The hedge always wins

Every highway engineer has a nemesis. For some it's a utility company. For us, quite often, it's a hedge.

It goes like this. A lovely site, a sensible access, a layout that works. Then we draw the visibility splays. Out they go, two neat triangles stretching up and down the main road – straight through a hawthorn hedge that has clearly been there since before cars were invented.

The hedge isn't in the red line. Of course it isn't. It belongs to a neighbour, or a farmer, or occasionally to nobody anyone can find. And no amount of careful CAD work makes a driver see through two metres of very healthy shrubbery.

So begins the dance. Can we shift the access a few metres? Can we prove traffic is slower than the speed limit suggests? (Cue a speed survey, and a quiet prayer that nobody decides to race past the counter.) Can the client buy a strip of land? Can we have a nice chat with the neighbour over the fence?

Sometimes one of these works. Sometimes it's a bit of all four. Occasionally the hedge simply wins and the access ends up somewhere else entirely.

The lesson, which we repeat to anyone who'll listen: check the splays first. Before the architect falls in love with the layout. Before the planning application goes in. Ideally before anyone gets emotionally attached to where the front door is.

It's the cheapest bit of design on the whole job, and it can save an awful lot of heartache later.

If you've got a site and you're not sure whether the hedge is friend or foe, give us a shout. We've lost to a few. We've also won a few….