We put your questions about the Spur Road works to the council. This week: what are the mini traffic lights for, and how is it that the road's already being resurfaced?

1. Why is the stretch of the southbound carriageway between Qinetiq and Matchams flyover being resurfaced again? Hardly anything's been dug up?

The council replied: "Any previous work in this area, before the A338 major scheme, would have been a patch repair and we are now carrying out full depth reconstruction."

Full depth reconstruction (or full depth reclamation, as it's sometimes known) is a road building technique, and is not the same as totally rebuilding the road.  About a foot of carriageway is dug up, pulverised, and mixed with new materials to make a new road.

In other words, that IS the new look Spur Road.

2. How deep will the excavation be?

Where we are widening the carriageway the excavation will be up to 600mm, where we are reconstructing the existing carriageway the excavation on average 310mm.

3. What are those mini traffic lights for on the coned off lanes at the bottom of the northbound carriageway and the top of the southbound carriageway?

If an accident/breakdown occurs within the contraflow we can control traffic safely during the incident to give us a clear carriageway to allow access to recovery/emergency services.

4. How many breakdowns have been recovered in the roadworks area so far?

Since the contraflow started on 21 September there have been 23 breakdowns recovered not involving road traffic collisions. There have been 27 breakdowns recovered including road traffic collisions.

5. How many different crews are working on site? 

There are 15 subcontractors working on site.

6. What’s the heaviest piece of machinery operating on site?

We have a fleet of 20tonne excavators on site, but the heaviest piece of machinery on site is the planer, which takes up the existing road surface.