Specs - A428 / A14 / A11 - Bedford to Norfolk

[mindgam3]

dunno about the scammeras, but there's a major accident on the A14 nearly every week, the council really need to sort it out

[autismuk]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I don't know if they are live or not.

A428 to the A1 (Black Cat) ; there are some scameras in the village which should have been bypassed years ago whose name escapes me (it is obvious !).

Note: Great Barford PSR

A1 short section, not that I know of.

A428 St Neots to Cambridge, a few here and there. It's not that likely btw that you'll be able to do more than 60 odd on this point unless it is 3AM.

A14 Cambridge to Newmarket, never seen them.

A11 Newmarket to Thetford. The first bit is dual carriageway but there's a 50mph limit to the Mildenhall Roundabout and there's occasionally a Plod about there. Mind you it's a bloody dangerous bit of road so they've got a point. The rest is a cruddy single carriageway road, again you'll be lucky to do 60mph.

A11 Thetford to Norwich ; now all dualled. No fixed cameras, I think, but the popular Scamera places are at Snetterton just past the B1111 turn off and at Ketteringham a mile before you hit the Norwich bypass.

However, being the only decent road in the county it is quite popular with Plod and Scameras.

>> Edited by autismuk on Sunday 13th February 11:56

[ledfoot]

Watch out for the scamera vans between Besthorpe and Norwich on the A11.

The vans are orange and sit on the bridges on dual carriageway.

I get the impression they want their £60 when you leave and depart from Norwich.

>> Edited by ledfoot on Saturday 12th February 20:20

[autismuk]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

You can't get in. It's an awful place to drive in.

We have an autistic transport planner (this is absolutely not a joke) who has all these wacky ideas.

Probably the most insane was creating a bus lane on one of the arterial routes for a Park'N'Ride ; great idea, except they hadn't started building the Park'N'Ride. Not only did it take 40 minutes to get in, you couldn't take the bus, there weren't any.....

This reached its apex a few months back.

Anyone remember "The Day Britain Stopped ?"

Well, we had "the Day Norfolk Stopped". It snowed ; about 2cm as a flurry. The city stopped completely ; it was taking people hours to get out and most of it just gridlocked - literally.

Someone I know took 6 hours to get to Gt. Yarmouth ; it is 20 miles away.

Despite this we have now built a new shopping centre with traffic light access off *one* side of a dual carriageway where the car parks will be. This particular dual carriageway is invariably jammed anyway..... I despair.

[parrot of doom]

mindgam3 said:

dunno about the scammeras, but there's a major accident on the A14 nearly every week, the council really need to sort it out

I'd say its not the council's problem, but something for drivers to consider.

[autismuk]

parrot of doom said:

mindgam3 said: dunno about the scammeras, but there's a major accident on the A14 nearly every week, the council really need to sort it out I'd say its not the council's problem, but something for drivers to consider.

It's probably a Highway Agency job as its a trunk road.

If you visit the CBRD they have a section called "Bad Road Junctions" ; of the couple of dozen 3 are on the A14. One is the laughable one at the end on the M6 ; the others are in Cambridgeshire, either end of the Huntingdon/Cambridge bit.

The "accident" is actually at the utterly wierd A428/A14/M11 Girton Interchange which appears to have been designed by spaghetti. If you follow the main A14 through it goes something like.

1) Filter off left (there's usually huge queues)
2) Miss tiny filter to M11 South (which causes lane changing because you get 2 seconds notice).
3) Go round 360 degrees in an incredibly tight circle.
4)Then there's the bit where two lanes of traffic cross each other in about 50 yards of single carriageway.
5) The road wanders on for a bit.
6) Then there's a filter from the right which appears to come from nowhere under the M11/A14 main carriageway
7) Then you've got to filter on to the extension of the M11.
8) Then after about another 200 yards there's a mandatory left lane turn which means you have to change lanes again, made worse by the building of a Hypermarket at Longstanton.

Unsurprisingly there are a fair few crashes here, god alone knows what someone who is not used to it makes of it.... and it occasionally locks up totally, which brings the totality of Cambridge to a halt, because there's no way round and you can't go through Cambridge which is terrible.

