there was, but if so, there is no trace of it today. In fact, oddly, although there is a very strange 'dog-leg' junction at this spot today, it permits the *opposite* movement, allowing traffic leaving Hatfield Peverel southbound to access the D2 A12 so it doesn't need to go all the way through Boreham on the old road first. And yet from the dates I can find, it seems as though the D2 bypass north of here would have opened before the D3 south of here, suggesting, like the Old Maps site, that any temporary junction would have been completely the other way around...! Does anyone remember the road here in the mid-60s when this area was completely rebuilt (maybe a couple of times in rapid succession)?

Similarly, at the North end of Hatfield Peveral, the SABRE Seventh Series map shows the Hatfield Peveral bypass under construction, but the S2 A12 through the village already diverted onto what would become a curving northbound sliproad out of the village, over a bridge under construction over what would become the village's D2 bypass. Was there a time, as this map suggests, when this was a bridge over nothing — as yet unconstructed bypass carriageways? And during this time, did the village road stay S2 for the short distance between there and the start of the D2 Witham bypass, or was that section dualled at the same time as the Hatfield Peveral bypass? Or was there maybe even a short period when the Hatfield Peveral and Witham bypasses were open but the short section of road between them (less than half a mile) was still S2? That would have been truly crackers if so, and would have also necessitated temporary D2/S2/D2 tie-ins that can't have lasted for long, if they were ever there at all. Does anyone here know?

The final temporary tie-in in that area that I must have travelled on, but don't recall, and is now long gone, would have been up at Stanway near Colchester. I don't remember a time when you had to travel through either Kelvedon or Marks Tey on S2, so the D2 bypasses around those places must have already been in place by the mid-70s. But we used to go and visit my Grandma up on the coast near Clacton, and I do recall a time when we had to come off the dual carriageway somewhere around Stanway or possibly Lexden, and were presumably led seamlessly somehow onto what is now the A133 around the North edge of Colchester (itself a 1930s bypass of the town). Certainly I remember we used to come close to urban Colchester along what is now Colne Bank Avenue and Cowdray Avenue, and leave on what is now the A133 past Elmstead Market. For some absurd reason, even though I could only have been 7 or 8 or less, I remember the curvy Dutch gables on the two buildings to the north of the dual carriageway here — spotting those always told me that we had just left Colchester (or that, on the way back, we were approaching the outskirts). I have seen various dates given for the completion of the Colchester bypass, ranging from 1974 to 1982. It feels as though it was more like late 70s or early 80s to me, when suddenly we no longer needed to go near built-up Colchester at all and whizzed round the bypass, onto the A120 and only got back onto the A133 to Clacton at the (then) new roundabout north of Great Bentley. The dual carriageway link road from the new D2 A120 to the A133 tied those ends together, but I cannot remember what happened at the other end to connect the A12 off the section from Marks Tey to the new part north of Braiswick and on to Ipswich north of Severalls, and how the roads now known as the B1408, A133, A12 and A1124 were reworked to give us the layout we have today. Spring Lane roundabout here has been on the A133 as long as I can remember, but presumably it must have been quite new in the mid-to-late 70s when I first became aware of it. Again, the input of anyone who was grown up and can recall the chronology of the fairly complicated construction in this area would be welcome — again, I get the impression that there may have been several reworkings of the road pattern and superseded temporary tie-ins in a fairly short timespan, probably from around 1970 to around 1980 (ish)?

I'm guessing there must also have been some temporary tie-ins near Brentwood and Mountnessing too at various stages in the 60s (it looks from old-maps.co.uk as though there may have been a crazy period when Brentwood and Ingatestone were bypassed by dual carriageways, but the section in the middle was still S2 through the middle of Mountnessing...?), but these were less well-known areas to me when I was young anyway, so I have even less of a clue what the chronology or layouts might have been back then. Sites like www.old-maps.co.uk provide some help, but of course there's no dates in places like the Motorway Archive because... well... the A12 isn't a motorway. Looking back on how long it took to get everything dualled to Ipswich by the county councils, and how many times the resulting D2/D3 spatchcock of an A-road has been reworked since, you can't help wondering why no-one in central Government ever said: right, let's just forget about the A12, and build something blue all in one go. It would surely have been easier, and maybe cheaper, in the long run...?

