A11 Bat Bridges

Part of the planning permission appeasements, bat bridges are to be built spanning stretches stopping squashing some soaring scavengers. The theory being that the bat's sonar senses the netting as it would the top of hedgerows, guiding the mammals over the dualled danger zone.

MikeCalder/Wikimedia

£500,000 have been earmarked to protect the six species known to inhabit the vicinity, which seems rather a lot for some posts and a bit of netting. The Highways Agency point out that this is a road safety issue too. As well as an unwelcome coming together with a hurtling motor vehicle for the bat, like the reasons steps are taken to divert deer off dual carriageways, they can be a dangerous distraction for the driver too.

A11 dualling

The government has brought forward capital expenditure projects already given the go ahead with preliminary work to start on the Barton Mills to Thetford stretch next Monday.

Highways Agency

The works will make the journey on the A11 dual carriageway from the M11, and the main east-west A14 road, to Norwich. Hopefully the widened road will alleviate the traffic jams at the notorious bottlenecks at Fiveways and Elveden .

Treacherous Travel Tales

Sleepy sailor starts speedy saviour shout. A man off the coast of Happisburgh, that's 'haze-brrrrr' for you outsiders, fell asleep on board his boat mustering the local RNLI lifeboat to discover that, in fact, he just forgot to turn his external lights on. More dramatically there was a bus fire on the outskirts of Norwich.

Amy Taylor/EDP

No one hurt. There was a much more awfully offal accident near Thetford on the A11 which caused chaos all day as the unspeakable bits of chicken were strewn across the road. 

EDP

Umhhh, Kentucky Fried Chicken anyone?

Blocked all Fiveways

With another (un)timely accident closing the A11 this evening, on the only single carriageway section between Barton Mills and Thetford, the final stage of the enquiry into duelling restarts again tomorrow. With the inevitable knock on effects of its closure to all roads in and out of this part of East Anglia, the nearest thing we will have to a motorway can't come too soon. If passed, the £147million 15km section could be open by 2013. Most objections to the scheme, after the RSPB withdrew their opposition to the widening of the road after the Highways Agency agreed to create an area of suitable habitats for nesting stone curlew, are concerning the ability for the Fiveways roundabout, at Barton Mills, to cope with the traffic through flow. When it's not blocked by an accident, of course.