An artist's impression of how the roads at Streethay will look when HS2 is built
An artist's impression of how the roads at Streethay will look when HS2 is built

A slip road off the A38 at Lichfield will close for 15 months, HS2 bosses have confirmed.

The southbound exit at Streethay will shut from 1st August.

It is part of the works to create a bridge to allow the A38 to go over the high speed rail line.

A spokesperson for HS2 said:

“The new railway line will run beneath the main carriageway, slip roads and existing railway lines.

“To carry out this programme safely, we will have phased traffic management which will commence with the closure of the A38 southbound slip road at Street from 9pm on 1st August for 15 months.

“We recognise this will be impactful, but by closing the slip road it allows us to complete the work quicker overall, saving 12 months on our programme.

“We will be constructing the supporting foundations and structure for the bridge. We will also be starting excavations for the A38 southbound slip road and carriageway over bridges.

“During later phases of work we will be closing the northbound slip road along with lane closures on the carriageway within the Streethay area.”

A series of overnight works will also take place in the run up to the longer term closure.

The southbound slip road will shut for five nights from 11th July, while the northbound slip road will be shut overnight for six weeks – not including weekends – from 25th July.

Information events are being held for residents to find out more about the planned works in the area.

An online webinar will take place at 5.30pm on 5th July, while drop in sessions will be held at Boley Park Community Hall from 2.30pm to 5.30pm on 11th July, and 4pm to 6pm on 19th July.

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Curborough Rd Resident
1 year ago

I predicted this over 18 months ago, and it’s going to get worse, A38, A5, A51, A515 will all have to be crossed by HS2 at some point, I feel the Streethay residents deserve something much better.

John
1 year ago

Streethay was a beautiful hamlet. If this is progress ???? Now we know why our MP voted against it.

Nightwatchmen
1 year ago

Just scrap this unwanted project. All week the government have said that the rail industry needs modernisation and is short of money. Simple solution scrap HS2, that nobody wants and spend the money on the existing railways that everyone wants improving

Pauline
1 year ago

Your MP only got off the fence and voted against HS2 when his comfortable seat was in jeopardy. He could have done so much more to stop this

Stevo
1 year ago

HS2 will be hugely beneficial for Lichfield, with much better connections to many more places as more capacity is freed up on the existing main lines. Not everyone is against it. Short term pain for long term gain.

Vic
1 year ago

Micky Fab only opposed this once he felt the strength of opinion, until then he was a full on supporter of HS2…..don’t be fooled check the history

ML
1 year ago

Stevo trains have to stop in Lichfield first, many years ago they did now except slow ones they don’t

RFW
1 year ago

Actually Fabbo came out against it after he left the Whips office and no longer had to support the party line and on realising he was never going to be made a junior minister under any PM. Despite toiling away for years in the Whips office he was never given the customary junior minister position.

Hence the public support for Boris in order to get a Lordship after he retires or is retired, one way or another.

Ian
1 year ago

Those that think HS2 will bring any benefits to Lichfield are deluded. The fast trains will be gone from Lichfield, we will be left with the inferior stopping trains. HS2 is a complete waste of our money. Costs now greatly outweigh benefits, although original benefits were fake. The world now avoids a lot of travel with Zoom etc.

Archie
1 year ago

HS2. Cost 98.5 Billion Pounds already ( double the budget) to date, estimate 1st stage complete in 2033…and beyond.
Please do not say this is short term pain.
Certainly not any gain.
Just think what that figure could have done to lift our NHS out of the Doldrums. Plus the infrastructure of the Uk.

Steve George
1 year ago

I am a big railway fan, but I believe HS2 to be a ludicrous waste of money, and colossal inconvenience. By the time the trains start running it will be already outdated. Btw, on the day it was announced with a £56m price tag, I predicted the cost would at least double, as always happens when the public sector try to manage construction projects.

JJ
1 year ago

Why are we still going ahead with this ridiculous train. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of things the money would be better spent on. Anyone who said there is a gain, what s the gain, the best you can get is a faster train. That is not life changing is it, it’s just a train, the government and county as a whole is gone. It makes me sick to my stomach what this country has become and the people who run it.

