Shrewsbury relief road the route to a brighter future. says chief
Shrewsbury’s long-awaited North West Relief Road will pave the way for a greener, cleaner and more economically viable town, a councillor has said.
The multi-million pound road was brought to life yesterday when councillors and officers were given a whistle-stop tour of the proposed route.
The major highway, which will link Bicton Heath to Ellesmere Road was awarded £54 million government funding earlier this year and now the authority is keen to get the project under way.
Councillor Steve Davenport, cabinet member of highways and transport, said that while not everyone agreed with building new roads, the positives far outweighed the negatives.
He said: “I will be pushing to improve the town’s Park & Ride service and to get more people using public transport but we still need roads. Traffic won’t diminish in the future, it will just be different – for instance electric cars – but they still need a road to travel along.
“Ultimately this road will make the town greener, cleaner and will benefit the economy.”
Shropshire Council is expected to submit a full planning application in April 2020, with construction then starting in spring 2022.
Reduction
Matt Johnson, the council’s strategic transport and contracts manager, said: “The biggest benefit is obviously less traffic in the town that shouldn’t be there. It will improve the air quality and road safety. People will be able to walk their children to school safely, or cycling to the pub. There are real life-enhancing benefits.
“But then we have to move on when the road it built. We can’t just stop there. We need to make the most of the reduction of traffic and start redesigning the town.
“If we remove the traffic and redesign the way the town centre works, businesses will want to be there and it will economically benefit the town as a whole and hopefully we will see a major upturn.”
The road is due to open to traffic in autumn 2023 with the project fully complete the following spring.
But Councillor Davenport said this was only the beginning and plans to improve other county roads were moving forward.
He added: “This is just the start of investment to our roads in the county. Next we will be working on other big projects like the dualling of the A5 and A483, and even A49.
“There seems to be accidents on the A5 almost weekly now, especially at Oswestry which is not good enough.”
“But I can say that this is something that we are seriously pushing for and we have having regular meetings to make it a reality.”
