Diversion at Monks Heath

The start of the one-way restriction on the A34 Congleton Road between Alderley Edge and Monks Heath crossroads described above has been delayed and is now expected to start about midday tomorrow, Wednesday 27th October.

Has anyone ever had a valid reason why the numpties at the Council have decided to put another set of lights between Zeneca and Monks Heath?

How can anyone think adding more lights to the lunacy that is the A34 at Zeneca be a good idea - I have info that they say Bollington Lane is an accident blackspot - (never seen one) - but all they will do is end up turning their lovely new bypass into a car park!

As for the Birse Civils traffic management - only good for managing a scalextric not a real road!

100% agree with your comments Andy. I can understand the need to widen the junction at Monk's Heath but I have never understood the rationale for the work being done at Bollington Lane. I predict travelling northbound on the A34 will become a nightmare when the work has been completed, traffic will not be able to progress through Monk's Heath towards the new bypass quickly but will be caught up in ANOTHER set of lights with traffic coming down Bollington Lane/turning right on the southbound A34.

I think Monk's Heath will become the new Alderley Edge in terms of congestion.

It's actually not a lot of fun to say 'I told you so'. Anyone who thought the multi million pound Alderley Edge bypass scheme was the perfect local solution to traffic flow around Alderley Edge and its leafy neigbour areas such as Monks Heath must have been living in dream land.

Now we see desparate efforts to patch up a flawed plan. Roll on the next new game in local planning- The Monks Heath bypass- with probable compulsory purchase of all the old buildings at the traffic lights to find room for a new major roundabout, so people can race on down to Capestorne. .

Meanwhile look forward to traffic jam chaos at Monks Heath, back ups on the new bypass at peak times and increasing traffic from the south avoiding the bypass in favour of Chelford Road, that will become the new alternative bypass. It's just so sad the planning experts did not take the views of local people seriously and ploughed on regardless.

I'm afraid this is a simple case of moving the bottleneck. The weight of traffic down the A34 causes build-up all the way along from Manchester to Stoke, with AE just being one of the bottlenecks.

Congleton gets bad too but the councils can't just keep bypassing everything, they need to find the best compromise. Maybe the Monks Heath layout will work, maybe it won't, but they did have to do something.

It will be interesting to see how many people still travel through Alderley at the weekends. I know people drive through just to make their journey to John Lewis or Tesco more interesting so what needs to follow really is traffic calming measures in the village or ideally cobbles!

I have put the point to the relevant parties that possibly the biggest problem for traffic build up southbound on the A34 and eventually down their new bypass is the amount of traffic allowed out at the Zeneca South junction compared to the amount of A34 traffic that is able to clear the box junction. On average I count 15-20 Zeneca cars (at least 3-4 will have jumped the red light) compared to 5-6 A34 southbound cars.

I did put it to the Council that the box junction should be re-painted and moved slightly south to cover the entire junction and at least try to prevent light jumping at Zeneca as well as adjusting the lights to provide a fair chance for A34 traffic.

I was told the junction is only for Zeneca traffic turning right and that they will complete the bypass and see what happens to the Zeneca/A34/Monks Heath junction.

Maybe this widening is them finally looking at their plans and realising they dropped a big one on planning. But still this widening alone will not help. Any bets the new three sets of lights timings will be all out of sync and whilst one is green the others are red etc.

Couldn't organise and p'up in a brewery comes to mind. I can just never understand why the bypass never finished at the Zeneca junction or the Bollington Road junction.

Could anyone point me in the direction of the final layout of the Monks heath/Bollington road junctions? Surely the northbound traffic on the A34 will not be diverted through Bollington road permanently?

I am giving the planners the benefit of the doubt until the layout is complete and the bypass is open but having two sets of traffic lights on the A537 within a few hundred meters of each other is ludicrous. Surely any idiot could tell that the traffic would queue back from the new traffic lights past the Monks Heath crossroads and stop anyone getting though west bound or northbound when the lights change?

Perhaps we should ask Birse/ the Council to issue a statement on what's happening, what's planned and how they see it working? Perhaps George Osborne and Councillor Keegan, the number one fans of the bypass know the answers?

Agree it looks a disaster with the two sets of lights so close together and probably unworkable, but hey, what do I know about traffic management, Im just a simple country boy wondering where all the trees went?

Will give the 'experts' the benefits of the doubt , no doubt they have done traffic surveys and worked it all out with professional precision!

A response from Andy Buckley at Cheshire East to an email I sent highlighting the above points in July. Just shows how badly planned it is - basically we are building the bypass and putting the lights in and then we shall see what happens - amazing how the council can play with many peoples lives as if they were toy cars. Stunned in particular that they think the Bollington Lane improvement will help Monks Heath, of course it will but only West to East and not where the main problem lies, North to South, amazing how dumb they have been shown to be.

the response was as follows...

....."As you note the bypass will be good for taking traffic out of Alderley Edge which is its prime objective. The scheme that is currently being built was never intended to "solve" the traffic problems at the Monks Heath junction, although earlier versions of the scheme in the 90s did include this junction. However during the development of the recent scheme some small scale widening works were proposed to the Monks Heath junction on the A34 southbound approach. These are separately funded by Cheshire East Council to the main bypass works and will improve the flows at this junction. There are at present no further plans being actively considered.

The improved Bollington Lane/A34 junction will operate under traffic signals. This and the improvements elsewhere along Bollington Lane were identified to because of the additional traffic that is expected to divert along the A537 and up the A34 to pick up the bypass (and vice versa). The use of this route by such traffic will be signed and so reduce the traffic volumes using the Monks Heath junction which should have a corresponding improvement in its operating performance. In particular there was an existing accident hot spot on the A34 at the Bollington Lane junction which the improvement will also address and mitigate.

