10:30am Wednesday 25th November 2009
LANE closures on the A338 is something we are all going to have to get used to.
Once the preparatory work is completed in February motorists will have a few months’ grace before more lane closures are introduced for the start of the main £26 million resurfacing scheme.
This main work will begin in September 2010 and is due to finish in April 2011.
After that major work is due to be carried out to add a third lane north and south between the Blackwater Bridge junction and the Cooper Dean roundabout, improve the Blackwater junction, build a link road to the airport and build a park and ride near Bournemouth Hospital.
There have been calls for these schemes to be carried out at the same time as the resurfacing work.
But David Diaz, the county council’s project leader, said it was not feasible to work on other major projects in the time scale they were given.
Funding for the resurfacing work has come from the South West Regional Authority and the Department for Transport said the funds would be lost if they weren’t spent within the next financial year.
Mr Diaz said provision was being made to ensure future schemes could go ahead without having to completely re-do next year’s work.
Early indications are that the work would be carried out in phases, between 2016 and 2019.
“It is something we will start working on to work out what land we need to buy and put our best case forward for the funding again,” Mr Diaz added.
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