MT 120/233

Highway project feasibility studies: preliminary study of the proposed North London Orbital; notes, minutes, agendas and correspondence

Date range	1969
Location	National Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue	See entry
File base	Series MT, subseries MT 120

Context

As with other files nearby (MT 120/234 in particular), this file concerns both Ringway 3 and the North Orbital Road (or, to us, Ringway 4) north of London. Both routes were investigated as part of one feasibility study and traffic forecasting exercise, which gave us a three-lane M25 and only vague plans to build the NOR later on.

Most of this file's contents from 1969 relate to the public inquiry into the NOR Hunton Bridge-Maple Cross scheme (now M25 J17-19) and Freeman Fox and Partners' study into traffic flows on R3/R4 in this area. Anticipated traffic volumes between M40 and M1 were in the order of 150,000 PCUs per day, more than double the then-specified capacity of D3M, and this was used to justify construction of both R3 and NOR. Today the M25 in that area carries about 130,000 AADT so the predictions were right but the number of roads they thought they could build was wrong.

Some alternative ideas for NOR routings can be found here, along with pencil sketches of what civil servants referred to as the "Denham Complex". None of these are actual proposals but it's interesting to see just how much difficulty this area presented.

Links to other files

MT 120/234 Highway project feasibility studies: preliminary study of the proposed North London Orbital; notes, minutes, agendas and correspondence (1969)

MT 120/248 NORTH LONDON ORBITAL HIGHWAY (PROPOSED) FEASIBILITY STUDY. Working papers with ministerial and other correspondence (1969-1970)

MT 120/249 NORTH LONDON ORBITAL HIGHWAY (PROPOSED) FEASIBILITY STUDY. Working papers with ministerial and other correspondence (1969-1970)

MT 120/250 NORTH LONDON ORBITAL HIGHWAY (PROPOSED) FEASIBILITY STUDY. Working papers with ministerial and other correspondence (1969-1970)

MT 120/251 NORTH LONDON ORBITAL HIGHWAY (PROPOSED) FEASIBILITY STUDY. Working papers with ministerial and other correspondence. Part 1. (1970-1971)

MT 120/252 NORTH LONDON ORBITAL HIGHWAY (PROPOSED) FEASIBILITY STUDY. Working papers with ministerial and other correspondence. Part 2. (1970-1971)

People with camera copies

Chris Marshall has a partial copy.