In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I spent a lot of time travelling between London and Yorkshire. Much of that was spent driving on the A1. I recently repeated the journey and was taken aback at the lack of roundabouts (yes, this national 70 mph trunk road was regularly interrupted by roundabouts) and I missed Grantham Services, my usual halfway stop (being on a roundabout, it used to be convenient and hard to miss).
Happily, the services are still there, it’s just that they moved the motorway:
Grantham used to be built on the A1 southbound, with a roundabout to the north allowing northbound traffic to access it and a loop road back to the roundabout allowing them to get back. Recently the Highways Agency brought the A1 to the west of this interchange, with the old road becoming the southbound sliproads and a new bridge being constructed for northbound traffic.
In other related commuter news, London’s Docklands Light Railway recently solved a problem with short platforms by moving the station:
The station was constrained by sharp curves at both ends and could not therefore be further extended on its former site. The DLR’s plans to operate 3 car trains on this line therefore included the relocation of this station some distance to the east.
Incredibly, they built the new station and dismantled the old one without any disruption to the railway!
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