Chris Edwards
1 year ago

Bodger’s vanity project will sadly continue, so much money we haven’t got spent on something we don’t need, North to South it’s a relatively very short distance. We live on a small Island and not in a vast country thousands of miles long and wide,where time saving journey factors would possibly come into play.

The damage and destruction caused to wildlife and irreplaceable natural habitats is an abomination, at the very least it is without doubt vandalism on an epic scale .

Local infrastructure and public transport improvement projects should have been the priority nationwide.

This sad apology of a government will continue to be profligate and will always obfuscate .The likes of Micky Fab and Billy Cash will still defend this Prime minister until they all follow each other over the edge of that cliff together.

All of us have been let down by successive governments over the last 50 year’s we should have been self sufficient in renewable energy long ago saving our economy billions of pounds per annum.Blessed with tides,wind and solar opportunities this country should be in surplus and not servicing a what is now around a two and a half trillion national debt costing the tax payers around eighty-three billion pounds a year in interest repayments alone, it really is so shocking.

Percy
1 year ago

Ian mentions people who think HS2 will bring benefits to Lichfield. Do such people exist? It’ll take trains past Lichfield at high speed on a new line. The trains aren’t going to stop at City or Trent Valley. There’s not going to be a station near Lichfield built on this new line. So what benefits would Lichfield get from HS2?

Susan hodgkinson
1 year ago

I wish they had started in the North, and finished in Birmingham. I think that they needed it more than London to Birmingham. The North East and west need more connecting transport links. It would also perhaps encourage more companies to move North.

Steve Morgan
1 year ago

Surely this is not about just London Birmingham ? The service will go Leeds -London. Anyway think of it as HC2, high capacity not high speed. It goes without saying any new rail service will be fast. The existing lines were built in the reign of Queen Victoria and the carriages are always now too full. I presume from the comments on this page they don’t use public transport and have never seen the superb French and German Railways. Q.E.D.

Chris Edwards
1 year ago

Re: Outdated rail capacity, true but HS2 will be old school before its completion.

Maglev systems already operational in China and South Korea trump any existing systems on the European Continent. Clean and cost effective they are the supreme mode of rail transport and work well in Asia.

Around 90% of food and goods are transported via road networks in Britain ,around 6% goes via rail the rest by water and other methods. Passenger levels will continue to decrease due to remote working and other innervations,hence the cost of HS2 in relation to passenger numbers and enhanced capacity is not a valid point of view.

Investment in existing lines, stations, even redevelopment of old branch lines to help with connectivity and capacity would have been the best option along with nationwide investment in local infrastructure and public transport systems.But Bodger and his cronies know best, l speak as a life long Tory. I doubt even Comrade Corbin would have wasted as much money as this lot.

Alan O'Connor
1 year ago

HS2 is an incredibly costly project that benefits very few people and is obsolete in its planning. The current estimate of cost is well over £110 Billion yet, in economic terms, it has negative benefit, that is it is a complete waste of money.
It really is time that HS2 was abandoned and the huge amount of money being wasted on it devoted to improving existing public transport networks, particularly in the economically and socially deprived northern half of England.

Simon
1 year ago

Completely agree @Alan O’Connor. I think everyone knows this except the clueless politicians.

Richard
1 year ago

After all this is delivered, will it be a) affordable and b) needed anymore? Majority of workers now are hybrid, the number on the trains now is significantly down compared to pre-covid. Less demand means higher prices. Train prices are already incredibly high and increase annually. Such an expensive project has to pay for itself. What is the benefit to its users?

Maureen
1 year ago

By my understanding HS2 completion is 2045?? 1st Stage 2033? By the time of completion the whole system will be out of date.
I for one will not be around.

Buttons
1 year ago

HS2 has been, and is now more than ever, massively opposed by anyyone with an ounce of common sense. There is absolutely NOTHING to justify this environmental disaster and dreadful waste of money.

How we can say that we live in a democracy when our voices are totally ignored is beyond me.

The devastating environmental damage caused so far to our beautiful woodlands, countryside and wildlife can never be replaced, and has only just begun. All for no long or short term benefit to anyone – apart from the heathens involved with HS2 Ltd.

At least the Northern leg has been scrapped … shame our politicians didn’t have the balls to stand up to Government and HS2 Ltd to stop this unwanted and unnecessary Midlands/Southern line going ahead.

