A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

A rare bit of good news;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25197921

Considering practically every Suffolk MP is Conservative, this scheme always was a monumental foot shooting exercise.

A14 Toll Victory - RT

It's not really a victory - the new road, as currently planned, will be operating at well over capacity from opening day - according to the government's own current road building standards the present traffic volumes need a 4 lane motorway with hard shoulder but it'll be built as a 3-lane dual carriageway with no hard shoulder.

It'll be congested as soon as it opens so can you imagine how bad it'll be in 20-30 years?

The plans don't even take into account the fact that HGV traffic density is double that of existing motorways.

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

It's a victory in the sense that Suffolk as a county won't be subject to a tax which no other county in Britain would have to put up with. Tolling a new alternative is nothing new, they did that with the M6, but the A14 plan included knocking down part of the old road to give you no choice but to pay the toll. Stalin would've been proud.

It'll be congested as soon as it opens so can you imagine how bad it'll be in 20-30 years?

The A14 has been a problem for decades. There was a plan to upgrade it to the M14 back in the 1980s but it never happened, Blairs incoming Government in 1997 officially scrapped it, but I doubt it would've ever got built anyway.

I'm not sure what idiot thought that road was capable of serving one of the biggest ports in the World.

A14 Toll Victory - RT

?? The A14 wasn't built until the '90s - a combination of new build from Catthorpe near Rugby to Kettering, online upgrade to dual carriageway of A604 between Kettering and Cambridge with a few bypasses and then renumbering of the A45 dual carriageway from Cambridge to Felixstowe. The original A14 was the Old North Road from London to Alconbury, now renumbered to a minor route.

Back in the '40/50s when outline plans for motorways where drawn up, a motorway would have run from Holyhead to Felixstowe roughly along the line of the current A5, M54, M6, current A14 but all we got was Rugby-Telford.

The A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge has to cope with two major traffic flows, the A1-M11 traffic to/from the North and London / channel ports as well as the A14 traffic itself from Felixstowe (Britains busiest port) to the Midlands and North. On traffic flows it should be one of the UK's widest motorways, if not the widest.

As well as a "victory" for Suffolk-based hauliers taking containers from Felixstowe around the UK, this is also a "victory" for those living near the Huntingdon-Cambridge corridor as large numbers of vehicles would have used ordinary roads either side of the A14 to avoid the toll.

It's not a "victory" for motorists as it's still be a congested road running over capacity most of the time.

Edited by RT on 04/12/2013 at 08:23

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

The A14 wasn't built until the '90s

Its current incarnation wasn't finished until the early 1990s, but they started building it from Huntingdon in the early 1970s.

t's not a "victory" for motorists as it's still be a congested road running over capacity most of the time.

It's a victory in how it staves off alternative-free tolling and road pricing a little longer. Every time they attempt it, they eventually have an attack of conscience - ie they realise they'll lose lots of votes if they don't surrender.

A14 Toll Victory - RT

The A14 wasn't built until the '90s

Its current incarnation wasn't finished until the early 1990s, but they started building it from Huntingdon in the early 1970s.

That's somewhat selective - originally built by the Romans as part of Via Devana from Colchester to Chester, the A604 between Huntingdon and Cambridge was gradually upgraded to dual-carriageway.

My father was the AA Patrol with motorbike and sidebox on that stretch in the '50s, in it's 2-lane days and I regularly drove it in the '60s in it's 3-lane death-trap days. The upgrade of the A604 to dual-carriageway in more-or-less it's existing form was a great improvement.

The online dualling between Huntingdon and Kettering retained the A604 number, like the Huntingdon-Cambridge section. Only when the M1-A1 Link Road was fully opened as the A14, the A604 was renumbered as A14.

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

Sorry I just realised I really don't care.

A14 Toll Victory - Ethan Edwards

Victory? No merely a slight temporary win in a minor skirmish in the ongoing Government War on the Motorist. Millipede will probably change the decision or find some other imaginative way to screw us..

As a great man once said..this is not the end, no it's is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

So keep your powder dry lads.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 04/12/2013 at 11:01

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

Well the last Government first announced an A14 upgrade around Huntingdon. The Coalition then scrapped it, then made a new plan - which looked very much like the old plan - and decided to toll it.

Of course, whether the Labour plan would've ever got built is highly debatable. They announced it in the dying days of Gordon Brown, when they knew they'd lose the election and were guaranteeing the Earth to everybody.

A14 Toll Victory - RickyBoy

Heh!...

...business as usual Jamie? That's my boy...

A14 Toll Victory - gordonbennet

You have to wonder at the brains sorting out the infrastructure for this country.

Over the last 30 years this country has become a national warehouse for Chinese made tat, a massive amount of which is shipped in via Felixstowe and distributed to all those warehouses dotted around larger towns all over this country via A12 and A14.

Anyone with an ounce of sense could have forseen that a massive highway for lorries was going to be needed to cope with such traffic, especially as during the same period the population has increased by around 10/15 million hence even more tat needed to be transported and warehoused.

Edited by gordonbennet on 04/12/2013 at 21:21

A14 Toll Victory - Smileyman

Yes, it would have been better with all the goods going from factories to Felixstowe for export, but the days of being a major manufacturing nation are long gone ......

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

Yes, it would have been better with all the goods going from factories to Felixstowe for export, but the days of being a major manufacturing nation are long gone ......

Yes everybody wants to be an exporter while looking down their snobbish noses at any importers. Britain hasn't been a major manufacturing nation since before the Second World War, but we made the 14th highest amount of cars in the World last year without a British owned carmaker, which is pretty good going.

Having said that, we're still the Worlds 8th biggest manufacturer in nominal terms. We do a very good line in high end goods which newly rich Asian consumers want - rich Chinese folk don't want the tat they've been flogging us for 50 years.

Countries like India, Brazil, China etc will always better us on making tat.

A14 Toll Victory - Andrew-T

< Countries like India, Brazil, China etc will always better us on making tat. .

Of course one way to postpone the import-road congestion problem might be to persuade the British population that they should not buy so much tat?

Can't see that happening though .....

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

Postpone? It's been here for 20 years mate.

People generally buy what they can afford & with salaries static for a decade that is mostly tat. We say throwaway things like the 'newly affluent Chinese' while ignoring the fact 90% of China still can't afford the tat they flog us.

A14 Toll Victory - RT

Some of the "tat" is high value - computers for instance - just look at the PC/laptop/tablet/smartphone you're using right now.

A14 Toll Victory - jamie745

It'd be worthless without the processors from Cambridge.