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jackal wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 12:48
Are there any examples of properties being bought by HA/HE/NH and demolished in order to remove their frontages from trunk roads?
Surely this would often be far better value for money than building a new road. Even 10 £500,000 properties is only £5m, a fraction of the cost of the shortest realignment.
Yet it seems very rare if it happens at all. Maybe NH are so used to thinking of demolition as a means to the end of construction that they don't usually consider whether it might in itself be an improvement.
We have previously discussed the related case of buying and demolishing properties next to the M6 as environmental mitigation for the J21a to J26 scheme, though obviously there was no frontage on the M6 here.
A2(NI) Jordanstown widening a number of houses were bought for their frontages eg.
It seems most were demolished and replaced by a handful of new builds with tiny gardens.
Interestingly not all, some of the surviving properties lost a bit of their gardens, as with this example on which the garage is no longer able to be used as a garage
I'm amazed it has it's own central barrier gap. Turning out of it you could use the roundabout to the north, though turning into it from the north you'd either need the gap or continue a few miles to the next roundabout.
Feels as though it would have been sensible to turn this into S2+frontage road when it was bypassed. In fact, the dualled bit seems to only cover the section with residences - it's as if this might have been the intended future for it once the bypass was built.
Feels as though it would have been sensible to turn this into S2+frontage road when it was bypassed. In fact, the dualled bit seems to only cover the section with residences - it's as if this might have been the intended future for it once the bypass was built.
Agreed, there is already cross over access in three places. However I suspect the short dualling may have been to allow residents to turn right by crossing to the centre gap and waiting there. When it was the A47 it was always a slowish 40mph slog both ways behind HGV's and stopping behind turning traffic and buses picking up and setting down.
Last edited by doebag on Sun Feb 11, 2024 09:40, edited 1 time in total.
This is a USA Freeway in Los Angeles, the Century Freeway. Quite recent build (1990), looking at the map you can see how it just smashed through an established high-density grid plan of housing
Known for having demolished the childhood home of the Beach Boys pop group, the Wilson family. It also involved a number of other prominent musicians' backgrounds - this is LA after all. One notable thing was that once the route was mooted, the houses lost value tended to get sold to various lower-income groups, as you can imagine. When build started, there were further issues because what was being cleared was predominantly such groups.
jackal wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 12:48
Are there any examples of properties being bought by HA/HE/NH and demolished in order to remove their frontages from trunk roads?
Surely this would often be far better value for money than building a new road. Even 10 £500,000 properties is only £5m, a fraction of the cost of the shortest realignment.
Yet it seems very rare if it happens at all. Maybe NH are so used to thinking of demolition as a means to the end of construction that they don't usually consider whether it might in itself be an improvement.
We have previously discussed the related case of buying and demolishing properties next to the M6 as environmental mitigation for the J21a to J26 scheme, though obviously there was no frontage on the M6 here.
They wanted to buy one of the properties alongside the A1 at Elkesley to remove its access from the road, but said that they "weren't able to do so". Since CPOs are compulsory I can only assume that meant the scheme budget wasn't enough to buy it.
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There were plenty here in Ireland along the older sections of D2 - such as the Naas DC before its major upgrade in 2006 when all the private accesses were removed and parallel roads built between the new GSJs.
Ireland is scourged with ribbons of one-off rural housing - extremely bad gombeen “planning” and the National primary routes, now mostly replaced by the motorways, were festooned with private entrances. These were a contributory factor to some of the fatal crashes on these roads in previous decades.
I think there are only now a few sections of D2 with houses along them - the N11 Stillorgan DC in Dublin, built in the 1970s and other old sections of DC in suburban Dublin built pre-1985. A few rural sections too, N71 just outside Cork city, part of the N25 in east Cork near Carrigtwohill and the former N18 between Limerick and Shannon, originally dualled in the 1970s.
orudge wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 13:34
You'll find a good few on the A90 between Dundee and Aberdeen, though some sections (e.g. Brechin and Stonehaven bypasses) are of a higher quality and avoid this. Random example and another.
Yes, there are loads of cottages and farms on the A90 and the S2 sections of the A96. I’ve always thought this one just south of Stonehaven looks like it would be very noisy.
WHBM wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 01:00
A31 in the New Forest (above).
Here's one for the "Active Travel" zealots.
A31.JPG
The road predates cars. This is the vice of online dualling.
I think in all these cases that is what we are looking at, the A1, A38, N13, N4 and all the other examples existed before dualling, and would include those places which have essentially become oxbow lakes. Just wish I could remember where I saw them!
The likes of this this on the French A13 doesn't count as the houses were built with the autoroute as accomodation for the Gendarmes patrolling the road.
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