Today National Highways have launched their consultation on the proposed Road Investment Strategy 3 (RIS3) Pipeline scheme for the A14 Copdock Interchange. If successful, RIS3 projects would go into the construction stage in 2025-2030. This is an important opportunity for local residents, businesses and stakeholders to demonstrate their support for improvements to this congested junction. The full details of the consultation can be found here: https://highwaysengland.citizenspace.com/he/a14-j55-copdock-public-consultation/.
There will for four public exhibitions before the consultation closes on Thursday 9th December and there is also a Virtual Event Space that you can visit online. The four public sessions are listed below:
Holiday Inn Ipswich, London Rd, Ipswich IP2 0UA - Saturday 6 November, 11am to 6pm
Capel St Mary Village Hall, Capel St Mary, Ipswich IP9 2ER - Friday 12 November 2pm to 8pm
Belstead Village Hall, Grove Hill, Ipswich IP8 3LU - Saturday 20 November 11am to 6pm
Copdock Village Hall, London Rd, Copdock, Ipswich IP8 3JN - Friday 26 November 2pm to 8pm
Beyond providing an opportunity to generally support the inclusion of the project in RIS3, the consultation also presents two possible options for the interchange. The first is to increase capacity of the existing junction by widening the circulatory carriageway and including free flow left turn lanes. The second is a solution to decrease the volume of traffic at the existing junction by removing the traffic travelling between the London & Felixstowe directions by separate link roads. Diagrams for these options can be seen below.
As highlighted in the South Suffolk Taskforce’s recent report, this junction improvement is absolutely crucial for our local economy to benefit most fully from the Freeport East project: https://www.jamescartlidge.com/news/sstf-launches-resilient-recovery-report. It is also essential to reduce congestion for local traffic including commuters accessing Ipswich. There have been many times when issues at the interchange has caused delays along the A12 all the way back to Capel St Mary & beyond.
I am encouraging all of my constituents to respond to the consultation to provide their support for the project generally. You will also be able to express a preference for the proposed schemes.
