We’ve already told you that The Highways Agency is holding public exhibitions to advise local residents and road users about the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme, as part of an informal consultation. We’ve now had a chance to read the proposals and we think you may want to comment.

The key document is a rather chunky 2MB PDF ( A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme – Public Consultation on route options, September 2013 (Adobe/PDF, 2000KB).). The core of the plan is:

• A new section of the A14 from Ellington (west of the A1) to Swavesey. The A14 north of Swavesey will be “de-trunked”.
• The A14 will be widened to dual three lanes from Swavesey to Bar Hill and then dual four lanes to Girton.
• The Girton interchange will be updated and simplified to get rid of one leaf of the clover leaf (the A14 westbound leaf).
• The A14 Cambridge Northern Bypass between Histon and Milton will be widened to dual three lane, together with the improvement of Histon and Milton junctions to provide improved capacity and to reduce queuing back onto the A14.

Where it gets interesting:

• The new section is to be tolled. Tariffs have yet to be agreed but could be between £1.00 and £1.50 (current prices) for cars and other light vehicles, and around double this amount for heavy goods vehicles. It is proposed that charges would apply between the hours of 06:00 and 22:00 seven days a week.

  

• There are three obvious alternative routes (coming towards Milton):
  1. Use the A1 and A428 (a diversion adding 9 miles to your journey)
  2. Use the de-trucked A14 to Huntingdon then the A141 & A1123 to St Ives and A1096 to re-join the de-trunked A14 (a diversion adding 4 miles to your journey)
  3. Just use the existing A14 north of Swavesey however the railway bridge over the east coast main line will be demolished and not replaced so this route will only be suitable for light traffic as it involves a detour on Brampton Road.

So you’re faced with a fairly big dog leg partially on single carriageway roads (a), a smaller dog leg again on single carriage way roads (b) or going down the original route with a pinch point (c) or coughing up between £2 and £3 every time you want to use the road (most journeys being return).

Or going after 10pm.

Which option is acceptable to you will depend a lot on how you cost your time and also what you consider to be the real cost per mile travelled.

The other aspect of this is what will happen at the A10/A14 interchange at Milton and we’re grateful to Cllr Maurice Leeke for this plan as he posted the document in which it can be found (A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme – Public Consultation Briefing, September 2013 – see last page) on milton-chat.

It’s not very clear but he says there will be three lanes on the slip roads eastbound and three lanes round the east side of the roundabout. The planners say that this can be done within the existing width of the bridge. What impact this will have on our ability to get out of Milton isn’t mentioned.

There is an online survey you can use to respond if you’re so inclined having read and considered both the above and, if you’ve time, the document we link to.

In closing we should mention that we’ve said in the past that at least with this scheme we’re safe from having an elevated dual three lane past Milton, with all the noise problems that would bring. On page 20 of that document a single paragraph notes:

Consideration will be given to schemes for improving the A14 east of Milton junction as part of the Highways Agency’s ongoing route-based strategy studies that include the A14.

So we’re not out of the woods yet.