National Highways has told the Bedford Independent that the A421 could be open by Wednesday (9 October) pending safety checks.
In an interview with this newspaper, Martin Fellows, Regional Director for National Highways in the East of England, says the road should be free from water by Sunday.
A stretch of the A421 between the A6 at Bedford – M1 (junction 13), near Brogborough/Marston Moretaine, has been closed since 22 September after unprecedented rainfall flooded the road, pumps to remove water from the road, and balancing ponds near by.
A number of safety checks will then need to be made to see if the road surface has been damaged, and any repairs made, including potentially resurfacing the road near Marston Moretaine.
Checks on the road surface no longer under water have already begun and it’s been confirmed at least one slip road will need to be resurfaced.
While the water levels on the road have reduced, Mr Fellows says they still have a lot of work to do to get the road open as quickly as they can.
“We’re hopeful now that we can get a second high-volume pump working that will start to pump even more water. If the weather stays reasonably fair we ought to be able to pump the water away towards the end of the weekend, beginning of next week.
“We are already starting to assess the roads to ensure that we can get it open as quickly as possible, but we recognise that when you have such a high large volume of water it gets into the road surface and can potentially get even into the lower layers under the road.
“So it’s likely we will have to resurface the road. We will also need to check the structure of the bridge over the A421 as when water gets into the concrete, sometimes that concrete can break away.
“The structure is absolutely fine, but what we can’t have is traffic running on it and there being a risk of concrete breaking away from the structure, so all of that process is ongoing.”
Phased reopening
He added that they may also reopen the road in phases to ease congestion on the diversion routes.
“We’re hopeful that once we get the water cleared and we can then get the road at least some capacity back to the road, what we won’t do is wait until we’ve got the whole road sorted before we get at least some capacity back.
“It may be that we will consider opening one lane in each direction first,” he said.
There has been criticism aimed at the flooding of the A421 and concerns that it might happen again. Mr Fellows says they will be assessing the impact of rainfall on the road and how they can prevent flooding from happening again.
“It would be irresponsible of us not to consider the implications of it likely happening again,” he said.
“What you have to remember is this is a one-in-100-year event, but unfortunately those are becoming even more prevalent now.
“The pumping station that serves this particular location has never been underwater, it got completely and utterly submerged because of the sheer volume of water. So, we will need to look at that pumping station and it will need to be completely renewed and rebuilt.
“We’ll look at where we locate it and while there is logic in having a pumping station close to the road surface, which is which is important so it can pump the water away, we’ll need to consider whether or not there’s an alternative location for some temporary pumps.
“The permanent pumping station will take some time to repair, but we’ll put some temporary measures in place to ensure that we can still take the water away.
Future flooding concerns
While National Highways do assess and plan to put in place the infrastructure to prevent future flooding of this kind, Mr Fellows says they do share local people’s concerns.
“Yes, absolutely it concerns us. The road is not in isolation, we have to consider the land and people around the road and there’s a whole range of partners here that will have to look at what measures we can take that will make sure that water doesn’t get onto the road in the volumes that it’s happened here, and if it does that we can remove it as quickly as possible.
“I can’t control the weather, but what I can control is what measures we can put in place to at least mitigate the impact if something similar happens again.”
It’s estimated that at its peak there were 60 million litres of water on the A421, with “somewhere in the region” of 72 million litres pumped away so far due to rainfall during the operation to get the road clear.
More from our interview with National Highways will be published in follow-up stories shortly.
