GRAVEL Hill is set to reopen in nine days’ time after being closed for four months.

The £4m scheme which began late July has included a number of changes to the road including its layout, a lowered speed limit and brand new lights for the road.

Motorists have spent part of the summer and all of autumn avoiding the closed route between Dunyeats Road and Queen Anne Drive as workers sought to improve drainage and strengthen the road that had been regularly breaking away for years.

Borough of Poole’s contractors have pushed back embankments, using a variety of structural techniques, enabling them to widen the pavement - up to 3.5m in some sections - which will become a combined pedestrian and cycle lane.

A new track has also been installed to access the culvert beneath the road.

The main changes to the A349 are:

n Motorists travelling northbound from Dunyeats Road towards Wimborne, at the junction of Queen Anne Drive, will find three lanes. The right-hand lane will direct traffic to Queen Anne Drive only. The left and middle lanes will direct traffic to a merge in turn once they’ve passed the junction.

n Those travelling from Queen Anne Drive will be able to turn left or right where there will be merge-in-turn layouts in both directions.

n Those travelling southbound from Wimborne at the Queen Anne junction will encounter two lanes - the left for left and straight on and the right lane for straight on only.

n The previous 60mph speed limit will be reduced to 40mph.

John Rice, engineering manager, said the project has encountered a number of challenges since it began including shallow utilities, telephone wires and environmental issues. He said the biggest headache has been the “co-ordination of all the activities to keep it all on programme”.

“The main contractors employ sub contractors and because it is a linear site, by its very nature, operations have to happen in a particular sequence. If there is a slip up it affects everybody. Most people accepted that the work needed doing. The alternative to not doing it was a lot more work. We have to grin and bare it. Closing Gravel Hill would increase traffic through Broadstone, Corfe Mullen etc. basically all the other main routes. Poole is at capacity, and that’s across the conurbation, at peak hours.” There just isn’t the spare capacity.”