It's a quite extraordinary junction, especially the above which is the main movement A14 East to West.

The whole A14 was built on the cheap. It's the old A45, slightly improved but pretty poor and the A14 to Huntingdon, a few new bits and the Kettering bypass, and the comically inadequate end.

[pic]www.cbrd.co.uk/badjunctions/diag/11-14-428.gif[pic]

[zumbruk]

autismuk said:

A428 to the A1 (Black Cat) ; there are some scameras in the village which should have been bypassed years ago whose name escapes me (it is obvious !). Note: Great Barford PSR

Great Barford, correct. Work on the bypass has started and the villagers have taken down their "Bypass Now!" posters (odd that there's never anything on the news when a village actually *wants* its bypass).

Note that there are often mobile scameras in the village to get those who speed up and down for the fixed cameras.

autismuk said:

A428 St Neots to Cambridge, a few here and there.

AFAIK, there is exactly one camera, a GATSO, opposite a large farmhouse near Borne. It's always been facing towards Bedford (IOW, to catch Eastbound traffic) all the times I've passed it.

autismuk said:

It's not that likely btw that you'll be able to do more than 60 odd on this point unless it is 3AM.

Not even then. It's an appalling road, and was scheduled to be dualled. However, the plan has been withdrawn for "more consultation". Whoever's idea that was should be forced to walk along the centre-line at 5:30 pm.

So far as I know, there is no SPECS between Bedford and Cambridge. My wife is having medical treatment in Cambridge, and I have driven up and down this roads dozens and dozens of times in the last 15 months.

[Globulators]

autismuk said:

The "accident" is actually at the utterly wierd A428/A14/M11 Girton Interchange which appears to have been designed by spaghetti. If you follow the main A14 through it goes something like.

It must rate as one of the worst junctions of all time, 'designed' by a total cretin who must have given morons a bad name.

However...

If you work in Castle Street/Castle Hill (i.e. you are a councillor for instance...), you'll find when you use Castle Street heading north-west and go straight on, that delightful residential looking road turns into a lovely multi-million pound special dual-carraigeway trunk road that bypasses that junction, and joins the A14 just below Bar Hill.

Lovely.

[Cooperman]

Bedford rascal. Why not buy a spare front number plate, snap it in half and fit one half of it when travelling on that journey. It's £30 and no points if you get caught by a trap pol, but no points. Then you only have to worry about the highly visible Gatso on that run, which, incidentally, almost passes my home.

[minimax]

Cooperman said:

Bedford rascal. Why not buy a spare front number plate, snap it in half and fit one half of it when travelling on that journey. It's £30 and no points if you get caught by a trap pol, but no points. Then you only have to worry about the highly visible Gatso on that run, which, incidentally, almost passes my home.

is it not a much higher fine than £30 for doing that? IIRC it's £30 for not having any number plates

ps are you near bedford? I'll be in the area this coming week if you want to talk minis over a swift half

[autismuk]

Globulators said:

However... If you work in Castle Street/Castle Hill (i.e. you are a councillor for instance...), you'll find when you use Castle Street heading north-west and go straight on, that delightful residential looking road turns into a lovely multi-million pound special dual-carraigeway trunk road that bypasses that junction, and joins the A14 just below Bar Hill. Lovely.

Odd that.

A few years ago here in Norfolk a dual carriageway bypass was built, which goes to the South of the Norwich.

It's very good, but the link roads are all unchanged, so you leave the bypass to enter Norwich down through some villages or outskirts and wander down single carriageway or bus-lane roads into the City Centre.

Except the A146 Lowestoft road through Trowse.

Apparently we needed a brand new Dual Carriageway, and a bridge across the River, big junction at the end, about a quarter of a mile from the old A146, which runs up to the Bypass and stops dead.

if you turn left at the brand new traffic light junction it's the rubbishy old single carriageway ringroad, but to the right, there's 4 lanes of road, 2 each way, that lead to a really big roundabout.

All the other exits from that roundabout are rubbish roads again.

Except the one that goes directly into County Hall.