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The long-awaited works to line up Cricklewood Lane with Chichele Road start this month. The junction’s been a problem for many years. Barnet wanted junction works to be paid for as part of expanding Brent Cross shopping centre but when that was put “on pause”, the council had to take responsibility. In a year, the junction should work better. We’ll have traffic lights green in both directions at once and pedestrian lights across Cricklewood Lane too, drivers will have a new right-turn lane and there’ll be an advanced stop line for cyclists. But we’re going to have some disruption during the year, and at first a lot.
The block on the corner, with a pharmacy, phone shop and gambling-machine “casino” will be demolished. If all goes to plan, that’ll take from September 2020 to April 2021. Then a new section of road will be built through there, from April to July 2021. Finally, new traffic lights will be installed and the road resurfaced, ending August 2021.
For most of that time, pedestrians won’t be able to walk round that corner; we’ll have to go right round on the other side of the Broadway. The southbound lane of Cricklewood Broadway that’s often full of parked cars will be closed too, at off-peak times. There’ll be bus-stop suspensions too.
The biggest disruption will be at the start and at the end. From the end of this month, from 28 September to 24 October 2020, Cricklewood Lane will be closed westbound (ie going towards Chichele Road), from Elm Grove to the Broadway. Presumably buses will be going along Lichfield Road, Westbere Road and Minster Road. Other drivers may try to go down Elm Grove or through the B&Q carpark.
It seems the next major disruption’s in June to August 2021, with Cricklewood Lane closed eastbound for a week June-July 2021 and the entire junction closed in the week before August bank holiday 2021 and over that weekend.
That’s a rough outline. Click here to see the seven stages. We’ll try to get some questions cleared up.
Update – buses Sep-Oct 2020
We’ve found out how buses will be diverted.
When buses from Golders Green reach Claremont Road, they’ll turn right, go all the way up to Tilling Road, across to Staples Corner and south down the A5 Edgware Road. So the 245, 260 and 460 will go along Cricklewood Lane as usual as far as the Lichfield Road / Claremont Road junction, and the 226 will go along Pennine Drive as usual, then turn right. The 189 from Brent Cross will also go via Staples Corner and the A5.
The 245 will get back on track by turning onto Dollis Hill Lane towards Neasden, while the 226, 260 and 460 will go down into the middle of Cricklewood and turn right onto Chichele Road towards Willesden. The 189 will go straight on past the Crown towards Kilburn.
Buses on diversion don’t usually stop along the way, so residents on Claremont Road can’t expect a magical new fleet of buses stopping for them. In fact, southbound they’ll only have the C11.
This runs for just under four weeks, from 09:00 on Monday 28 September to 17:00 on Saturday 24 October 2020. After that, the works can carry on without diversions until the resurfacing week in Agust 2021.
Buses going towards Golders Green will carry on as normal.