The good news is that a new much needed section of road by passing Huntingdon is to be built. The bad news is that it will be a toll road with no alternative non-toll route. The bridge on the old road is to be removed.
I guess at the end of the day toll road is better than none but it does look to be the pattern for the future.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-24007800
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There's always an alternative, they'll have to weight limit the A428 or it won't cope, depending on toll charges and the queuing involved to pay.
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Unless the toll is cost really prohibitive I don't see the A428 as a practical alternative.
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Thats agreed IF the toll charges are as suggested in the item, however it'll be a cold day in hell before a state cost estimate comes in on budget so every reason to suspect the figure quoted won't either.
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There is an alternative for car drivers, via some general village windings. Or a longer one for lorries. The toll is planned to be "either £1 or £1.50" for cars, and double for HGVs.
I guess you work out your running costs per mile and do the calculation as to which route is best, assuming time doesn't matter.
The plan is for it to be ready by 2020. Allowing for slippages, that's going to be another decade yet, which is a long time in politics.
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Route-of-15bn-A14-upgrade-and-details-of-tolling-plans-revealed-20130909000100.htm
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 10 Sep 13 at 09:27
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Best plan of the new route I've seen online...
www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/content/articles/2007/11/05/a14_widen_map_07.pdf
Much needed but I'm not keen on the toll element.... collected by number plate cameras it seems.
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>>collected by number plate cameras it seems.
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How do they collect foreign registered vehicles charges, or another freebie for them?
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>>>or another freebie for them?
They say not but I have no idea how it will work.
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Four of our vehicles do two trips to FXTO and back per day and again at night.
That's a considerable cost and makes going across the fen to come out at Newmarket worthwhile.
Pat
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>> Four of our vehicles do two trips to FXTO ............
Even my revered Urban Dictionary couldn't enlighten me on FXTO.
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When the A14 is busy, the congestion appears, to me, to be between the whole length from Huntingdon to Cambridge. The plan shows that the toll road will rejoin the A14 before it splits into A14 East, M11 and Cambridge city. Surely the congestion will simply be concentrated into one great mass just to the north of Cambridge?
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The plan seems to be that where the toll road rejoins the old A14 that will be widened by one lane through to the top of the M11.
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"The plan seems to be that..........."
Ah, thanks for that. Presumably the old stretch of A14 down from Huntingdon will still be open to traffic coming down the A1 wanting to head down to Cambridge/M11.
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Pity there won't be an alternative. At least with the M6 you pays your money ( or not ) and takes your choice, so to speak.
I do use the M6 toll quite a lot whether indeed I've been paying with my own money or my employer's. It does save a lot of time at peak periods and if looked at as a functional cost of say, a round trip to London, for me it doesn't add a lot of cost as a percentage of the total day out.
If anyone can be bothered to do the sums that example above would be 360 odd miles round trip, at approx 45mpg ( diesel ) plus £10 con charge, plus about £35 in parking charges in central London so another £11 to save maybe an hour or a bit more out of an already long day seems ok, in the scheme of things.
I'd certainly have a different view if I had to use it every day without alternative options which might well be the case for someone living/working either side of the proposed A14 toll.
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>> Pity there won't be an alternative. At least with the M6 you pays your money
>> ( or not ) and takes your choice, so to speak.
But there is, in practice not that much traffic continues up the last bit of A14 to join A1N, the vast majority continues on A14.
If you're coming from Newmarket end then bearing in mind how bad the congestion is trying to funnel round that single track to join A14 nth at top of M11, you can continue straight along the A428 then either nip back up A1 from St Neots, or nip down the A421 to rejoin M1 at jct 13.
Bearing in mind how bad Kettring section can be at peak times plus the inevitable congestion at A14/M6 there's probably not a lot in it.
Locals will always find a way round whatever happens.
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>>>Presumably the old stretch of A14 down from Huntingdon will still be open...