[multiraider2]

In answer to your opening thread title and last question. It's always been about the money with perhaps local wants (and later objections) thrown in. Yes, it would have been cheaper in the long-run to do the whole thing in one go and yes a three lane M12 to Ipswich from Brentwood built in the in the 60s would have solved a lot of the problems now faced by the A12. But (and this is a rhetorical question) when have you known such forward and joined up thinking to come to the fore over the last 70 years of road building?

By-passes were built in order of priority/drivers and locals jumping up and down to indicate a problem in x town. Then if relatively easy and cheap to do they went on to the next one. The difficult/controversial bits always get left to last, or never completed. This is why Chelmsford and Colchester which already had earlier centre of town s2 bypasses and which are larger in size requiring a greater diversion were left until later and the problem had grown. The A12 corridor through Essex was pretty rural either side of the road, save for Chelmsford and Colchester and it was relatively cheap and easy to put the individual bypasses in. You mention Hatfield Peverel and this must be one of the simplest by-passes imaginable. It barely kinks from the original A12 line and looking at the 1965 map, the A12 wasn't following the original Roman Road to the North East of the settlement there anyway. There was already a kink there. The curve to the North East was used as the on-slip to the new bypass and it looks like the course of the original Roman Road was used as the off slip to get vehicles to the settlement.

You also mention tie-ins later obliterated. As a non-motorway many of these new junctions were simple forks either end of the bypassed settlements with a single over/under bridge and would have been very easily changed when the new bypass sections were to be tied in. I can't help with your specific questions because I was born in 1965 and remember the A12 first aged about 3 or 4 and being taken to Clacton. However looking at the maps and taking Witham as a specific example, the dualling North-East of there looks to have been done on-line at least until the Kelvedon bypass is reached. Therefore the old A12 leads inexorably to the new A12 once you pass the Eastways Industrial Estate/offslips from the South East bound junction. There was nothing to obliterate there, the road simply flows into the new arrangement. That's another point really. If it had been built in one go as motorway, half these settlements wouldn't have had a junction at all, certainly not one at either end of the town/village. Probably not Hatfield Peverel/Kelvedon/Ingatestone/Mountnessing. Marks Tey might have got an exit for the A120 junction. The old A12 would have had a fair amount of traffic on it from all these places with no access. See Godstone to Sevenoaks on the A25 where there is no M25 junction as a prime example. The final point I have there is that a three lane motorway would not have fitted in all the places the A12 was asked to go, without greater local destruction. Certainly where I was born in Pilgrims Hatch.

There are many other roads where this piecemeal bypassing has happened. See the whole A303/A30 route to the South-West. The A303 cobbled together in 1933 from other roads and including a proposed new bypass for Hounslow on the A30 in 1922 and nearly one hundred years later there are still prominent threads on here re bypasses proposed and now happening on the route and why Stonehenge still sees a lot of traffic.

[Scratchwood]

It's unfortunate that Felixstowe container port was opened in 1967 after the Motorway network had been planned, and that nobody anticipated that it would become the UK's most important port, as it's crazy that it doesn't have a Motorway to London, and that until the 1990s there was no continuous dual carriageway to the West Midlands.

[B1040]

As a kid we often visited a great aunt who lived in Harwich, travelling from Harlow.
My uncle would drive to Chelmsford and then enjoy a thrash up the DC, my father preferred the A120 which in those days was a long slow road.
Stanway and Copford were often congested, so my father took a back roads route from Coggeshall to Great Tey and joined the A604 (as it was then) near Aldham and then made his way down to Colchester that way.
The Stanway bypass was opened in the early '70s, with the flyover for the Western bypass (A12) built ready. I thought the builders had made a terrible mistake with a pointless bridge, until I saw a 1/2" map and could see it was ready for extending.
The Eastern bypass opened somewhere in the late 70s and we sometimes went round the top and then headed East to the A137.
By the time I moved to Colchester for my first job, the North Eastern bypass was opened and a clear route through to Harwich was there. Not long after that, my great aunt died and we didn't go to Harwich much more.
In 1985, I ended up walking almost all the way to Chelmsford with a guy going to a peace conference in Italy. Somehow I put him up for a night and set off to walk the first bit with him and ended up going all the way to Chelmsford. There was pavement all the way from Kelvedon to Chelmsford and very little walking alongside the main road. (It turned out a good day, met someone who had known my father, a nice girl I'd known at college, and several other interesting people). It was plain to see how the bypasses had left the old road, then rejoined at the other end of the settlement. At that stage they were simple single bridge Y forks (I think).

