Nottingham Urban Motorway

Post by **ravenbluemoon** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 13:53

I was looking into the history of roads around the local area when I found this interesting tit-bit from a local councillor's website:

Forty years ago, planners drew up plans for Nottingham’s Inner Motorway.

The “Forest Way” – an elevated road, was to run across the north of the Arboretum public park with a small version of spaghetti junction taking up the North-West site of the park.

This sounds like a plan for a ring-road system that would mirror roughly where the "Boulevards" are now, which strangely, would've meant that one of the houses I used to live in would have been bulldozed 40 years ago!

I was aware from doing a roads project at University that there was plans for motorways in Nottingham, and that they were rejected in favour of other schemes, but I was wondering if anyone had any other information on what might have been?

si404 · Post by **si404** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 15:15

there were, back in the days of MSN, some plans in the photo section, but not there now.

There was going to be a 4-level stack, IIRC!

Steven · Post by **Steven** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 16:05

Not from me - Nottingham is one of the places I have on my list to trawl through its archives, but I've not managed to get there yet.

Truvelo · Post by **Truvelo** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 16:26

Here's the map.

Post by **ravenbluemoon** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 16:44

Thanks - that's a good find!

I will most likely attempt to overlay this on the current network to see how much carnage this network would've caused

I wonder if the rush hour traffic would've been better if it had been built?

Truvelo · Post by **Truvelo** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 16:56

When this map was originally posted a few years back someone mentioned it was nothing compared to what was planned for the outer ring road. Obviously the A52/A453 GSJ's are complex but I imagine the whole route was meant to be GSJ'd.

ForestChav · Post by **ForestChav** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 17:17

Interesting find. I went to school near the Forest - still at a loss to think where that might go. The new roads are there but not enough reference roads.

Joking slightly but I would quite like to see the city council's response if I actually emailed and asked if they could build it... Might make a change from all the nimbies moaning.

M1 · Post by M1 » Wed Feb 20, 2008 18:45

ForestChav wrote:Interesting find. I went to school near the Forest - still at a loss to think where that might go. The new roads are there but not enough reference roads.

Joking slightly but I would quite like to see the city council's response if I actually emailed and asked if they could build it... Might make a change from all the nimbies moaning.

Please do so! And post their response here.

As much as I love urban motorways, this plan seems a bit excessive.. Good thing it wasn't built. But it seems that Nottingham, unlike many other big cities in England, didn't even build a small segment of it! Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?

ForestChav · Post by **ForestChav** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 19:37

I think the fact the Western arm scythes through The Park would make it unimaginable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Park_Estate

Not a single bit of that appears to have been built. I have insufficient info to check that with a better source but there doesn't even appear to be the land reserved.

kevjs · Post by **kevjs** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 20:08

M1 wrote:As much as I love urban motorways, this plan seems a bit excessive.. Good thing it wasn't built. But it seems that Nottingham, unlike many other big cities in England, didn't even build a small segment of it! Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?

I can't picture any of it on the ground - London Road has a 30mph limit that everyone assumes is 40mph, and nothing else appears to have a relation. The Meadows way has an S2 on it, that does seem to have a fair bit of space that you could get an S4 into if you wanted to, but aside from that!

I dread to think what Trent Bridge would be like if they had motorways further up London road would be though!

My best stab on Google Maps

Chris5156 · Post by **Chris5156** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 20:26

Interesting that the south-east corner would have had a Volleyball Interchange - it would have been the only one in the UK.

See here: http://www.kurumi.com/roads/interchange ... yball.html

ForestChav · Post by **ForestChav** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 21:32

kevjs wrote:
M1 wrote:As much as I love urban motorways, this plan seems a bit excessive.. Good thing it wasn't built. But it seems that Nottingham, unlike many other big cities in England, didn't even build a small segment of it! Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?
I can't picture any of it on the ground - London Road has a 30mph limit that everyone assumes is 40mph, and nothing else appears to have a relation. The Meadows way has an S2 on it, that does seem to have a fair bit of space that you could get an S4 into if you wanted to, but aside from that!

I dread to think what Trent Bridge would be like if they had motorways further up London road would be though!

My best stab on Google Maps

Presumably it would need widening - More so than the D3/S6 it currently is.

Roadtripper_Ian · Post by **Roadtripper_Ian** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 22:42

Chris5156 wrote:Interesting that the south-east corner would have had a Volleyball Interchange - it would have been the only one in the UK.

See here: http://www.kurumi.com/roads/interchange ... yball.html

I can't see any advantages having 4 sets of lights instead of a roundabout.....

ForestChav · Post by **ForestChav** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 22:46

Roadtripper_Ian wrote:
Chris5156 wrote:Interesting that the south-east corner would have had a Volleyball Interchange - it would have been the only one in the UK.

See here: http://www.kurumi.com/roads/interchange ... yball.html
I can't see any advantages having 4 sets of lights instead of a roundabout.....

I can't see why a signalled roundabout is necessary to begin with.

Truvelo · Post by **Truvelo** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:10

M1 wrote:Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?

Maid Marian Way is the only part built but it's not part of the motorway system.

Bryn666 · Post by **Bryn666** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:21

I can't see why a signalled roundabout is necessary to begin with.

You've obviously never used the busier roundabouts in the country then have you...

M1 · Post by M1 » Thu Feb 21, 2008 16:03

Truvelo wrote:
M1 wrote:Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?
Maid Marian Way is the only part built but it's not part of the motorway system.

This? It's not even grade separated.

Bryn666 · Post by **Bryn666** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 16:17

So?

It didn't work as a road anyway, it cut a swathe across the city and was regularly voted one of the ugliest city centre features in the UK. With GSJs it would have been even worse.

ForestChav · Post by **ForestChav** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 17:31

Truvelo wrote:
M1 wrote:Was nothing from the plan constructed or am I missing something?
Maid Marian Way is the only part built but it's not part of the motorway system.

True, I did wonder that but it's further in, though it looks like the southern end of MMW is what was originally intended

Do you have any better copies of that map? I was trying to see where it would actually go. Around the centre it's more obvious but things like the Southern end it is difficult to see where it goes.

Also there's the issue of detail further out. The radials are to be blunt crap and having nice motorways in the middle or even D2s then to be chucked onto a poor quality S2 radial is insanity so I can't think that it would be the same.

Someone mentioned the A453/A52 junction - I know it well, but to be honest it's a total mess as the A453 was never intended to be the numbered route - I'm sure originally that was the A648 leaving the A52 on the Sth side, or maybe the B679, and the Nth side was the A6019 (You can still see the patching, I have a pic on fotopic). It's nicely engineered but to an extent it causes too much weaving for traffic wishing to stay on numbered routes. Look on Google Earth. I also wonder if the A52 further SE of that was built around a temporary terminus. If you look at it, you might see why. You could write a load about that junction.

Bryn666 wrote:
I can't see why a signalled roundabout is necessary to begin with.
You've obviously never used the busier roundabouts in the country then have you...

If you put signals on a roundabout then maybe it might be because you have an imbalance of flows, in which case then it might be more sensible to think about grade separation if it already hasn't happened. But of course, it's cheaper to slap lights on an island than to build a GSJ.

Bryn666 · Post by **Bryn666** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 17:34

But of course, it's cheaper to slap lights on an island than to build a GSJ.

Well you could start demolishing vast swathes of urban areas for GSJs but that doesn't usually go down well with people...