New M25 > A3 link road

[sillytaxi]

Hi,

local gossip here in Kingston is that a new link road between the M25 and the A3 (via the A243) will be proposed as part of major greenfield development of the Chessington area. The Kingston Council Leader, Kevin Davis, has stated that the route has not been finalised yet. To me, that sounds pretty affirmative that proposals are being drawn up. Kevin Davis is also founder and COO of a lobbying company called Cratus who work to influence planning applications from large property developers. The Chairman of Cratus is Merrick Cockell, also Chairman of the newly created Crossrail 2 Growth Commission. Local speculation is that the new road is part of plans to develop large housing developments on greenfield land in the Chessington area. This mooted development would be used to bankroll Crossrail 2.

An indicative route has been doodled up on google maps, but I don't know how accurate it is:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

I understand that there were previous proposals knocking around 25 years ago, but I can't find anything online. Does this ring a bell with anybody? Thoughts on whether this is a good/bad idea would be welcome, particularly with regard to the long standing congestion upstream bewtween Hook and Tolworth - how would that be affected?

[Truvelo]

My immediate observation is commuters from Leatherhead into London would be attracted onto the new A3 junction and add to the queue where the A3 loses a lane at Hook.

[M19]

Unless it's a nice stretch of expressway standard dual carriageway connected at both ends with free flow junctions, I won't be getting excited.

I imagine it will be one of those so called "development routes". Read that as meaning a sub-standard underengineered pretend bypass that has too many roundabouts and a 40 mph speed limit which would also ruin the A243 in the process. I think I remember the A243 being a half-decent short cut that I used over 15 years ago. That is a long time ago, so I don't know whether that road has been molested by the fun police since then.

[Johnathan404]

Rumours of major works abound - see also this thread.

[jackal]

My immediate observation is commuters from Leatherhead into London would be attracted onto the new A3 junction and add to the queue where the A3 loses a lane at Hook.

It would be possible to compensate for the extra traffic by adding west-facing slips at Hook for access to the A3, merging/diverging at the lane drop. This would take some traffic out of Hook Underpass and onto the roundabout (which would have lost some of its traffic to the new A3 junction).

[Truvelo]

The original plan was for a bridge joining both parts of Woodstock Lane and making it full access like this.

[A3-Andrew]

It could be useful. But one thing I'm quite sure about: It won't be quite up to the standard of the original 1970s A3 Esher By-Pass motorway. I suspect the slip roads will be substandard somehow.

[phil gollin]

.

Being relatively local, East Molesey, I can't see the Claygate residents being at all happy (assuming there is a connection northwards from the new A3 junction) and whilst it MAY relieve some pressures, it will jam up the Scilly Isles roundabout(s) even worse than at present (with "rat-running" traffic avoiding Esher).

Purely from a roads point of view I can see the "ripples" of different traffic flows causing lots of problems.

[ronA1066]

Sounds daft to me. Improving a stretch of road which links a congested bit of motorway (the M25 at Junction 9) to a congested major road (the A3), neither of which needs any more traffic. More sensible to put the money into Crossrail 2, make the Chessington branch part of Crossrail 2, and extend the branch to Leatherhead as was the original intention about 80 years ago.

[Arcuarius]

So no M31 then?

[sillytaxi]

A story has emerged in the local paper.

http://m.surreycomet.co.uk/news/1409434 ... years_on_/

To me, the tone sounds like the Kingston Council leader is flying a kite with this one. Not exactly warm sentiment from government.

Neither the council leader nor the local MP outline any likely impact on the A3, which would be pretty fundamental to getting the proposal furthered.

[ronA1066]

So no M31 then?

You must be joking! Cutting through the stockbroker belt where house prices outside the towns are in the £3-5 million bracket? Just to buy the land for a short length of motorway would be a billion or more before a spade went into the ground. And apart from the sheer cost, the Tories want to win the next election. Threatening to cut the M31 through there would be the quickest way to bring about a Liberal Democrat revival that would cost the Tories their parliamentary majority.

[Bryn666]

Yet all those pricks moaning about their house prices being knocked by new roads will also be moaning about the traffic jams on the M25 every morning.

[si404]

Sounds daft to me. Improving a stretch of road which links a congested bit of motorway (the M25 at Junction 9) to a congested major road (the A3), neither of which needs any more traffic.

The main driver is the development at Chessington and this is simply a bypass of it. I can't see it adding much traffic to either the M25 and A3, and might even remove some.

