With the long awaited Alderley Edge and Nether Alderley bypass now open, many local residents are eagerly waiting to see exactly what effect it will have on traffic flow through our village. It was certainly a lot quieter when I walked my daughters to school this morning.
One area which is causing particular concern amongst some of our readers though is Monks Heath, where road works will continue until Christmas and a new set of traffic lights is being introduced at the Bollington Lane/A34 junction.
In response to requests from our readers we have obtained the above diagrams from Birse Civils, showing the final road layout in this area, and confirmation from Cheshire East of exactly what changes are being made at the junction.
Andy Buckley, Programme Delivery Manager, told us "The works at Monks Heath cross roads are not extensive but certainly have a large impact on the vehicles that currently use the junction. The works are simply to widen the A34 south bound approach going from Alderley to provide an extra lane for traffic turning left towards Macclesfield. There are other associated works to accommodate this, such as the re-positioning of some signals, but there are no other widening works at this junction.
"At Bollington Lane we are constructing new junction layouts that will be signal controlled to accommodate the increased traffic flows that are predicted to use this route rather than going through the actual Monks Heath cross roads junction. The previous junction between the A34 and Bollington Lane was the scene for several accidents the occurrence of which once the new junction is in place should be reduced.
"I can understand the comments about how close together on the A34 the new lights at Bollington Lane will be to the Monks Heath cross roads lights. We have investigated linking these sets together so they would be managed as one unit, unfortunately they are too far apart to enable that to be done. The same study also showed that the two operation of the two independent sets should not interfere with the operation of the other, this is something we will monitor once they are up and running."
Andy added "Altogether these improvements will improve the capacity for traffic to negotiate this area more successfully."
Several of our readers have expressed concerns that two sets of traffic lights so close together will cause traffic chaos and simply move the bottleneck from Alderley Edge to Monks Heath.
We travelled along the new bypass about 4pm on Friday and, as many of our readers predicted, the traffic was queued quite far back at the south end of the bypass and gridlocked all the way to Monks Heath crossroads - granted it was rush hour on a Friday.
We will have to wait until the Monks Heath works are finished towards the end of the year though to really see what impact the bypass and these works will have on traffic flow in that area.
You can also download a PDF file illustrating all of the changes at Monks Heath together or scroll through the different diagrams at the top of the page by clicking on 'next photo' or playing the slideshow.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
To me there seems only a few ways they can ever solve this now given the bypass is now built and will never meet the A34 at Monks Heath:
1. Find a new way to get Zeneca traffic out, i.e. a new road out onto the Macc-Chelford Road (never going to happen)
2. Make the A34 lights have the same 'on' time as the Macc-Chelford traffic as they seem to have longer (obvious and easy to do)
3. Make the Monks Heath lights stay green for much longer on A34 between 5 and 6pm
4. Install a roundabout at Zeneca, will still be chaos but at least with some charitable driving for every car on the A34 there will be one Zeneca car through the junction instead of the imbalance we have now of 10-15 Zeneca cars to 3-4 A34 cars.
5. Hope that Zeneca quit the Alderley Edge site and that means trouble free motoring for the A34! (never going to happen)
6. Cheshire East top passing the buck to the old regime, realise that they have made a complete mess of the situation and see that they have built a £50m car park, they apologise, they sack the person responsible for the design and by-pass phase two is begun creating an extension to the original road which creates a flyover over the monks heath crossroads and joins the A34 south of the junction (we can only dream)
Just some of my possible ideas - at least they are ideas which Cheshire East seem completely unable to do! Still, the bulk of the traffic is gone from Alderley Edge and that is all they are worried about, as long as the rich taxpayers of AE are happy, stuff the rest of you!
I was 150 miles away on Saturday and a man came up to me asked me where I lived and then he said " I was invited to the opening", he lived in Leicestershire.
Andy, where do you travel to and from every week day that has caused you to be so bitter?
It needed a slip road onto the Alderley Chelford road and a roundabout at Monks Heath and the closing of Zeneca's southern exit.
Btw I live in Biddulph and travel to Styal every day and every night i sit in traffic at Monks Heath listening to radio reports of major delays on motorways where people are in queues for an hour to do 5 miles, yet due to poor planning we are wasting 30 minutes of our lives every night to do just 1 mile!
