• This topic has 78 replies, 44 voices, and was last updated 1 year ago by kilo.
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  • Stonehenge bypass announcement.
  • CountZero
    Full Member

    Can’t see anyone else has picked up on this yet, but it’s gone to the Secretary of State to sign off, and the plans, finally, look like how it should have been done twenty years ago! It’s going to be twin tunnels, bored not cut and cover, about 40m deep and 200m away from the stones, so further away than the A303 is now. Plus changes to the various junctions.

    https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/22976266.national-highways-a303-awards-contracts/

    The only issue I can see is the incessant whining from entitled assholes snivelling because they won’t be able to see the stones any more! Boo ******* hoo! You’re not entitled to look at the sodding stones, you’re required to pay attention to what’s in front of you while you’re driving!

    Just getting across the junction with the A303 heading south on the A350 to Salisbury is a bloody nightmare, due to entitled **** deliberately blocking the ‘keep clear’ boxes, afraid they might get pushed back a space or two, which won’t add any appreciable time to the delay they’re already enduring.

    Can’t come soon enough for the poor locals who’ve been suffering delays there for years.

    aide
    Full Member

    Was really surprised how close the road is to the stones when I went past. This can only be a good thing and hopefully should look good from the stones (ie you can’t see the road)

    mikertroid
    Free Member

    I use that stretch of the ‘303 regularly to get from home on the Wilts/Dorset border, to work in Oxfordshire.

    Personally, I’ll be grateful for the improvements, as I imagine the residents of Winterborne Stoke & Shrewton will be, but I am sad that the Till Valley is getting the road through it; Parsonage Down is magnificent in its tranquility and natural beauty. I hope much of that is retained 🤞🏻🤞🏻

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    zippykona
    Full Member

    Surely the brave new way is to knock them down and build a housing estate on the site.

    dissonance
    Full Member

    I guess it depends on how it is dug out. The problem is Stonehenge is just one part of the landscape with multiple other sites in the vicinity and probably more undiscovered. So would want to see some informed comments about the risk of the boring approach to losing history.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    What provision is being made for cyclists? I assume they’re not expected to use a 2 mile long tunnel?

    mikertroid
    Free Member

    It’s a shame that the current site is a replica. The original stones were dumped in a dusty storage facility on a secret airbase not far from the original site just before WW2…

    Best make the whole site into a carpark and visitors centre as the current setup is awful. You could use the existing ‘stones’ as hardcore…😎

    tjagain
    Full Member

    The tunnels are going to destroy known archaeological stuff i believe. Thats why its been constantly rejected.

    Also new roads mean more traffic

    bigrich
    Full Member

    hmmm, sounds like the entitled locals don’t want the scruffy outsiders blocking access to tescos.

    argee
    Full Member

    £1.25 billion for this 8 mile detour, i think they could spend that on better solutions on the 303 in general!

    mikertroid
    Free Member

    hmmm, sounds like the entitled locals don’t want the scruffy outsiders blocking access to tescos.

    The nearest Tesco is far enough away not to get affected.

    bigrich
    Full Member

    The nearest Tesco is far enough away not to get affected.

    then what’s the problem? after all, people have been slowly proceeding to have a look at the thing since it was built.

    bigrich
    Full Member

     entitled assholes snivelling because they won’t be able to see the stones any more! Boo ******* hoo! You’re not entitled to look at the sodding stones

    yes; yes they are. world heritage site mate.

    mikertroid
    Free Member

    then what’s the problem?

    Yawn 🥱

    jimdubleyou
    Full Member

    The tunnels are going to destroy known archaeological stuff i believe. Thats why its been constantly rejected.

    I think that was the case with the cut and cover method. If they are boring it should be better(ish).

    bigrich
    Full Member

    Yawn 🥱

    keeping you up are we?

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    The tunnel under the Devil’s Punchbowl at Hindhead has been a spectacular success. Traffic is so much better on the A3 south in particular, on the local roads, and the old A3 has been allowed to grow over so the area now is whole, no load through the middle for walkers, horse riders and cyclists to navigate around.

    Great name for the PM on the project

    irc
    Full Member

    edit

    Greybeard
    Free Member

    £1.25 billion for this 8 mile detour, i think they could spend that on better solutions on the 303 in general!

    Unfortunately, I suspect there’s a strong possibility it will have been spent on tax cuts

    dissonance
    Full Member

    If they are boring it should be better(ish).

    Hopefully. I would assume its a lot better than the previous proposed trashing of the landscape but before jumping up and down with happiness I would like to see some informed opinion as opposed to just the locals being happy.

    Ambrose
    Full Member

    I’d suggest that ‘locals being happy’ constitutes informed opinion. Public consultation has taken place, expert and lay views, knowledge and opinion has been sought and listened to.
    You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. Compromises need to be struck and this seems like a good one to me.

    I too would like to know what provision is to be made for cyclists, horse riders, pedestrians etc.

    robertajobb
    Full Member

    WHS protection means the square root of feckall to this Tory Government. I know. Because the **** called in and approved building in WHS buffer zone here in Derbyshire. Because they corrupt builders had stuffed the corrupt party coffers with pieces of silver after it was repeatedly rejected in local planning ( its in the WHS buffer zone which is there to protect the WHS. But that was dismissed as not mattering.

    robertajobb
    Full Member

    I’d like to know who TF is paying.

    kayak23
    Full Member

    Could they not just move the stones?
    It’s not like it matters exactly where they are or anything.

    nickc
    Full Member

    The tunnels are going to destroy known archaeological stuff i believe

    Correct. The whole area is rammed full of unique archaeological treasure of significant importance of human development. There are astonishingly small numbers of sites across the world that are so densely packed with information about the earliest human settlements.

