Cheshire East Council has been given the final piece of the jigsaw after a bid for road infrastructure improvements in and around Crewe was successful.
The £2m worth of funding, awarded to the Council by the Department for Transport (DfT) for ‘local pinch points’, backs the Council’s vision for a less congested and more integrated road network that will help transform Crewe and surrounding areas into an economic powerhouse by 2030.
It is the culmination of several years of hard work and lobbying by the Council and is the latest in a series of successful ‘road bids’ for the Council.
The cash will help build a 600 metre-long widening of the A500 on the approach to the M6 at junction 16 on the Crewe side, with a completion date set for summer 2015.
This will create an additional full length lane along that stretch of the A500, which will then taper into a shorter third lane.
This will help ease traffic congestion to the proposed Basford East and West development sites.
These are strategic employment sites that are a key part in the council’s vision to help create up to 12,500 jobs over the next two decades as part of the ambitious ‘All Change for Crewe’ programme.
Recent successful bids to the DfT also include:
- £7.5m to ease congestion around junction 16, with the widening and installation of traffic signals on the A500 and M6 approaches to the junction.
- £2.7m of ‘local pinch point’ funding towards the Basford West spine road linking the A500 at Shavington with Gresty Road in Crewe, with work proposed to begin in Summer 2014
- Up to £15.7m of funding for our planned Crewe Green Link Road scheme which will further improve access to the Basford development sites.
Leader of Cheshire East Council, who is also chair of the newly formed Cheshire and Warrington Local Transport Body, which helps attract inward transport investment, said: “This is fantastic news for Cheshire East and really completes the picture for our borough as far as road infrastructure is concerned.
“We have been successful with all four out of four bids that we have put before the Government over the past few years and this shows that we are being taken seriously as a key conurbation for growth and development.
“The scheme will significantly improve traffic flow at junction 16 and promote access to planned employment and other key development sites as part of our massively ambitious ‘All Change for Crewe programme’.
“One of our aims is for Cheshire East to have a strong and resilient economy and improving the roads in and around the Borough ensures that we will gain an even greater reputation as an excellent place to do business.
“We will continue to lobby the Government for funds to realise the Congleton link road and the Poynton bypass and any other road improvements in the future which will greatly enhance prosperity in Cheshire East.”
The Highways Agency will deliver a total of 58 schemes across Britain as part of the Government’s remit to help boost the economy, reduce congestion and improve safety as part of its ‘strategic pinch point funding’ programme.
It represents an investment of £98m nationally to remove bottlenecks and keep traffic moving on England’s motorways and major A roads. They will be delivered by March 2015 and will bring in an estimated £1.4 billion of economic benefit to the country.
For more information and to view the bids type ‘pinch point funding’ into the search engine at www.cheshireeast.gov.uk
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