Great Western Coffee Shop

The Chancellor George Osborne annouced today that the 3 mile single carraigeway bottleneck on the A30 at Temple between Bodmin and Launceston will be daulled in a ^60million scheme in 2014.Looks to me as if they are they trying to kill the slow under invested rail network west of Exeter with improved roads.

http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/update/2012-12-05/chancellor-confirms-a30-will-be-upgraded/

will just move the bottleneck to Carland Cross.

I don't think one 3 mile section of newly dualled road will kill the rail network west of Exeter.

No but it unnecessarily diverts funds from doing something worthwhile to trying to remove a few slow moving queues on about 6 summer Saturdays.

I'm as pro-rail as you get but this is a much needed improvement. It's not just slow moving queues 6 days a year, its miles of queuing every holiday period. It's only a small 3 mile section in what is an otherwise dual carriageway road. At least at Carland Cross where it goes to a single carriageway for a period there is a roundabout which cuts down on the queues, some of the traffic will be heading towards Truro as well rather than carrying along the A30 towards Penzance.

Of interest the roads announcement included "completion of the upgrade to motorway standard of the A1 between the M25 and Newcastle" by upgrading a section of around 10 miles in the Leeming area. It's a bit worrying that DfT think this to be the case, given that much of the A1 between Letchworth and Doncaster is non-motorway, and includes several roundabouts in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

OK, nothing to do with railways, and not even in our area, but indicative of the incompetence within the DaFT (see ICWC franchise, ICE, Thameslink stock, cont p94....)
 

The actual quote is:

The 'route' is the M1 from London to Leeds, then the A1/A1(M) to Newcastle.

Ah, good point TJ. Although I'm probably not the only person to take a reference to the A1 and then "this route" to assume that it meant the A1 from the M25 to Newcastle.

To be honest I don't care either much about that short stretch (apart from the point I made) and the main thing is that they are leaving well alone the more easterly schemes that would do immense environmental damage in the AsONB as well as encourage more transfer from rail to road (or rather, less transfer from road to rail).   

This road scheme was the Northern part of the Dishforth -Barton upgrading of the A1 to full motorway standard. The Southern part contracts were let by the May 2010 election. Phillip Hammond, the first Tory SoSfT (he of no electrics to Swansea fame) wouldn't sign off the rest so the Leeming - Barton section lapsed.

Now that infrastructure and transport is fashionable, it's being finished.


OTC

You're correct. The scheme was phased to avoid too long a stretch of roadworks, and the southern stretch just got going in time before coalition cuts were made. Having recently travelled the northern stretch of the A1, the last remaining stretch of classic A1 is a bit like going back in time, though for those with a nostalgia for the Great North Road there's plenty more further south that looks as if it will be around for a few more years.