[wrinkly]

We're familiar on SABRE with the idea of temporary termini (the currently popular thread on which originally inspired this one), that is, points where the construction of a new road, often a motorway, came to a temporary stop before being extended past the temporary terminus later as construction continued. I wondered if it was time for a thread about a related but different concept — the temporary tie-in. These are links that are also not supposed to persist, but exist for a short time during the construction of a new road. However, unlike some temporary termini, which can persist for years, be retained as roundabouts or part of rebuilt junctions, or even become permanent fixtures of the road network if the planned extension of the road is cancelled, tie-ins are often removed without any trace in quite a short space of time, and frequently no trace at all is left of them.

I haven't yet read all of your post, which is one of the longest I've ever seen, so I don't yet know whether I'll be able to answer any of your questions, but I thought I'd comment on your first paragraph.

I've tried in the past to promote the use of the phrase "temporary tie-in" on SABRE, but largely failed, because most people have used "temporary terminus" instead, but different people have used it to mean different things.

I would prefer to define a temporary tie-in as a place where a motorway, dual carriageway or other major road once ended, and where at least one of three further conditions applies:

either (1) there is no junction there today

or (2) there was no original plan to have a permanent junction there

or (3) some extra piece of carriageway was built to form the temporary tie-in, that was removed when the motorway (or whatever) was extended.

So I would say all temporary tie-ins are temporary termini but not all temporary termini are temporary tie-ins.

However the distinction has not caught on. Some people use "temporary terminus" for what I call a temporary tie-in, while others used it for any place where a motorway (or other major road) once ended, even if it was at a proper junction.

Then there's the question you raise of how long a temporary tie-in lasted for. That varied a lot. Some temporary tie-ins may have been internal to a particular contract and will almost certainly never be documented. Others were there at the end of a contract, awaiting the next contract along, sometimes for years.

[KeithW]

It's unfortunate that Felixstowe container port was opened in 1967 after the Motorway network had been planned, and that nobody anticipated that it would become the UK's most important port, as it's crazy that it doesn't have a Motorway to London, and that until the 1990s there was no continuous dual carriageway to the West Midlands.

Perhaps but at the end of the day when you look at the traffic counts at the Felixstowe end its under 40k with 30k of that being cars. We know that the traffic over the Orwell Bridge is around 80k with 60k being cars used by commuters, then it drops to 40k again with 30k being cars

When I recall the Cambridge Northern bypass in 1980 it was mostly empty fields, no Science Park , St Johns Innovation Park, Orchard Park etc. They are what drove traffic increases on the A14 between Girton and Huntingdon not Fellixstowe, the same is true of the A428, St Neots has become a dormitory town and they built a shiny new one at Cambourne with spillovers at Caldecote, Hardwick Papworth Everard. Once past Brampton Hut the A14 is back to its base level of 40k with 25k being cars. The A14 as built is more than capable of handling the levels of through traffic, its the local commuter traffic that screws it up. I should know having been one of them.

[fras]

It's unfortunate that Felixstowe container port was opened in 1967 after the Motorway network had been planned, and that nobody anticipated that it would become the UK's most important port, as it's crazy that it doesn't have a Motorway to London, and that until the 1990s there was no continuous dual carriageway to the West Midlands.

Felixstowe was never part of the National Dock Labour Scheme with its nonsensical restrictive practices. I can remember that dockers in these ports insisted that container "stuffing" was a dockers job. There were all sorts of shenanigans that forced shippers and shipping companies to docks without all the nonsense, and, wonder of wonders, it was very convenient for Europe too. Just like the printers and their unions, the dockers jobs disappeared because of a new technology, containers.

