Beaumont (Jersey)

Beaumont Junction

Beaumont is the name of a hill in the parish of St Peter,Jersey. The hill has two roads: Le Vieux Beaumont (Old Beaumont) (both an S1 and an S2) and the modern A12 La Route de Beaumont (S2 its whole length). The road has given its name to a settlement at the bottom, which features a roundabout junction of the A1 La Route de la Haule and the A12. The junction is a few paces from the coast.

Originally operating as a normal modern roundabout, traffic engineers found that such a design did not suit the junction's characteristics. During the morning peak (and in modern times, pretty much all day), there is a very heavy flow from both the A12 and A1(W) into the A1(E) (both roads serve roughly even populations, who mostly commute to St Helier for work). However, the flow from the A1(E) into the A12 is very low, meaning the A1(W)'s priority was interrupted. Therefore, the junction was altered to a filter in turn, which means each flow got an even chance to merge onto the A1(E).

The filter model has its advantages and disadvantages. It is much cheaper than widening the road to provide signals, but during low flow is reduces traffic flow, as drivers must take the junction more cautiously.

Fixing the traffic problem

Despite the filter evening the priorities, it hasn't reduced the traffic congestion in the area (possibly worsened it on certain approaches). The D2 A2 Victoria Avenue bottlenecks further west at Bel Royal and must filter with other traffic here, causing back-ups every day at least as far as the Millbrook junction. The fact that the A2 does not extend as far as Beaumont creates a bottleneck for traffic in both eastbound and westbound connections, as two flows of traffic must converge through Bel Royal. Many different solutions have been proposed over the years.

In 1974, a traffic study presented a number of options:

• Widening La Route de la Haule to four traffic lanes and constructing a bypass of Beaumont by extending the sea wall.
• Constructing a new link road across Goose Green Marsh to the A11 attracting traffic from Beaumont Hill away from Route de la Haule (this would have needed significant improvements at Bel Royal, even proposing an overpass from the A11 to the A2).
• Constructing a new road across the Goose Green Marsh, operating on a one-way system
• Constructing a new sea wall to Beaumont and extending the A2 to beyond Beaumont, where its traffic divides almost equally.
• A new gyratory system involving a link road from Route de la Haule to Beaumont Hill

In the 1987 Island Plan, it was proposed to construct a gyratory system using patches of undeveloped land adjacent to the road. This would remove the current three-way conflict, but would not solve the bottleneck of the D1 La Route de la Haule.

Routes

Route	To	Notes
A1	St Helier
A1	St Aubin
A12	St Ouen