Enabling works are well underway on the Lodge Hill A34 interchange upgrade. Since the earlier blog post announcing the start of construction, more progress has been made – especially on the works depot and car park. This area will eventually link a new roundabout on the A4183 (Oxford Road) with a new slip road onto the southbound A34 towards Newbury, helping to ease traffic through Abingdon.
Further vegetation clearance has taken place near the existing slip road from Oxford. This is in preparation for one of the two new roundabouts. It will connect the slip road from Oxford and the new slip road towards Newbury with the A4183.
There has been some clearance for the other new roundabout. It will connect the new slip road from Newbury and the slip road to Oxford with the A4183.
The main construction work — including the two roundabouts forming the new ‘dumbbell’ layout and south facing slip roads — is due to begin in late summer 2025. As part of the project, the access road to Egertons will be re-routed.
What a pathetic, destructive and disruptive waste of time, resources and money! We have a perfectly good outer ring road in Dunmore Road, Copenhagen Drive and Colwell Drive round to the A34 at Marcham Road, which is not heavily used as it is. We don’t need this extra A34 access. Governments are only concerned with more houses leading to more cars leading to more houses and more cars. Where’s it going to end?
What a short sighted view Michael. Abingdon is a diversion route for the A34 and is routinely brought to gridlock when there are issues on the A34. Also we do not yet have all the traffic from the new developments (and more of them to come) in North Abingdon on the roads yet. 5000 houses with ca. 2 cars each!
Colin, please don’t criticise me and then repeat exactly my argument. Abingdon is STILL going to be a diversion route when the A34 is blocked. The new interchange won’t help there. I suspect through traffic isn’t aware of the Dunmore Road route and goes through the town centre. That’s what causes the gridlock. What’s needed is better signposting. And when the new interchange is built, aren’t developers going to say “We’ve got the road infrastructure, let’s build even more houses.” So, more houses, more cars….. Roll on Abingford (or will it be Oxingdon?).
It seems to me that Michael has missed one vital benefit a full diamond interchange will bring. If there is an ‘issue’ on the A34 between Lodge Hill & Hinksey (in either direction) – once finished, traffic will will then be able to ‘get on or get off’ at the ‘new’ Lodge Hill interchange and avoid having to go through Abingdon at all – because as things are at the moment there is no full ‘on/off’ access between Marcham interchange and Hinksey interchange without going through Abingdon whichever route you use. Also in this day and age virtually all vehicles now have sat-nav and it is quite easy to see the routes available without the need for additional sign posts.
Expanding populations need more housing
Some progress at last ! Not to include a southbound slip at Lodge Hill was very short sighted when that A34 junction was first built. From the expansion back in the 1960s it was clear that Abingdon was always going to become a dormitory town.
The advantages provided by the new roundabout will depend on where you live in Abingdon. For those on the south-side it will be an absolute boon as when commuter traffic coming over the bridge and via the Drayton direction is joined by that filtering from the north-side of the town the road from the other side of Abingdon Bridge, along the High Steet and Ock Street right up to the A34 is one long pinch-point.
The whole town’s cup would runneth over were the appropriate authorities have a rush of uncommon sense to the brain and make make the Stratton Way – Stert Street – High Street triangle a one-way roundabout, as it was before Sratton Way became two-way to stop some of the commuters on the north-side rat-running through the town to get to the Marcham Road roundabout.
So whereabouts do you live in Abingdon, Michael? Do you come around the ring-road and join the Marcham road queque at the Police Station roundabout one entry-point before those who have just crawled their way up Ock Street etc. Are you a part of the problem?
I’m just wondering where anyone would have to live in Abingdon to think that the Lodge Hill impovements were a bad thing … educate us, please.
newcomer, I do not have a car. I use the buses. I’m concerned about environmental destruction, farmland being used for houses, cars, pollution, global warming etc. Anything wrong with that?
I think that a full diamond interchange ought to be in place, but (if I read it correctly) Michael’s point is about the lack of road signage at the round about down from Lodge Hill.
If traffic has to be diverted from the A34 (usually for road traffic incidents), the outer ring has to be very clearly indicated with A34 signs pointing right onto the ring. Inevitably, there will be increased congestion at the police station roundabout. Whether this will mean less congestion in the centre of town is debatable, since the queues will build up back to Stratton Way. What it ought to do is keep the LGVs out of the town centre.
The outer “ring road” is not really effective since it is not a complete ring, and at each end it meets a congestion spot: Stert Street and the police station. It gives arterial access to Peachcroft, but it does not relieve the overall traffic density.
The present route of the A415 adds to the difficulties and should have been diverted south a long time ago, but there is no sign of that happening. If you live in Marcham, you have serious problems exacerbated by increased housing and no way of avoiding the narrow double-bend. If two lorries meet at that point, traffic can easily back up for a mile towards Abingdon.
We live in an expanding town with a medieval road plan at its heart. Solutions will not be found on the back of a postcard.
There is no issue with signage. For many years “Newbury (A34)” has been on the signs for Dunmore Road and Copenhagen Drive so it is clear for those who have been diverted off the A34 at Lodge Hill.
Many existing signs also have a symbol on which indicate an Emergency Diversion Route which drivers should follow when the A34 is closed.
https://www.roads.org.uk/articles/emergency-diversion-routes
But ppjs, THE PLAN is to keep the improved means of bypassing the occasional problem on the A34 A TOTAL SECRET by supplying no signage.
Unfortunately, the fact is that the diversion supplied by the new roundabout will make everyday commuting between Abingdon Bridge and the Marcham Road roundabout much easier … and, how, one asks. have the road planners managed to spoil a pefectly good A34 Relief Road by creating this total unintended major improvement to everyones’ daily commute? ITS DISGUSTING!!
Irony’s good, Newcomer; it’s what comes after laundry.
Interesting discussions from all angles. But as I’ve said from the beginning, and here previously, the junction should have been near the Wooten Road roundabout, I.e. near Aldi’s. It would have served many more people. I live in the Northcourt area just off the Oxford Road, and I’m very uncertain when going south whether I would drive an extra two Km in the wrong direction to use the new junction rather that use the ring road.
Does anyone know – when planning this stuff ie tens of thousands of random houses plonked in the countryside – do those responsible ever think of the consequences of everyone needing a car to get about as we have next to no public transport? Because as I pass the hordes streaming out of Marcham/Grove every morning, it certainly baffles me.
The clue is in the name of the road … Oxford Road … the road is to and from Oxford only, and this is the problem which a ‘Full Monty’ roundabout at Lodge Hill is intended to remedy. The half-roundabout is half the required full roundabout that needs to be built, but is better than the non-roundabout at the end of the Wootton Road … Oxford Road has much more useful connective ’tissue’ to the rest of Abingdon than Wootton Road.
I wasn’t living in Abingdon when the authorities screwed up the traffic system and you could well be right, Ab Ithel, about Wootton Road, in the mists of time, having been the better choice, but this is now and it’s not the better choice now, just a ‘thought diversion’. Let’s not confuse the issue and just be happy that things are going to get better.
Ab Ithel wrote, ‘I’m very uncertain when going south whether I would drive an extra two Km in the wrong direction to use the new junction rather that use the ring road.’
Aah … but it’s not about distance, it’s about time. I used to commute from the West End of London down the Cromwell Road and it once took me two hours to drive down Park Lane (one mile tops) to get home … you can get into a lot of trouble offering that as an excuse …
I had a car like that once… 😉
Rachel you are bus routes that service the new developments. The developer funds have gone some way to supporting these.
Michael I will criticise your highly objective viewpoint as a non-driver