Route announced for £1 billion Trans-Pennine dualling transformation
Major upgrades to a northern Trans-Pennine route are a step closer
today with the official preferred route announced for the £1
billion A66 upgrade. The announcement reveals the list of
improvements Highways England wants to now take into construction.
The A66 is both a nationally important road, linking the M6 at
Penrith in...Request free trial
Major upgrades to a northern Trans-Pennine route are a step closer today with the official preferred route announced for the £1 billion A66 upgrade.
The announcement reveals the list of improvements Highways
England wants to now take into construction.
The A66 is both a nationally important road, linking the M6 at Penrith in Cumbria with the A1(M) at Scotch Corner in North Yorkshire, and a key regional route. As well as benefiting local people the upgrade will support tourism and freight traffic, improving connections between ports in Scotland and Northern Ireland and those in England at Hull and Felixstowe. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said:
The proposals announced today are also the most popular options among people responding in last year’s huge public consultation. They include five new bypasses, key junction improvements and an underpass at the congested Kemplay Bank roundabout near Penrith.
Highways England’s senior project manager Matt Townsend
said:
As well as choosing the underpass instead of a fly-over
at Kemplay Bank, Highways England is proposing the
following options to bypass existing sections of the
route or provide dualling alongside the existing single
carriageway road:
The proposals also include significant improvements to the existing junctions between Barnard Castle and the A66 at Bowes and Rokeby. These will improve safety at the two junctions and make for safer, smoother journeys for HGVs.
All of the villages being bypassed will benefit from
the removal of high volumes of traffic, including HGVs,
from the existing road as well as improved community
connectivity. Pedestrians, cyclists, and horse riders
will also benefit from the upgrade which will reduce
collisions, competition from other vehicles and
associated congestion along one of the most important
commercial routes in the north of the United Kingdom.
In every case, the chosen option was the most popular among the 857 respondents. The consultation involved more than a dozen events held along the route between May and July of last year and attended by 2,333 people. In all, almost 93 percent of people backed the overall dualling plan. All the preferred options will now go into a period of further analysis, development and design before a second public consultation and scrutiny period next year. Highways England also revealed today that the £45 million design contract for the project, put out to tender in October, had been awarded to Amey Consulting in collaboration with Arup. Further information on the project can be found on the project webpage |