It's just unlucky the bypass finished so early, as the work on the junction has somewhat spoiled the 'bypass effect'. I presume the work was scheduled in now, so it would be finished before the date the bypass was meant to be opened?
I'm very happy with it so far, and I'm neither rich or a high rate tax payer, but I live in Alderley Edge!
Andy, you want AZ to shut down, where thousands of people work, just so you don't get stuck in a jam. Amazing. And a flyover...............priceless LOL
You clearly have a bee in your bonnet about Alderley Edge re your comment little angles. Can I suggest you set up Biddulph.com.
You're missing the point, the bypass is seriously flawed at the Monks Heath end and unless the Zeneca lights are removed and the entrance closed the bypass will never be used to its full potential.
( I for one will never use it again ) and if it isnt used to its full potential the traffic will return to Alderly Village once more.
Just because the last few days have been quieter doesnt mean it will remain quiet.
I also don't think in these difficult times the compulsory purchase of all the residences around Monks Heath to install a new road would get passed!
So... given the number of houses and farms in this green belt area the solution is a mass of compromises. I think the job of easing the traffic is a bigger one than most would like to acknowledge.
If you "remove the AZ lights" then the bypass won't be used to it's full potential because of the Bollington/A34 lights; if they go, then Monks Heath will be the bottleneck, and so on.
The bypass was planned in the earlier proposals (see http://bit.ly/e6HhWj) to be linked to the A535, which would have diverted to the bypass much of the traffic that is currently using Monks Heath (or still passing the AE School for Girls pedestrian crossing lights to go down the A535). I don't know why this was dropped, but I do think it was a mistake.
As it is just doesn't work they have priority while everyone else is parked up on the new bypass.
I currently use the chelford / alderley road and unfortunately for the denizens of Alderly I will continue to use it.
It is very poorly thought out, if a slip road came off the bypass at the Chelford Road I wood use the bypass and stop driving past AE school for girls as it is I won't.
If you prohibited right-turning traffic out of Bollington Lane onto the A34 - then there would be no traffic crossing the southbound lane of the A34 - and therefore you could have a permanent green arrow for straight-ahead traffic heading south. That would be a very easy way of minimising the effect of the extra lights there (if heading south) - and would cost almost nothing.
With the Astra Zeneca entrance, a roundabout might make it easier for A34 through traffic. It may also be possible to build a short link road from the AZ road to the new roundabout at the southern end of the bypass. The new link road would only need to be around 400 yards long. I think utilising an existing junction would make it a bit easier than having to deal with a set of lights a short distance from the new junction.
The bypass is long overdue and a real benefit to Alderley Edge, both now and in the years to come.
The real issue is a lack of communication, allowing the bypass to open ahead of the Monks Heath chaos! We all knew months ago that the new road would be opened in November, 2010, so where was "the joined up writing" that we all use in our everyday life.
From what could have been a smooth opening and a real positive reaction,has turned out to be a major PR disaster.
This evening at 5 30pm I sat at the AZ end, stationary for 10mins, then a further 15mins getting to the Monks Heath traffic lights. Fuming fellow motorists were doing u-turns on the bypass, heading back towards Nether Alderley on the old road and askiing the question......why wasn't the opening delayed to coincide with the Monks Heath works?
Finally, Andy C. lost all credibility once he admitted he wasn't even a resident or worked in the area! Biddulph to Styal each day hardly qualifies to be a spokesman for neither the rich or not so rich residents of A. E.
There's some good suggestions too about traffic management around the Monks Heath 'loop', it remains to be seen how they implement the priorities. No right turn from Bollington Lane onto the A34 would help I'm sure, perhaps it would also work if the lights only gave the right turn when there was traffic waiting. I can't see much going up Bollington Lane only to turn right and go back towards Monks Heath.
The optimistic would say they will have already modelled this and formed a solution using software designed for exactly that purpose. Failing that one would hope they are prepared to monitor and tweak the traffic flow at all four sets of lights to minimise delays. We'll have to wait and see...
a) the time on red for traffic heading South on the A34 is considerably less than East-West, yet there is relatively traffic East-West. b) traffic heading South is blocked by traffic waiting to turn to go towards Chelford. As far as I can see this will not be solved - or only partly - by the roadworks, but could be eased by resolving the traffic-light timings mentioned above.