[KeithW]

Felixstowe was never part of the National Dock Labour Scheme with its nonsensical restrictive practices. I can remember that dockers in these ports insisted that container "stuffing" was a dockers job. There were all sorts of shenanigans that forced shippers and shipping companies to docks without all the nonsense, and, wonder of wonders, it was very convenient for Europe too. Just like the printers and their unions, the dockers jobs disappeared because of a new technology, containers.

Something similar happened on the Tees. In the 1970s Middlesbrough Docks in the centre were considered too small for modern ships so a new facility called Tees Dock was built further down river and it would continue to handle cargo in the same old manner. By the end of the 70's when Middlesbrough Docks closed that business had gone as a new container terminal had been built at Teessport. So Tees Dock largely switched to handling Nissan cars via large RoRo ships from Japan. Once that business reduced with the opening of the car plant at Sunderland it switched to handling bulk dry cargo on the western side and a second container terminal on the other.

One of the little customs and practises was the widespread pilfering especially of alcohol and tobacco that was euphemistically referred to as wasteage. An attempt to builld a RoRo terminal for Middlesbrough docks was vigorously opposed by the dockers, but even they couldn't figure out how to steal the Range Rovers being shipped from there to the middle east. When Tees Dock opened the Range Rovers and Land Rovers were shipped from there along with Jaguars, Rolls Royce and Bentleys.

[BF2142]

There absolutely should be an M12 between the M25 and Ipswich.

Sent from my SM-G986B using Tapatalk

[c2R]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

[Bryn666]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

[c2R]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

Indeed - this sort of thing on the A-92 is typical (although this does have a c-d road, it doesn't help the feeling of death that might occur) https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2313233 ... 312!8i6656

The road itself also has relatively sharp bends one way followed by the other, with gentle up and down undulations, meaning that it's no good if you suffer from motion sickness - it's also fairly tiring to drive, compared with some of the straighter modern motorways.

And who doesn't like a bit of community severance with terrifying two-way collector distributor roads which would make wrong way traffic very easy, as well as night time traffic exiting the service lane thinking the collector-distributors are one way: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1851627 ... 312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1860829 ... 312!8i6656

[Bryn666]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

Indeed - this sort of thing on the A-92 is typical (although this does have a c-d road, it doesn't help the feeling of death that might occur) https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2313233 ... 312!8i6656

The road itself also has relatively sharp bends one way followed by the other, with gentle up and down undulations, meaning that it's no good if you suffer from motion sickness - it's also fairly tiring to drive, compared with some of the straighter modern motorways.

And who doesn't like a bit of community severance with terrifying two-way collector distributor roads which would make wrong way traffic very easy, as well as night time traffic exiting the service lane thinking the collector-distributors are one way: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1851627 ... 312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1860829 ... 312!8i6656

We do have some of those two-way suddenly becomes a slip road type roads here, the A14 and A1 spring to mind as two examples! Very old fashioned way of doing things now of course.

[A303Chris]

See Godstone to Sevenoaks on the A25 where there is no M25 junction as a prime example. The final point I have there is that a three lane motorway would not have fitted in all the places the A12 was asked to go, without greater local destruction. Certainly where I was born in Pilgrims Hatch.

There are many other roads where this piecemeal bypassing has happened. See the whole A303/A30 route to the South-West. The A303 cobbled together in 1933 from other roads and including a proposed new bypass for Hounslow on the A30 in 1922 and nearly one hundred years later there are still prominent threads on here re bypasses proposed and now happening on the route and why Stonehenge still sees a lot of traffic.

