Transport Insights

Another full weekend road closure from National Highways’ catastrophic M25 Junction 10 scheme will cause delays and congestion this weekend, with long diversions, particularly for non-motorway traffic.

Although National Highways has said there will be no more full closures of the motorway, the A3, which intersects with it at Junction 10, will be closed from Friday night until Monday morning over the short section north of the junction as far as Painshill (Cobham) roundabout.

Some of the lengthy diversions will be taking traffic past already busy spots on the local network, including Chessington World of Adventures.

Wisley Gardens, south of the motorway, is warning of delays, with visitors on the northbound A3 already having to engage with to engage with the Junction 10 roundabout, which will be busier with even more people leaving the road to join the M25 for a diversion.

The charity that runs Wisley, the RHS, says it will have lost £11m in visitor revenue by the time the scheme ends (late) next year. It has a petition calling for compensation with nearly 94,000 signatures so far.

I have written extensively about the catastrophic impact of the scheme on the network how National Highways underplayed it at the planning stage and this features heavily in Transport Action Network’s National Highways Watch page on the True cost of traffic delays from building major roads, which I researched and wrote.

In future, National Highways needs to be more honest about the disruption caused by planned schemes and ideally it should not be allowed to mark its own homework.

Picture: Surrey County Council