A3 Hindhead Tunnel - Is it better ??

[Philip Benstead]

I see the A3 Hindhead Tunnel is now open,

have the traffic jams gone

what about cycling in the area have things improved.

Can you cycle though the tunnel?

[Graham]

I see the A3 Hinhead Tunnel is now open,

Yes

have the traffic jams gone

Pretty much. When heavy, the traffic does back-up before entering the tunnel ( because the speed limit is slower in the tunnel ).
Motorists describe the tunnel as a transformation w.r.t. previous queues and guaranteed frustration.

I would judge that the traffic on the A3 has visibly increased since the opening. i.e the A3 is already showing signs of the traffic numbers increasing with the increased road capacity . . . . i.e ultimately self-defeating.

what about cycling in the area have things improved.

The old road over the top of the Devil's Punchbowl was a blight on the landscape : visual, noise-pollution, air-pollution. The pollution aspects have been transferred over to the areas of the tunnel portals.
The old road created a major severance for on-road cyclists. ( Motorists unwilling to respect cyclists safety on this section of trunk road. )

Can you cycle though the tunnel?

No. Cyclists are explicitly excluded from the tunnel.
There is a cycle route through Hindhead and over the top of the punchbowl. This route is not on the old road (A3) around the punchbowl ( which is the easiest gradient ).
A new path has been built along the ridge. A couple of weeks ago this new track had NOT been completed at the northern end.
The old road around the punchbowl will be ripped-up and returned to nature.

From an off-road bikers perspective the burial of that very busy road is a very good thing.

[stewartpratt]

When heavy, the traffic does back-up before entering the tunnel ( because the speed limit is slower in the tunnel ).

No it's not, it's 70mph all the way unless the 40mph signs have been flipped into place.

It bugs the hell out of me that most people seem to drive through it at 50mph and then accelerate to 80 or more as soon as they get out of it.

Anyway, yes, the traffic flows freely (if curiously slowly) through it. But bear in mind it's the summer holidays... It will be interesting when the schools go back. Mostly to see whether the tunnel causes an increased rate of northbound morning flow that has any effect on the one remaining problem area of Guildford, where the A31 joins and the road to the research park comes off.

[Graham]

When heavy, the traffic does back-up before entering the tunnel ( because the speed limit is slower in the tunnel ).

No it's not, it's 70mph all the way unless the 40mph signs have been flipped into place.

It bugs the hell out of me that most people seem to drive through it at 50mph and then accelerate to 80 or more as soon as they get out of it.

Anyway, yes, the traffic flows freely (if curiously slowly) through it. But bear in mind it's the summer holidays... It will be interesting when the schools go back. Mostly to see whether the tunnel causes an increased rate of northbound morning flow that has any effect on the one remaining problem area of Guildford, where the A31 joins and the road to the research park comes off.

Sorry about my speed-limit misinformation. I was guessing.

. . .one remaining problem . . . ???

As always the problems will be transferred to the next potential bottlenecks ( sooner-or-later ).

To the south, the Ham Barn roundabout, between Liss and Greatham, is the only place where the dual-carriageway is momentarily constrained by a roundabout.
Not a lot of traffic queuing, but quite a lot of RTAs, where the drivers forget to slow down enough to steer safetly around it !!

That section of narrow carriageways between the Hogs Back and Guildford is pretty frightening for any motorist. Dilemma : keep to the speed limit and get harassed by the majority OR exceed the speed limit ( to keep up ) and risk high-speed collision. Oh and then there are the peak-hour queues, of course.

[Richard Mann]

You won't suppress motoring culture by making bottlenecks on major roads, unfortunately. The battle will be won (hopefully!) in the cities, where people can be given an alternative lifestyle, and if they've enough sense, get rid of their car.

[horizon]

"Philip Benstead" (writing in 1927)

I see the Kingston by-pass is now open,

have the traffic jams gone

what about cycling in the area have things improved.

Graham, replying in 1927:

Pretty much. When heavy, the traffic does back-up before entering the by pass. Motorists describe the by-pass as a transformation w.r.t. previous queues and guaranteed frustration.

