Road closures yesterday evening?

knightstyle

So heading up to Lincolnshire there were signs on M25 that A1 is closed at St. Neots, sat nav diverts us then it says A16 is closed so another diversion. OK but there is no information on any sites I can find about these closures. It was the same when the A24 was closed for resurfacing, no information anywhere about it even though it was planned a long time in advance.
Anyone know why these roads were closed evening of 23rd Feb?

neilmcl

https://roadworks.org

https://highwaysengland.co.uk/traffic/

What makes you think it was planned roadworks anyway. The A1 frequently has problems due to accidents.

EssexExile

knightstyle wrote: »

Anyone know why these roads were closed evening of 23rd Feb?

Work related to the A14 improvements probably. https://highwaysengland.co.uk/a14-cambridge-to-huntingdon-improvement-scheme-about/

System

neilmcl wrote: »

What makes you think it was planned roadworks anyway. The A1 frequently has problems due to accidents.

The A1 has had closures in the southern half of England every night for the past several years. The last couple of years have been concentrated on the Grantham to Biggleswade section and currently around the A14, soon to be joined by the upgrade of the Black Cat roundabout.

When they do overnight closures on a weekend it is usually because they need to do both directions to put up say a bridge or overhead signage.

If you think your journey was bad you want to do night runs as a lorry driver during the week. Last week going from Hemel Hempstead to Hull the M1 was closed J14-15 (along with the alternative A5 from Northampton to Crick) then again from J23a-25, the alternative, the A1 was closed around the A14 and for those wanting to avoid the M1 J23a closure the A46 was closed too in two places. This is not an uncommon state of affairs to have full closures on every major trunk route AND their alternatives at the same time.

knightstyle

Thanks, looks like Tarambor is right, planned weekend closure, shame there was no notices about this when we drove down on Thursday.

System

knightstyle wrote: »

Thanks, looks like Tarambor is right, planned weekend closure, shame there was no notices about this when we drove down on Thursday.

There will have been, there always are and they're usually put up at least a fortnight and most often a month in advance. They're yellow rectangular ones with the closure information put on at the point where the road closure will be. This week for example the M6 southbound is going to be closed at J43 for 3 nights, the signs for that have been up at that junction for at least 2 weeks. They look something like this:



You will also find on major trunk routes that the overhead message boards also give notice of upcoming major closures too. Anyone who travels the M6 in Staffordshire for example will confirm this.

The only time you don't get notices like that put up are when it is emergency roadworks so for example a large hole has appeared in the road or there was a crash and they need to repair the road surface or barriers so they need to do a closure that same night to deal with it.

knightstyle

OK but we are sure there were no notices when we travelled down the dual carriageway a few days earlier.
Plus it was the same when the A24 near Dorking was closed, they put notices like that out a week earlier but nothing about the closure on the day on the roads and M25 leading to the closure.

System

knightstyle wrote: »

OK but we are sure there were no notices when we travelled down the dual carriageway a few days earlier.

It doesn't surprise me that you didn't notice them. Every day I witness drivers who don't see the massive bright yellow 800/600/400/200 yard yellow lane closure signs the size of their car placed 5/6ft in the air at the side of the motorway and are surprised when they suddenly come across a line of cones closing their lane off. Most car drivers wouldn't even think of looking for those notice signs, I notice every one of them because I actively look for them due to how much I'm affected by road closures on nights.

They do tend to not bother putting those notices on approach roads because it can get quite silly with how many you'd have to put out and how far do you go? I have however known them to signpost the A1 Scotch Corner Closure from as far south as the M25 in the past though when they were doing the upgrades to motorway but that was due to the mpact of the amount of freight that uses that as a route to Scotland with only the 50% single carriageway A69 as an alternative route and the fact the M1/M6 was a usable alternative.