A3 - A243 - A309 Comments

The Ace of Spades was the first junction on the Kingston Bypass to have grade separation and its limitations are accounted for by its age. I'm not sure if what is now the A309 ever had three lanes but if not the lane drop would make sense. The stumps of the original concrete lamp posts were still visible last time I went through. I recall these were odd double bracketed posts with the underpass side head linked to the post by a long pole to make it lower

By all accounts in the 50s it was the wild west of the road network. D3 with narrow lanes (probably the first D3 in the country) and banked turns, it was totally derestricted until the 70 national road limit came in but had traffic lights at regular intervals and sort of resembled reigate avenue (A217) now

Add in 1950s cars with mechanical braking and brake fade and....suffice to say that I am told one garage (I think at the Combe Road junction) used to put the mangled wrecks on display in the forecourt to try and dissuade people from confusingt it with Brooklands race track and approaching traffic lights at 85 hoping they would stay green....In the end the whole road was grade separated largely for safety reasons. The 50 limit was much later, within the last 10 years or so.

I am amazed there are not traffic lights on the Ace of Spades roundabout, but then I spent years working in tourism explaining to baffled overseas visitors why we put traffic lights on roundabouts... Madness!

I live in Kingston and would make agree with pretty much all of this - what is not metioned here is that there is also no access to the A3 Southbound from the A243 - this catches me out time after time. Its ridiculous that the main Southbound route out of Kingston & Surbiton does not then connect Southbound with the main Southbound route out of South West London! And every time you forget this and turn right the roundabout you end up flying off down the A309 to Claygate & Esher and having to crawl past Sandown Park and thru Esher to get back on the A3 at the next junction!

Would also concur about the local access road - I use it frequently when coming in from A3 northbound and it involves cutting accross merging traffic, braking hard and then performing a very tight turn at slow speed. Dangerous! Its still better than the alternative of staying on the A3 for another mile then crawling thru Tolworth.

The sliproads on this junction are a work of comedy. The London-bound A3 onramp, as others have commented, has local roads (most notably Fullers Way) branching off it at right angles and acting as an auxilliary route for Kingston-bound traffic that can't get off the A3 any other way. It also has a zebra crossing going across it right immediately after the roundabout exit, and a petrol station access at the same point. The southbound offramp from the A3 has peoples' driveways opening directly onto it for goodness' sake!

The limitations of the hook underpass are all too obvious to see by people who use this frequently. My real beef with this junction is that no provision was made to access the A3 southbound when approaching from either direction on the A243. Therefore any traffic that may wish to by-pass Esher and head straight towards Cobham or Guildford either has to go to Tolworth to get access or, worse still, drive through Esher itself to achieve the same objective. I can only imagine, like a majority of these ideas, it was designed by someone who didn't have to make that journey and it somewhat nullifies the use of the A3 which has the capacity to handle extra traffic and take it away from Esher. Sitting in Esher most days, as I do, I often wonder if there actually is a by-pass.

I take all the exits off this junction from time to time. The aforementioned congestion, as 3 lanes goes to 2 for that 500M stretch through the underpass, is an obvious issue.

What I also find is traffic joining the A3 London bound (from Kingston and Chessington) has to contend with any traffic from the local road (Fullers Way North) about 100M after you join.

This causes all sorts of fun as people slow to about 5 mph to leave (its too tight to take faster) just as others speed up to A3 speeds and other people cross lanes (as mentioned above) to get to the exit. Ahhh!

Just close Fullers Way access.

Living myself to the north west of this junction, I would certainly appreciate south-east facing sliproads from the A309 onto the A3. This would enable me to bypass Esher en route to the M25 etc, Esher being a busy town these days. South west-facing slip roads from the A243 roundabout onto the A3 too make good sense, not least to improve the options available to traffic to get into Surbiton/Kingston from the south or out of the Chessington area headed south/south west. On the face of it there seems to be land aplenty to accommodate both extra options and this would also facilitate a 'meaningful' lane drop, from the A3 northbound carriageway.

The A309 is not a major route into Kingston. The A309 is part of the original Kingston By-Pass (and is still called Kingston By-Pass Road), and was used by traffic bypassing Kingston on the way to Esher, Guildford and Portsmouth. There are four good roads approaching Kingston from London, points east and Leatherhead.

Today, traffic going south now leaves the KBP at Hook West, with the A3 running along the new Esher By-Pass, which finishes at the junction of the A245 at Cobham and is of near-motorway standard. The old KBP, however, is still used by people getting from London to Esher, and from other points east (Sutton, Wimbledon, even Croydon) to Esher, Staines, Hampton Court, Walton and the M3. It's effectively across south London to Staines and the M3.

I agree that the Hook underpass is really too narrow, since going eastbound it takes all the traffic from Portsmouth and Esher, that is, five lanes of traffic, into two lanes. Although I've never encountered the sort of congestion you might expect.

Oddly enough the roundabout section works quite well, no traffic lights needed to stagger it out. It's only the A309 entrance which is bad. Approaching it from the A3 or either side of the A243 is ok, apart from small side road which appear half way up the slip road (common for this part of the A3!) and have cars darting out on the main road as if they didn't care about if they were alive tomorrow. The worst part is the merging of the A309 into the northbound A3. You actually have 5 lanes of traffic merging into 2 - the A3 northbound is virtually motorway standard before this junction, but just before it you have 3 lanes of national speed limit traffic squeeze into 2 lanes of 50mph traffic with a speed camera to boot! Add to this 2 lanes of traffic from the A309 forced into this to go into a very thin 2 lane underpass and you can imagine how messy it can get. Add the drainage issues to this and it becomes a nightmare! But overall it still works and flows better than its neighbour, the A3/A240 junction at Tolworth, which often has knock on effects onto the A3 itself.

I know this junction well - one of the problems it causes is that as there is no access to the A3 westbound from the A243 all traffic from the area trying to reach the A3 has to join at Tolworth (the next junction east), which makes that junction overloaded, and squeezes more traffic through the two-lane section. And, of course, traffic leaving the A3 cannot do so until Tolworth.

I don't see access from the Esher bypass to the A309 as the priority - a more direct route to Esher is to leave the A3 at the previous junction (A244). Traffic into southern Kingston is more likely to benefit from provision of access to the A243. A solution would be to change the sense of the slip roads between the A3 and A309, so that instead of linking the A309 with the underpass, they link the Esher bypass with the roundabout. Yes, A309 traffic would then have to use the roundabout, but the much larger flows to and from the A243 could be accommodated.