Ipswich Northern Bypass won't reduce traffic says Nick Green

Nick Green, who previously led the Stop the Northern Bypass campaign, said that despite people "trying to win votes", there is no appetite from the government to fund the road. 

This comes as Suffolk County Council voted to back a motion in support of the Northern Bypass, as well as a series of other traffic-calming solutions, last week.

Nick Green, former leader of the Stop the Northern Bypass campaign (Image: Archant) Mr Green successfully led the campaign against the project the last time it was seriously considered, before it was abandoned in January 2020 after losing political support.

He said: "Looking at all the facts over the Northern Bypass, what was very clear from third-party studies was that when a bypass is built around a town, you have this wonderful honeymoon period where everything flows fantastically for about five years.

"In every single study they did, they showed that five years after the building of such bypasses, the traffic actually got worse. So if anybody's thinking that the Northern Bypass will reduce the traffic within Ipswich, they're 100% wrong.

Villagers to the north of Ipswich protesting against the Northern Bypass saw the project abandoned (Image: Newsquest)

"It is just jumping on the bandwagon to try and score a few votes on a project that has no chance of happening.

"You need to build houses to pay for the road, and whilst Suffolk County Council wanted 15,000 new homes, the previous government wanted 50,000, which could mean 100,000 cars on the road."

The revival of the Northern Bypass project is a result of weeks of traffic chaos on the A12 and A14 due to work to the Orwell Bridge. 

Repairs to the Orwell Bridge have caused chaos on Ipswich's roads (Image: Newsquest) With the end of the lifespan of the Orwell Bridge approaching, there have been calls from all sides of the debate on how to proceed.

Mr Green believes that the best solution would be the revival of the Upper Orwell Crossing, a bridge over the River Orwell, closer to Ipswich with connections to the A12 and A14.

He said: "If you look at the two side by side, what's interesting is that the Upper Orwell Crossing alleviates the traffic significantly in mid and south Ipswich, whereas, according to WSP survey, the Northern Bypass did nothing to assist mid and southern Ipswich traffic concerns.

Nick Green, Suffolk county councillor Elaine Bryce and Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Patrick Spencer, who are all opposed to the Northern Bypass (Image: Elaine Bryce) "The Upper Orwell Crossing is a roughly a third of the cost of the Northern Bypass, It only runs for about two to three kilometres, whereas the lawn bypass is about 18 kilometres and there for stop the vast amount of environmental damage.

"Homes would have to be built to support the Upper Orwell Crossing but this would be a fraction of the amount needed for the Northern Bypass, which the government don't want to support because it would probably cost between £2-3billion.

Ipswich MP Jack Abbott started a petition in favour of the Northern Bypass which has thousands of signatures (Image: Office of Jack Abbott) "The calls will die down when the work on the bridge is finished and traffic is back to regular levels, and according to National Highways, in Ipswich we move a lot more freely on average than many other places across the country.

"We're looking when all the noise dies down and the hysteria moves on, and politicians are trying to make names themselves, we're going to put the group back together again to try and find some proper solutions that might actually happen."

Last week, Suffolk county councillor Elaine Bryce described the approval of the project by Suffolk County Council as a "hammer blow to residents".