It seems not as they plan to remove the unsound flyover in the area of the railway at Huntingdon... I assume A1 southbound traffic will have to travel further south and join the new road.
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I'm extremely nervous about this precedent.
It's fine if you go to France. If you want to use the motorway (most of it, anyway), you have to pay.
It's fine on the M6 as there's a choice.
But here you're making access to Cambridge (Silicon Fen - a real powerhouse of the nation) difficult and expensive.
I don't get why they're not making the current A14 4 lanes. You could build a new parallel four lanes on the north side of the road, and then convert the current road into the westbound carriageway.
And where are they getting to with widening the M11 between Stansted and Cambridge?
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Is the long term plan of the Government to get all roads off the balance sheet whilst still collecting vehicle licences on a 6 or 12 month basis for the treasury?
I thought the Highways Agency was responsible for major routes including Trunk roads of which the A14 is one.
If they do no maintenance or slap a bit of tar about now and again for a few years it appears they can de-trunk the route, build a new road at a cost of £1.5bn and cover 20% of the cost through tolls. Where is the remaining £1.2bn coming from?
Last edited by: gmac on Tue 10 Sep 13 at 18:47
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I live in Godmanchester and work on the science park in North Cambridge. I never use the A14 in the morning and go down the A1198 and through the country lanes to avoid the Caxton Gibbet roundabout. I sometimes use it on the way home if I am leaving after 6:30 when it generally trundles along at about 50.
I am not sure what they are doing at Girton when you leave the old A45 to join the old A604? Not seen any plans?
I think they should dual what is now the A428 and improve the area around the black cat to send the M6 or M1 bound via the new A421 and avoid the mess that is Catthorpe. Traffic coming up the M11 can continue on the current road (Huntingdon bridge strengthening has almost finished) and then along the current A14. Issue on the A428 is going under the East Coast Mainline and over the Wyboston lakes.
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>> improve the area around the black cat to send the M6 or M1 bound via the new A421
The M1 end of the A421 is an absolute mis****. How the devil they thought that terminating a 21 mile dual carriageway with four sets of traffic lights and three roundabouts 1/4 mile away from a motorway junction was a good idea I will never know.
As far the A14 upgrade goes, only a short-sighted haulage operator would encourage their drivers to use more than 3 quid's worth of extra juice to avoid the toll road. Sensible routing on longer-distance journeys will help, but I suspect most freight traffic will pay up and use the new road for convenience.
I rarely use the Humber Bridge or the tunnels in Merseyside and Newcastle, never use the M6 toll or the Wales-bound Severn Crossings but go both ways across the Thames at Dartford a couple of times a week.
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>>>> improve the area around the black cat
IIRC funding's been approved to implement this.
>>The M1 end of the A421 is an absolute mis****
Couldn't agree more, a right pig's ear. Horrendous queues travelling East on the A421 from Milton Keynes at J13. I avoid it whenever I can.
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Shock Horror!
A sensible government decision.
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"A sensible government decision."
Not so much a sensible decision - more a sensible u-turn to an initially stupid decision. They've done another with the 'funding for lending' scheme that was guaranteed to increase indebtedness and push up house prices. It makes you wonder why they can't think these things through properly in the first place.
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>>more a sensible u-turn to an initially stupid decision
Better that than doggedly sticking to the wrong decision.
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Isn't this just the old "announce something we don't think we can get away with and see how volatile the reaction is, and then withdraw it, bringing it back a few years later until it gets accepted" politics?
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Wonder if Maggie's turning in her grave at the number of U-turns this lot's made?
Last edited by: bathtub tom on Tue 3 Dec 13 at 14:29
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She U turned out of no 10....
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"Better that than doggedly sticking to the wrong decision."
Yes
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It will be interesting to see when the announcement is made tomorrow whether the road will be built within the same timescale as it would have been if the toll proposal had gone ahead. I believe they were due to start building in 2016 but I rather suspect there will now be substantial delays.
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A14 Toll - -