The A25 made worse between Godstone and Wrotham, including through Sevenoaks given the lack of slips from the M26 E/W to the A21 N/S, meaning a long hike if going towards Maidstone to get on the motorway. Summed up by this
sign at Riverhead which directs you to Maidstone via the M25 and M20 at Swanley 19 miles compared to 9 miles along the A25 which is again primary between here and J2a

[exiled]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

Not quite on that level of 'yikes' but the comparison between the Wallonia sections of the N4 and E411 - A4 are a direct between 'this was ok' and something much better for now D3M of the A4. This is the N4 at Sinsin.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.26872 ... 312!8i6656

[Bryn666]

Agreed that there should have been - however, as with many of the A1 sections, the piecemeal upgrades made it just about good enough. This approach allowed road improvements to evolve over time and with lower initial outlay, but has left us in a position where we've got motorway type and levels of traffic running on routes that are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

Spain has had similar growing pains on their network, with upgrades to Autovia of their main national arterials, but in doing so has also had to embark upon a programme of improvements to reduce substandard cross-sections and improve junctions - some of which are are far more dangerous than those found on the A1 or A12 here!

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

Not quite on that level of 'yikes' but the comparison between the Wallonia sections of the N4 and E411 - A4 are a direct between 'this was ok' and something much better for now D3M of the A4. This is the N4 at Sinsin.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.26872 ... 312!8i6656

What is worth a look there is the overbridge (pan left) is seemingly a near uniform design all across Wallonia. They really like those 3 span curved decks.

[FosseWay]

It's a long time since I was there and it's all been bypassed now, but the N-340 along the south coast was ridiculous as a road, 120km/h with stop signs at the end of every slip road - it almost rivalled the now dead Italian A3 for substandard hideousness.

Indeed - this sort of thing on the A-92 is typical (although this does have a c-d road, it doesn't help the feeling of death that might occur) https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2313233 ... 312!8i6656

The road itself also has relatively sharp bends one way followed by the other, with gentle up and down undulations, meaning that it's no good if you suffer from motion sickness - it's also fairly tiring to drive, compared with some of the straighter modern motorways.

And who doesn't like a bit of community severance with terrifying two-way collector distributor roads which would make wrong way traffic very easy, as well as night time traffic exiting the service lane thinking the collector-distributors are one way: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1851627 ... 312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1860829 ... 312!8i6656

We do have some of those two-way suddenly becomes a slip road type roads here, the A14 and A1 spring to mind as two examples! Very old fashioned way of doing things now of course.

From the country that brought you the concrete pillar in the middle of a motorway carriageway, I present this gem near me. It is the s/b sliproad onto the E6 at J63 but it's two-way as far as the chopsticks sign to provide access to an area of housing off to the right. I'm not quite sure where to start on this... What exactly does the random disintegration of the DWL into blobs mean? The complete absence of any signage as you leave the side road implies that default priorities apply, i.e. priorité à droite. I really wouldn't want to test my priority coming out of there on a bicycle with a 40-tonner accelerating down the hill in order to reach motorway speed before joining L1. Yes, the nominal speed limit until you get to the 80 sign is 50, and the speed limit is 80 on the motorway, but guess how many people obey either?

Having said that, I use this onslip quite often and I've never encountered anyone turning into or out of that side turning. But familiarity breeds contempt, and doubtless the first time I do come across one, it'll be a cyclist with no hiviz at 6pm in November in the sleet.

[Enceladus]

I have cousins in and around the Ipswich area and have travelled on the A12 quite a few times - my own impression is that the piecemeal, non-strategic way it was upgraded between the 1960s and the present has led to a road that is high capacity for sure, but with a very inconsistent degree of standards along its length. If any trunk A route in the UK should have been motorway instead, the A12 is a prime example.

As another poster opined, when Felixtowe port was earmarked for major expansion in the late 1960s - why the M12 wasn’t planned at the same time is both a puzzle and was a huge lost opportunity.

[roadtester]

I agree the standard is incredibly variable but what we have now is quite a big improvement over what was there in the first half of the eighties before the "bypass of the bypass" around Chelmsford was built. That really made a big difference to the overall driveability of the route even if a lot of work still needs to be done to bring the whole lot up to modern standards.

[exiled]

From the country that brought you the concrete pillar in the middle of a motorway carriageway, I present

Is that the reason Volvos are built like tanks?

Trying to think of anywhere I've seen on a D2 with the combinations of 'yikes' as this one, again on the Belgian N4
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.39009 ... 312!8i6656

Local shop with parking, three houses, and the junction is not 90 degrees, it looks 75 - 80 in 110 - 115 out. Oh, and a 120 km/h limit.