I'm not exactly sure where the A14 started and ended in the bygone age, i know from all my years on the road it began at Sawtry or Alconbury and ended at Royston, not sure where it went to, if anywhere, after Royston...maybe one of our flock has a really old road atlas sitting about and wouldn't mind having a quick poke nose.

Similar, i can't recall exactly when the M11 opened fully nor where or in what order, i can well recall the havoc when the M25 was opened in sections though and three lanes of traffic suddenly descended on places like Waltham Abbey and Denham, older drivers must recall in their nightmares the joys of the North Orbital and the inevitable crawl through Watford, Denham, Slough, learned some serious ducking and diving techinques back then, 7.5 ton limits notwithstanding.

I haven't a clue what they're going to do about M11 and that horrid bit of the A604 (as it was) that runs between Cambridge and Huntingdon nor the junction from hell where the A45 runs beneath at the top end of Cambridge...it's been way beyond a joke for years now especially since production of anything plastic or electronic or clothing wise ended in this country and nearly all of it now travels by road via container lorry along this totally inadequate Camb/Hunt section.

Didn't they float plans for another toll road between the two running parallel to A604 a few years ago, some wealthy donor's money maker?? it was apparently dropped for some reason.

Maybe not enough poor souls (or headline worthy enough??) have perished to make it an urgent enough priority yet, i'm only amazed that at long last the Catthorpe section of A14/M1/M6 junction is finally being sorted, how many people have died and been seriously injured on that section due to criminally poor design of that jct i have no idea.

To be quite candid it wouldn't matter if all the major routes were widened to 4/5 lanes in each direction, the population and especaially the long distance traffic to service the same is increasing that fast that the whole road network is going to grind to a halt in due course whatever happens...going to help no end the critical shortage of real lorry drivers that's started now but is going to happen big time in the next 5/10 years as the old school retire, that is a seriously important situation that is being addressed by box ticking and kicking it into the long grass.

Cambridge, Oxford and other similar cities/towns with shall we say more academic profiles, suffer more than others from the two main peak period rush hours, where other towns have a certain amount of shift working due to warehousing/distribution (once manufacturing) with notable exceptions for Oxford (such as BINI plant), so their commutes are spread over many hours, the vast bulk of working is normal office hours in academic/office world.

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of putting decent railway tracks down to service such commutes, maybe we should advertise for some geezer called Beeching to design us such an infrastructure..:-)

Edited by gordonbennet on 28/09/2015 at 13:12

Hmm, something in what loosely passes for my mind is suggesting the old Roman road Ermine Street might be the route which the proper A14 followed.

I think at least part of that 'old' road forms the current A1198 from Royston to Huntingdon - its reasonably well used - I was surprised when Network Rail built the new 'loop' at Hitchin that they didn't add a 'slip-off' so that trains could then go directly from Royston to Huntingdon and onwards - in a way its a real shame the (infamous) Cambridge Guided Busway (I worked on an aborted attempt at some actual proper stations [mechanical building services] at St. Ives and Lonstanton) wasn't fully restored to a one up-one down railway line all the way from Cambridge Station to Huntingdon, as I think it would've reduced the car traffic on that stretch of the A14 significantly. In my view too many twit politicians who didn't know what they were doing involved.

As GB has said, ancient towns and cities like Cambridge and surrounds suffer terrible congestion problems from roads that could never handle the huge numbers of commuters (and many students now driving as well as travelling by bus or cycle [not something that was a problem in my days at university 20-odd years ago]) from every-growing satellite villages and towns (including Royston itself) and a train service that is near or at capacity.

The problem I find is that, at least as Cambridge is concerned, that the poor location of the station 20-25 mins walk (at least) from the city centre makes public transport less viable (who wants to lug bag-fulls of shopping that far or get squashed on the bus) and still more expensive/less convenient than driving for commuters. I suspect it was the closest that (back in the day) the colleges could 'stand' the railway to pass their lovely old buildings (they [mainly Trinity College] still own most of city centre, so nothing happens without their say-so. All we get now is loads of buses churning out disgusting diesel fumes and soot, rather like in central London. Sadly, as the council spent all (and more) they had on the Busway, they've nothing in the kitty for new innovations for a good number of years.

The general safety warnings might have a value: "Think bike" but I was pleased to see one on the M6 a few years back: "Thin bike." Still not sure what to do about that......

I thought I'd just add todays example:

Accident on the A1(m) - so the gantry signs tell us that the Rugby is coming in a couple of weeks.

A 3 mile queue (caused by their poor traffic management) at the tyne tunnel is helpfully explained with 'dont smoke with kids in the cars'

On leaving the tunnel a cryptic 'Caution' sign awaits you. Not sure if thats just general advice for life.

So the single-figure IQ bunch who run the tunnel are now moral crusaders against smoking in cars!

I like the sign saying 'dont smoke with kids in the cars' - is that implying you should tell you kids to put their cigarettes out whilst you're smoking as well - some sort of 'kiljoy' attitude?! :-)

The 'caution' one - that'll get nervous drivers thinking! What is coming??? Better slow down even more, peeing off even more drivers behind.