Scrooge
1 year ago

I wonder if the additional mileage and time are tax deductible or are our friends at HS2 going to compensate us by other means?

David Dundas
1 year ago

The closure of the Streethay slip roads from the A38 for 15 months will be a major inconvenience to many people, but could be avoided if the plan several decades ago could be implemented which was to build new slip roads from the A38 into and out of Cappers Lane, avoiding major traffic flows through Streethay. This could still be done; perhaps HS2 would fund it? When the 4-track upgrade of the West Coast line was done, I raised the question why these new slip roads were not installed at the time, and the representative of this project admitted that “they missed a trick” by not doing it, which would have required an even wider bridge over the main line.

Ian
1 year ago

@david Dundas is so right, if HS2 had planned properly, their new slip road to their compound could instead have been located at Capper Lane, and remained as an asset for road users in the future. Instead they have built a temporary slip road just for HS2 from the A38.

Does it really take 15 months to build a bridge? The Dutch recently built one in a weekend under a motorway. Closed motorway, dug out the cutting across the road, placed the concrete support in the cutting they had created, back filled, built road back over the top. Road open after the weekend with a tunnel now running underneath it. Not the 15 months slow HS2 methods that we are paying for.

ML
1 year ago

The Chinese would have it all up and running by now as they get jobs done fast

Rich
1 year ago

My 3 year old asked me why every time we drive around Lichfield and surrounding areas men are cutting down all the trees, digging up the ground and making us wait in traffic jams, I simply said somehow people who don’t live around here and have less brain power than you and your friends at nursery are running the country, they are big on the environment but not on this occasion they are forward thinking again not this time but they all share a common interest in making lots of money for themselves, buying holiday homes in France and retiring wealthy and abroad!
My daughter said daddy why didn’t you just say MPs
Our family has had 4 properties taken of us in the name of progress leaving my Parents, Grandparents and Uncles all split up and moved miles apart from the family farm which is now left to collapse, we are just one tiny cog affected in this grand scheme and my thoughts go out to all families affected by this unfunny joke

Taxpayer
1 year ago

No thanks David Dundas. I live by Cappers Lane and we have enough traffic going up and down here already thanks. When I bought my house here I was unaware of this idea of a slip road for A38 north. I looked at houses in Streethay and decided it was just going to get busier and busier there and time has shown I was right. No keep the entrance where it is please. I didn’t sign up for it to be by me but the house buyers in Streethay were well aware of this when they made their house purchases.

Lucy
1 year ago

Everyone is missing one large point . The south bound slip road will be closed for 15 months!
I commute down eastern avenue and it is an absolute nightmare every morning and evening and it’s only going to get worse pushing traffic to come through small villages.
It’s ok agreeing to HS2 and more housing in Lichfield but the road structures haven’t changed for years and they can’t cope with the traffic.
HS2 is a joke when residents of Lichfield aren’t benefiting as the like won’t stop at any Lichfield stations .

Spend the money on cancer research
1 year ago

We all know how construction costs have rocketed last 2 to 3 years. The predicted one hundred and thirty thousand million pounds although ridiculous enough, will be over 200 billion by now, £6000+ per uk taxpayer for something we will never use in our lifetime, nor will our children, whilst we are desperately in need of a better doctor service, and new hospitals.
We need to stop it before these major works, as already many politicians know it’s a dead duck but will rather we pay out than them admit they were wrong, and lose face

Helen Chesworth
1 year ago

So where’s the out or in roads of Lichfield going to be?? As people who work in Fradley or Burton how are they going to work? Which roads are getting stored for extra traffic coming through there villages?? As its going to be mayhem for all traffic users isn’t

JIM
1 year ago

what a waste of money,better spent on new cancer hospitals, improving existing road s,flood defences upgraded where applicable,in fact anything to help us all have a better quality of life than travel on a very expensive train which saves 40 minutes.!

Philip
1 year ago

@Jim…. It is interesting that the government is discussing ‘suspending’ their Global Warming programme (costing a few billion) because of the economic situation. There is no talk of any variation to HS2 (costing 100 billion plus). As with many of the vanity projects, and those who contribute to Tory party funding, the priorities seem to be incomprehensible.