Just to let you know that Highways England will be starting night time highways work on the A14 in May, starting on the 11th and taking some 12 weeks in total. They will be replacing some 22km of lanes in total spread over the east and westbound carriageway between Stowmarket and Claydon, a task that involves some 20,000 tonnes of material. The resurfacing will be of the full depth of the road to ensure it then has a 20 year life.
Your County Councillors insisted they considered contraflow working but they demonstrated that the road is not wide enough to support that. Queues during the day would be long and if ther was a breakdown or an accident it would be very difficult to get to for rescue or vehicle recovery.
So there will be diversions between 8pm and 6am on to local roads for quite a number of weeks. There would be speed restrictions on the A140 24 hours a day to allow traffic to run on that during the day.
They would do eastbound first from Stowmarket (Tesco) to the A140 with diversions via Dis (starting at Bury St Edmunds) and via Stonham starting at Stowmarket for the six weeks this phase would take.
They would then do the A14 eastbound starting at the A140 towards but not all the way to Claydon for two weeks with a diversion via Barham and Claydon, Norwich Road and Ipswich Road. Clearly that is a significant disturbance but traffic volumes at night are much lower.
The next operation would be the westbound carriageway from Claydon towards the A140. This would take some four weeks with a night time diversion via Great Blakenham and Needham Market. West bound traffic would access the A140 via Claydon and Barham but trafic from the A140 wishing to go west would go via Stonham to Stowmarket.
For details see the highways letter below