Horizon, commenting in 1927:

One thing is for sure, the opening of the Kingston by-pass spells a new dawn for motorists travelling from London to Portsmouth. It will mean a free run through all the way to Portsmouth now that this terrible bottleneck has been got round. The motorist will now find his way clear across the Surrey and Hampshire countryside, able to admire the views over the Devil's Punchbowl and breeze over the South Downs. The Kingston by-pass, if it achieves anything at all, will silence those critics who say that it will only encourage more cars and that the problem will simply be transferred further down the route. The Kingston by-pass has finally put paid to the delays on this important road. For cyclists it is a major improvement, they being able to cycle safely and serenely through Kingston itself with very little traffic around to worry them. And for those who say that the by-pass is just the the thin end of the wedge and that the countryside is threatened by a dual carriageway all the way to Portsmouth or that the Punchbowl and the South Downs will present an intractable problem of amenity loss, I say, nonsense - this by-pass has solved the traffic problem on the Portsmouth Road once and for all.

[Graham]

My informal observation is that within a few weeks of the tunnel opening the volume of traffic on the A3 in the Petersfield area has significantly increased.
This was inevitable.

In the wider context of the recession combined with high fuel prices motorists are said to be cutting their mileages. The opening of the tunnel appears to have confounded that general statistic.

Next step, the Ham Barn roundabout will be replaced by some underpass/flyover arrangement . . . . . . expect queues and bottlenecks somewhere further down the road.

[John Holiday]

Funny how history repeats itself & we still don't learn the lessons!

[CJ]

From an off-road bikers perspective the burial of that very busy road is a very good thing.

But from the perspective of every other kind of cyclist, racer, tourist or commuter, it's an act of vandalism.

The road wasn't the problem, just the traffic. With that gone underground all they had to do was bury about half of the road, leaving a country-lane-sized strip of tarmac, designated as a restricted byway and with a gate and tricycle-sized gap at either end. That way this old turnpike road could still have been used by cycles, horse-drawn carriages and other slow vehicles excluded from the motorway-in-all-but-name tunnel.

Goodness only knows where anyone goes now who used to commute by moped. I guess they'll either have to go miles out of their way or get a proper motorbike. And it's apalling that carriage drivers should lose this route, since it was built for them in the first place, to ease the difficult gradients on the older route up by the Gibbet.

But the National Trust don't care about any of that. They want their clear un-broken hillside without even a country lane on it. Except they've had to surface the aforementioned old route instead. So all they've actually achieved is to swap one strip of tarmac for another, in the process laying tarmac (or whatever inferior tarmac substitute they deem good enough for mere bicycles) over an ancient track that's never seen such material before. The rocks and ruts of this old track used to provide local mountain-bikers with a mildly interesting challenge, so actually, even the off-road bikers have lost out.

Now the traffic is gone, the Puchbowl will rapidly become a much more popular beauty spot and far more people will also explore the area around the Gibbet, previously cut off by the A3. They will stroll along the previous old trackway, with their pushchairs and extending dogleads, and come into conflict with the masses of cyclists for whom Hinhead was previously a virtual no-go area.

There will be tears before bedtime. And it could all have been so easily and cheaply avoided. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years time they exhume a strip of that tarmac and do what we first suggested, so as to separate cyclists from the strolling crowds.

[horizon]

The whole of the A3 saga is an immense act of vandalism. It finally kills the notion that highway engineers have anything to offer society outside their narrow, blinkered and short-sighted approach to roadbuilding (if any are reading this they are welcome to respond).

The A3 may not be the most historical route in Britain but it is probably the most significant road from 1750 onwards. This country adulates Nelson and sees Trafalgar as one of the most significant events in British history. The fact of the vital link that the old Portsmouth Road represents between the Admiralty in London and the naval base of Portsmouth is completely lost on a profession that cannot see beyond the next mile of concrete. Cycling brought this route alive as it goes at the speed of the coach and horse. The A3 also has its place in any case in the history of cycling. There were probably lots of ways to recognise its historical, landscape and amenity value. The road engineers would have none of it. The result is a pointless dual carriageway to nowhere (well, another traffic jam). Even the AA used to wax lyrical about the A3 in its route across the Surrey heathlands, now submerged under one of the ugliest stretches of A road in the UK. The slash across the South Downs (now a National Park) is nothing short of criminal. The fact that the Highways Agency trumpets the tunnel as an environmental bonus is sick and insulting - they wanted to run the road overland across the Punchbowl.