I note your specific comments on the yellow box marking at AstraZeneca. Generally though such a yellow box marking is intended to ensure that right turns from the main road into the side road and right turners out of the side road are not blocked by traffic on the main road crossing over the junction. From your comments it appears that this works on this junction. The left turners out are another issue, however, as we expect the bypass to be opened later this year then we would want to leave the situation as it is and then review it again, post the bypass opening.

In addition to the above Birse Civils are only building it, they had no apparent input on layout or traffic flow, the only additional thing they are supposed to do is help traffic flow through the road works - something which I mentioned above they have failed miserably.

Had great fun ribbing a family member though as they work for another division of BB!!

I totally agree with all the above comments!!! I, unfortunately, have the dubious pleasure of commuting between Biddulph & Cheadle Hulme everday for work. Since the onset of the by-pass works (not including non school day traffic) my journey now takes almost 50% longer. Some days it can take up to 30 minutes just to get from Nether Alderley primary school to the traffic lights at Monks Heath, a journey of about 1.25 miles. I wasn't aware, until now, that traffic lights are to be put at the new junction of Bollington Lane & the A34. Absolute "numpty" thinking!! How do so called traffic planners get their qualifications? Off Ebay probably. They obviously have never actually driven this route, at peak times, themselves.

Another frightening thought that comes to mind, what happens at the Wilmslow end of the by-pass when it is finally opened? I notice "pedestrian crossing" lights on both sides of the roundabout & traffic heading north will have to give way to traffic from the right (Alderley Edge). I forsee long tail backs on the by-pass & even more delays!!! Hey-ho, no-one cares how much pollution is caused by traffic delays, only the poor motorist draws the short straw again.

Well I have thought about how I am going to use the bypass and decided to continue going through Alderley Edge - there is no point going through the bypass only to be queuing where the traffic turns for Chelford again and the usual queue for Monks Heath.

At least if I come at it from the A34 I may get nearer the southerly roundabout before coming to a standstill. So in effect the bypass may have little effect as if others make the same decision as me there will still be traffic ploughing through Alderley Edge.

So they have to consider Monks Heath will have an affect on the bypass and its layout should have been considered along with the bypass. Btw I also live in Biddulph and it is taking me over an hour sometimes to get home from Styal.

Just read all of the above and am glad there are others who are dubious about the traffic measures (or lack of) in this area. As suspected it seems like the intention of the bypass is purely to remove traffic out of Alderley Edge without consideration for any of the surrounding villages or areas.

With the existing layout I can see a significant amount of traffic shunning the bypass altogether and carrying on through Alderley regardless as the queues during the evening rush hour will likely be halfway back up the bypass.

I also agree about the stupid scheme of letting every single car out of Zenica at the expense of the southbound traffic. What do they mean when they state that this is for traffic turning right?

I'd say 80% of the cars coming out of there turn left - otherwise wouldn't they have to join the queue further down? They are hardly likely to do that are they?

This 'award winning' scheme seems to be summed up as "let's build a road across this field and see what happens'.

I would like to know why the roadworks at Monks Heath have overrun by 2 months! When the signs were originally put out last year it stated the works would take 11 months and would finish in October 2010 (this in the last week or two has been blanked out but you can still see it) How crazy it is to open the bypass prior to the works at Monks heath being completed.

Councillor Carolyn Andrew's answer to the expected problems at Monks Heath and her claim the rat race will end in Alderley Edge -

"Our Council did not plan the road. It was planned by Cheshire County Council which no longer exists"

Amazing! What hope have we got if they pass the buck like that!

I am worried by this. Like Steve Rumsey I travel from Biddulph to AstraZeneca every day and over the last 3 weeks it takes me 50 minutes to get in! (Normally a trip of 25 minutes.) In recent weeks since the work began on Monks Heath it can take 30 minutes to get off AstraZeneca. I can see that people on the site see lots of cars coming off AZ but please realise that most of the time they too have been queuing for up to 2/3rds of a mile as only 2 or 3 cars can get on the A34 at a time. I was queuing for 30 minutes two weeks ago and finally got to the the lights at Bollington Lodge; it took 3 changes of the lights for me to get on the junctions Argh!

I did speak to the Birse Traffic Flow people and they insisted that manual light changes would continue, this was quickly followed by no-one on the lights for days on end. Despite their assurances I really don't think the chaps on the lights realise how far back and how long the queues are going Southbound at night. I went round twice going up Artist Lane and Birtles to come out at Monks Heath...there was one car in front of me, no traffic coming East and the queue was over 2 miles long onto AZ just sat not moving.

I really hope right turners to go down Bollington lane. I still don't understand why a big roundabout wasn't built at Monks heath just slightly south of the junction's present position.

Has anyone enquired about traffic light phasing?

I agree about traffic calming or cobbles in Alderley.

Its a lot more cars than 2-3 cars onto the A34 from Zeneca - i think you may mean southbound traffic can only get 2-3 cars - let the war between Zeneca and A34 traffic begin!!

I have to agree with James here regarding the traffic at the South AstraZeneca exit -- consistently, it's southbound traffic on the A34 that contravenes the box junction, blocks the exit from AZ and brings traffic to a standstill. I turn RIGHT (north) out of AZ there and almost every night I have a car in the box blocking me from getting out onto the A34.

It is indeed already a "war" between the AZ traffic, having queued 10 minutes to go 300 yards, and the A34 traffic, having queued 30 minutes to go 1.5 miles -- both understandably generating driving behaviours we don't want to see.

The underlying problem (poor planning aforethought) has been well covered by the above comments - it promises to be very interesting to see if this is the start of another 50-year bypass debate!