More sensible to put the money into Crossrail 2,

I can't see the cost of this being able to provide much for CR2 - at best it might fund Balham station (but not the additional tunnel mileage that the 'Balham bulge' has) and CR2 is looking at a completely different problem to this road scheme.

make the Chessington branch part of Crossrail 2,

That is the most certain SW branch (though Kingston is also a near certainty) and is one of two (Hampton Court being the other one) that is currently proposed to be CR2-only.

and extend the branch to Leatherhead as was the original intention about 80 years ago.

That strikes me as counterproductive. Leatherhead already has reasonable routes to London (via Epsom) and adding more passengers onto Chessington branch trains when peak frequency is proposed as 4tph, despite a ton of houses being built there.*

If you want CR2 to Leatherhead to improve access to Kingston, then extending the Chessington branch doesn't help (still a change at Raynes Park). Better to build a link to Leatherhead from Claygate.

Extend the railway through the development, sure, but going to Leatherhead isn't worth it.

*IIRC, existing peak service is 4tph already. Compare the upper Lea Valley's proposal to go from 1tph Liverpool Street and 1tph Stratford to 12tph CR2 and 4tph Stratford to merely try and spur development (though, to be fair, some is happening already thanks to STAR).

[Duncan]

Sounds daft to me. Improving a stretch of road which links a congested bit of motorway (the M25 at Junction 9) to a congested major road (the A3), neither of which needs any more traffic.

The main driver is the development at Chessington and this is simply a bypass of it. I can't see it adding much traffic to either the M25 and A3, and might even remove some.

More sensible to put the money into Crossrail 2,

The main problem at Chessington outside peak hours in my experience is that the authorities won't stop traffic for the World of Adventures queueing on the A243, which then tails back to the M25 and along the D2 link road between the two sections of the junction. Once you are past the Chessington Village roundabout the problem eases, even though there are two or three sets of lights up to the Hook junction (true it is D2 after Chessington Village). I would guess the people of Oxshott ought to be pleased with a new road though. It would remove the likes of me; because of the congestion around Chessington, that is my chosen route between the M25 and the A3. I have rarely been held up there, though I don't tend to travel by car when travelling to work.

[Arcuarius]

So no M31 then?

You must be joking! Cutting through the stockbroker belt where house prices outside the towns are in the £3-5 million bracket? Just to buy the land for a short length of motorway would be a billion or more before a spade went into the ground. And apart from the sheer cost, the Tories want to win the next election. Threatening to cut the M31 through there would be the quickest way to bring about a Liberal Democrat revival that would cost the Tories their parliamentary majority.

Which would be a very good thing

[ronA1066]

The main problem at Chessington outside peak hours in my experience is that the authorities won't stop traffic for the World of Adventures queueing on the A243, which then tails back to the M25 and along the D2 link road between the two sections of the junction...

A slightly curious assertion. You could equally say that the root of the London rush hour problem is that the authorities won't stop traffic that wants to get into London queueing on the roads approaching it.

[A3-Andrew]

I drove up the A243 past this stretch yesterday. The traffic was very bad at the time (morning) and it appeared to be down to a delivery of cars to the car dealership at Malden Rushett - that was all. It takes very little for that stretch to snarl up.

One thing that I have noticed about that road: I would say that there is evidence that it was planned for widening (dualling?) at one stage. The properties just south of the Malden Rushett traffic lights have their propery boundaries set back from the road as if there was an intention for widening and the borders of the fields on at least one side of the road are well set back. It looks post-war to me, if I am honest, which is strange if the Green Belt issue, which I understand was the death knell to the extension of the railway to Leatherhead, was the problem. Surely, however, any work that they do plan on this link road would also have the same problems? If they do manage to get around it then they could resurrect the railway perhaps?

[M4 Cardiff]

Could the development plan to be to close Chessington theme park and build houses on it instead? therefore the road could be S106 or would it be S278?

[booshank]

So no M31 then?

You must be joking! Cutting through the stockbroker belt where house prices outside the towns are in the £3-5 million bracket? Just to buy the land for a short length of motorway would be a billion or more before a spade went into the ground. And apart from the sheer cost, the Tories want to win the next election. Threatening to cut the M31 through there would be the quickest way to bring about a Liberal Democrat revival that would cost the Tories their parliamentary majority.

Which would be a very good thing

Why would anyone outside that immediate area care, beyond appreciating not having the south west side of the M25 permanently congested?