Highways England’s video mock up gives a reasonable idea of how the junction will look in a few years time.
The M25 – A3 interchange at Wisley, Surrey is amongst the busiest junctions in the UK and can be a frustrating place, with long queues. Also an accident blackspot, with one of the highest collision rates on UK major roads.
A scheme to rebuild the junction and surrounding area has been given the go ahead, with work expected to cost over £300 million and take three years.
We are fortunately nearer junction 9 (Leatherhead) so will be able to cope with any disruption. Our removals vehicles can still be amongst the 300,000 who use junction 10 each day, so improvement will be welcome.
Environmental Aspects
The reality of additional roads is that they take more space and nature can be disrupted during the build. We should still note that a fair amount of thought has gone into environmental needs for this project.
Over 25 hectares of heathland will be restored and new woodland planted to replace areas cleared for the restoration. A green bridge (no traffic) will link Ockham and Wisley commons, along with other bridges mainly serving smaller routes.
Those routes will include separate lanes to be used by cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders. The side roads they track should not in theory be busy and on the A3 itself, an extra lane is being built between Ockham and Painshill, to improve traffic flow.
The project begins with a focus on non human residents, fresh bat and badger surveys to make sure information is up to date. The engineering to create roads for our travel will start in September 2022.
Experience tells us that notable disruption in one place can spread and we may all need to make adjustments to normal routes. Our team will naturally be watchful and plan carefully on behalf of our removals clients.
If the project does reduce accidents and ultimately create better traffic flow at a significant junction, the odd inconvenience will have been worthwhile.
There are times when road plans to alleviate traffic achieve the opposite, or exact a high price in other ways. At this stage, benefits from the junction 10 revamp look likely to outweigh any downsides.