My personal response to this is, yes, personal. I ride my bike in primary postion, I turn up at hotels, weddings, supermarkets, work and towns on a bike and make myself awkward. And I drive the car less and less - I don't want to be associated with what they have done - I don't want the embarrassment of being seen as a motorist. What they have done in my name and yours is unforgiveable.

Cycling has lost a major asset and part of its history. I am not sure if the CTC or British Cycling had much to say about it. The country has had miles of precious landscape ruined and even less enjoyment of driving.

[stewartpratt]

Cycling lost that road long ago to traffic, not recently to road engineers.

(And, as someone who now drives through the tunnel every day, it's given me back a good half an hour in every weekday, often more. Plus I think it may well have reduced the traffic on the alternative routes, making cycling in the area better.)

[horizon]

Exactly. That is what they want you to think (unless you were being ironic). The problem appears to be the traffic - it isn't, it's the accommodating of the traffic, free at the point of usage, that is the problem as any economist will confirm. And just as in 1927 everyone thought the problem was solved and the journey time shortened, it isn't: traffic will increase to fill the space; journey mileage lengths will increase to fill the journey times back to their previous levels - this has been documented for over a century. And finally the surrounding roads are clearer: well, one road isn't there for a start. And the others? Liskeard, our local town was by-passed and is now choc-a-bloc. Newbury? The problem specifically with the new A3 is that it has partly obliterated and subsumed the old road and partly destroyed it even when not on top of it. Even a new motorway would not have done that - that is why I talk about the ignorance of civil engineers. There were possible solutions but they weren't even considered.

[drossall]

Things improve in some places. The A1 used to be a barrier to traffic; you could ride north on quieter roads, apart from some sections where upgrading had obliterated any ridable route.

More recent sections have tended to be done better. South of Biggleswade, an upgrade included a bridge and short new parallel road to reconnect side roads to the west and east. The Council told me at the time that cyclists were a consideration in this. North of Huntingdon, especially where it has become the A1(M), proper parallel roads, not mere cycle paths, have been provided, mostly by leaving the old road approximately in place; at least one such section even gets used for some time trials.

I'm not so familiar with the road further north, but the bits not recently upgraded between, say, Stamford and Blyth seem much more patchy in terms of alternative routes. Sometimes the old road goes through a town and is available anyway, but in other places it has been obliterated and there is no obvious way within miles either side. The more recent the upgrade, the better the chance of an alternative, it seems.

[Graham]

There were possible solutions but they weren't even considered.

I kept a close eye on the consultation and enquiry processes for the A3 tunnel. ( As I was an objector to the destruction of the whole width of the old A3. i.e. I wanted a narrow residual width left as a cycle lane. As did CJ and every cycling & environmental group in the area. ).

I think that every combination was proposed and considered during the process from :
-> Leave the old road in place, open to all motor traffic even with the tunnel built and running
--> leave the old road in place for emergency traffic only and/or as an emergency bypass when the tunnel blocked
---> leave a narrow strip for emergency vehicle use, walkers, cyclists, carriages and horses
----> walkers, cyclists, carriages and horses only

It was an absolute requirement that the road should be removed BY THE NATIONAL TRUST that determined the eventual outcome.
In other words the National Trust had the final say - some inalienable right to decide on the usage of the land.
They said that they would only agree to the building of the tunnel if the old A3 was removed entirely.

[horizon]

It was an absolute requirement that the road should be removed BY THE NATIONAL TRUST that determined the eventual outcome.
In other words the National Trust had the final say - some inalienable right to decide on the usage of the land.
They said that they would only agree to the building of the tunnel if the old A3 was removed entirely.

graham: that's a fair point. I don't believe though that the National Trust had a real final say: the new road was going to be built whatever, the only question was where and how. I'm not sure that the highway planners actually cared - the horse riders, cyclists, pram pushers, hikers and the rest could fight over the crumbs. What the highway people had done though was to leave the question of the Punchbowl to the end when the surge of traffic from either direction would present a de facto case for the road's completion - the delays merely allowed them to complete other sections while they waited to deliver the coup de grace (there is a parallel process happening with the A303 and Stonehenge). If it was indeed the National Trust that closed the old road, then it brings to a final, tragic and miserable conclusion the wiping out of a national asset. The National Trust merely delivered the last line in a decades-long drama of unbelieveable ignorance and greed.