Removing Bridges
Posted: Mon 2 July, 2012 Filed under: Change, Commuting, Driving, People 2 Comments »Over the weekend, the M1 near me (well, my entire commuting route) was closed to facilitate the removal of a bridge that is now un-used. It’s all part of the works on that stretch of the M1, and I’ve been watching as it all changes. Luckily I wasn’t going on that road over the weekend, or the detour would’ve been impressive.
The new bridge opened in May, and the last month has been spent removing all the sliproads to the old bridge, leaving it all isolated. By Friday they’d got rid of everything except the span of the bridge crossing the M1. And this morning, it’s completely gone, including the centre stanchions, and the massive block they stood on. It’s actually pretty impressive, seeing the speed it must have been demolished and removed.
Indeed, if you went past it for the first time today, you’d never really know there’d been a bridge there at all. There are no indicators of its existence at all.
Personally, I think the new junction is currently quite dangerous, although I think that’s also heavily related to the fact that people driving to the 50mph average speed limit turn into complete fuckwits. We’ll see how it works out as time goes on, the roadworks are removed, and normality fights to re-assert itself again.
I know where you mean because I used to live near that junction and work at the services there in my uni holidays.
I don’t know what the new junction is like, but the old one was dangerous, particularly when exciting northbound because the sliproad for exiting the services and entering the motorway ended just before the sliproad for exiting the motorway started.
The new approach is better than the old, I agree. But at the moment it’s a lumping great curve, and then at the end a short approach to the motorway, with very little feeder lane, and too many cunts sticking at 50 and not letting anyone in. I’m amazed it hasn’t had accidents already.
Hopefully it’ll improve when the roadworks are done.
Oh, and stupid people are also getting confused “because the junction isn’t the same as it used to be”, so now they have to turn in the opposite direction. In some ways it’s counter-intuitive – from Flitwick you have to turn right to get onto the ‘left’ route into Dunstable/London, and left to go ‘right’ towards Milton Keynes and the North. But so long as they can read and follow signs, they should be fine. Which is, of course, the problem.