THORNEY BYPASS
On Tuesday the 5th of October, 2004, work finally started on one of the most long awaited BYPASS schemes.
The late Douglas Adams had a great definition for bypasses which is included in the opening section of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Thorney is a village on the A47 which I have to pass through whenever I go to Peterborough, Leicester or Birmingham.
Here are some bullet points...
The route will be 5km (around 3 miles) long.
The cost will be around £28 million
The route will run to the N of the village
There are currently around 16 000 vehicles a day moving through the village, 4000 HGVs, with lots of movement at night.
It will be built by the contractors BIRSE, and construction will take around 78 weeks (during which there'll be - guess what - roadworks...)
WEBSITES
The HIGHWAYS AGENCY have a report on the Bypass which includes a great deal of background information. This sort of detail is presumably available for all similar schemes. The site includes a very useful image of the PREFERRED ROUTE.
A useful speech by local MP Malcolm Moss is featured HERE. This would form a useful resource.
The website opened in December 2005 - I have a clip from local news of the event...