Norwich Northern Bypass Update

[Norfolktolancashire]

The government has today agreed most of the funding for the proposed Norwich relief road to the north of the city


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-16176235

[NICK 647063]

Nice to see future planning by making it a D2 road a lesson learnt after the mess that is the A1237 york northern ring road! Roads like this open huge areas up for development and shopping parks so roads need to be able to take the extra traffic!

[owen b]

Nice to see future planning by making it a D2 road a lesson learnt after the mess that is the A1237 york northern ring road! Roads like this open huge areas up for development and shopping parks so roads need to be able to take the extra traffic!

While failing to resolve the glaring problem that it will not connect with the A47 west of Norwich, thus making large scale rat running on the unsuitable roads around Taverham and Easton inevitable, I would have thought.

[Derek]

It'll make a certain local land owning family very rich, that's for sure.

The Norwich NDR is genuinly a road being built in order to generate traffic. What it will do - and is designed to do - is to open up the countryside to the north of Norwich to development, which will translate as sprawling car based suburbia and shedscape warehouse parks. What it has very little to do with is relieving traffic congestion, which is mostly around the north-west corner of the city, the half of the route which isn't being built and rightly can't be built because of the Wensum valley.

I have always thought that what should have been done was to improve the old A47/outer ringroad route to the airport. Although disruptive to build, it would actually deal with the traffic demand and provide a route people actually want to use, as well as not contributing to sprawl.

The NDR is a classic example of private greed funded from the public purse.

Derek

[Unthank Road]

as someone who lives in norwich i'd like to completely endorse Derek's point above.

A way to spend a lot of my taxes not achieving anything good

[Truvelo]

To get from Dereham to the airport will anyone take the NDR via a 270 degree loop of Norwich or will the ratrun through Costessey still be quicker?

[AJK1982]

I'm not local and don't know the area, but there do appear to be plans to link the A47 to the A1067:
http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/Travel_and_tr ... /NCC052765

[Derek]

I'm not local and don't know the area, but there do appear to be plans to link the A47 to the A1067:
http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/Travel_and_tr ... /NCC052765

These are somewhat old plans now, they date from around 2007 or so and as far as I'm aware they came to nothing, certainly they haven't been mentioned for ages.

The original idea was for a D2 road all the way from one end of the Southern Bypass to the other, but the Western end would have had to go through a particularly lovely (and wealthy) river valley at Ringland. So this route further west was proposed to fill the gap. Trouble is though this section was only ever going to be S2 and it would have been congested from the start. So the route was left stranded on the A1067 to the north of Norwich. But at least that would have picked up traffic from the north and given it a route around Norwich, now that section has gone as well with the D2 ending on the A140, so the proposed route wouldn't do any good. This will mean not only the rat runs across the valley remain, but also those through the northern suburbs which are already horrendous. The whole of north Norwich is a textbook illustration of suburban sprawl, car based development with no provision for the traffic it generated. The NDR as is will only make all the problems there much worse.

And Welcome to SABRE Unthank Road - sounds like you live very close to me, I assume you know the Garden House?

Derek

[Unthank Road]

it's probably unethical to "bump" a thread having a private conversation but yes I do live very near Unthank Road and yes I do know the garden house - can't afford its extravagant prices though.

are there any other examples of roads that have been built that are as badly conceived as this one -ie a huge investment in new roads making the traffic problems clearly a lot worse?

[skiddaw05]

You're from Norwich, you can do as you like

I honestly can't think of any road scheme which is of less use to the general public than this one will be. All the time the plans have been simmering away there has been a virtual mothballing of any other transport improvements in and around the north of the city. Because any problems 'will be sorted by the NDR'. Which they blatantly will not.

[Phil]

It'll make a certain local land owning family very rich, that's for sure.

The Norwich NDR is genuinly a road being built in order to generate traffic. What it will do - and is designed to do - is to open up the countryside to the north of Norwich to development,

Derek

But development, particularly housing is good acording to the government (well if their planning proposals are anything to go by) and apparently part of the problem now is there is not enough development going on to generate jobs for the un-employed.

[Mark Hewitt]

It does seem to be a conflicting view that new housing is good, but new roads to support the housing is bad. Perhaps they are living in this dreamland where everyone walks or gets the bus everywhere.

[Derek]

More news from the Northern front.

The government has agreed to part fund the road from the A47 at Postwick to the A140 at the airport, now the Conservatives on Norfolk CC have decided to push for a dual carriageway through to the A1067. The origianl paln was for an S2 section to the A1067.

What this would do if built is to place a huge traffic burden on the country lanes across the Wensum valley, the protected area that lies between the A1067 and the other end of the A47 Southern bypass. Traffic wise of course, the is the section most needed if the NDR is to make sense.

EDP item

Derek

[norwichuk]

Some road porn courtesy of Norfolk County Council and the local rag.

[bob@romiley1]

Some road porn courtesy of Norfolk County Council and the local rag.

Seems an awful lot of roundabouts on such a road. Will it finish up with the same reputation as the [[A34]], [[Wilsmslow]] Bypass?

[Derek]

Not sure I'd agree about the "porn" comment, not much to get excited about to be honest. From a road POV the roundabouts are awful and the way it ends on the Reefham Road is just plain stupid - the big demand traffic wise is to go across the valley to the A47.

Environmentally it's a disaster. The video doesn't show the "development" that will come with the road - although the strangely pointless roundabouts are a clue. All that nice green coutryside will become shedsape/suburban hell. The Yare valley is crossed by some country lanes which are already overloaded with traffic finding its way to the A47, this new road will only make that a lot worse.

Private greed, that's all this road represents.

Derek

[cb a1]

Seems an awful lot of roundabouts on such a road. Will it finish up with the same reputation as the [[A34]], [[Wilsmslow]] Bypass?

The clue is in the name. Whilst this thread calls it the Norwich Northern Bypass, the link gives the name as The Norwich Northern Distributor Road.

Whilst a distributor road can act as a bypass, that's not its primary function.

[Truvelo]

It's exactly the same as York. A proper GSJ'd D2 to the south and a pathetic roundabout infested S2 to the north

[norwichuk]

It's almost all D2 in fact. And yes the porn thing is ironic...this isn't one of the better computer sims. That said I'm in. Favour of the road on balance. Only one of the roundabouts is pointless the rest connect radials. As a distributor (rather than a long distance hqdc) it will function well as long as they resist side accesses.

[M5Lenzar]

I am slightly surprised that the roundabouts aren't flared to allow for future dumbbells