    Driving a tunnel that close seems to me to be the equivalent of knocking down Museum D’Orsay with all the art still there to widen the road alongside the Seine, or knocking down the Piazza Del Doumo to make room for a housing estate.

    Idiots

    Anna-B
    Free Member

    I don’t understand why they aren’t planning to spend the money on dualling the A303 in its entirety.
    This is what is needed as the road suffers from pinch points all along as it changes from dual to single carriageway. I don’t see that digging a tunnel Will alleviate that, just push the problem further down the road. The section past Stonehenge needs to have something there to block the view for drivers, lots of whom slow to take photos and look at the stones, as this is dangerous.

    I live in Amesbury and commute west on the a303 for work. I’ve had very few problems in the nearly two years I’ve been doing the journey. I know others do but it’s clearly not the constant problem that it’s made out to be.

    I am fully opposed to the tunnel, if anyone is interested to read about the destruction of archeology in the area, look at the “Stonehenge alliance” website. There has been a suggestion that Stonehenge may have it’s whs status removed as a result of the tunnel. Overall journey time improvement from the tunnel has been put at a matter of a few minutes, which is not a great return for the billions it will cost.

    joshvegas
    Free Member

    I don’t really get what the fuss about Stonehenge is, sure it’s quite big but there are bloody hundreds of stone circles up here. It’s like the Neolithic dogshitbaginatree

    dudeofdoom
    Full Member

    Tourist crack, innit.

    I like the piccies of it when they remodelled it in ‘45 🙂

    Although it was very spooky in the Qatermass series in the ‘79 when the hippies got fried there.

    Wibble89
    Free Member

    Anna-B
    I don’t understand why they aren’t planning to spend the money on dualling the A303 in its entirety.

    Seeing as this proposed tunnel bit of the A303 is currently part of a single carriageway bit of the A303 I’m confused how they would spend the money for a section of the dialling on dialling the whole lot?

    Last time I drove the road there were large sections with construction ongoing adjacent to the road to provide new dual carriageway so it would appear that dialling the whole lot is the endgame plan.

    Due to how the funding tranches are applied and bid for, it’s fairly normal to undertake projects as smaller sections of a greater master plan.

    From a heritage point of view, the tunnel boring will have next to no effect on archeology in the area if done deep enough to be below those remains. London underground for example, when redoing Kings Cross underground station, tunnelled within 300mm of a buildings foundations with no ill effects. The potentially risky bit for archeology is the tunnel entrances and these will have been carefully sited with regard to the large number of remains that are known about.

    Some nice screening fences would be a nice cheap option to reduce the rubbernecking but this has previously been rejected by the public

    wordnumb
    Free Member

    I’d like to know who TF is paying.

    The monument itself is being sold to private owners to pay for the bypass.
    I should probably check this isn’t actually true before joking about it.

    benpinnick
    Full Member

    In other news secretary to the treasury, ardent tunnel supporter and salisbury MP John Glen stood down from his 5 year post earlier this year and subsequently hasn’t made so much as a whimper about the new government ploughing ahead with its financial plans after tearing up the treasury playbook.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    I’d like to know who TF is paying.

    RIS (Roads Investment Strategy) 2 budget (covering 2020 – 2025) was already cut by about £3.5bn due to delays in both A303 and Lower Dartford Crossing, the original budget was about £27bn. Same for RIS3 which will be 2025 – 2030. There’s a lot of crossover as well in the “2025” part, some schemes will get budget from both.

    Nothing has yet been fully costed for Stonehenge Tunnel as it was in the balance as to whether it would go ahead in the first pace or whether ot would be full dualling or some other scheme (cut & cover tunnel for example).

    Stupid idea – years of construction, almost certainly hundreds of millions of ££ cost over-runs and then it’ll be full of traffic again in a couple of years and the area will be back to square one.

    If the Government had been even halfway competent (ha!), there’d be plans for “HS3” from London to Exeter, possibly via Bath (or a spur to Bath / Bristol). The SW is desperately poorly connected at the moment.

    Anna-B
    Free Member

    From a heritage point of view, the tunnel boring will have next to no effect on archeology in the area if done deep enough to be below those remains.

    I really hope so, however I’ve read a lot on the subject as I want to be fully informed about this. Especially what professor David jacques has to say and I’m afraid it won’t be the case. He is head of archeology related to tunnel plans. I believe that the 6000 year old site of blick mead and its springs about one mile from Stonehenge, will be irreversibly damaged due to water table drop. It already has been by the highways agency, apparently, during their initial work.

    Lots of info on the web about this.

    https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/06/ancient-platform-damaged-during-stonehenge-tunnel-work

    Doesn’t bode well, really.

    trailmonkey
    Full Member

    The problem is Stonehenge is just one part of the landscape with multiple other sites in the vicinity and probably more undiscovered. So would want to see some informed comments about the risk of the boring approach to losing history.

    I don’t really get what the fuss about Stonehenge is, sure it’s quite big but there are bloody hundreds of stone circles up here. It’s like the Neolithic dogshitbaginatree

    The tunnels are going to destroy known archaeological stuff i believe. Thats why its been constantly rejected.

    All of this is true. The stones are iconic but are only a fraction of the wider historical landscape – most of which is pretty much hiding in plain site – just a case of knowing what you’re looking for.

    However, we can’t keep everything. To say that we’re not going to improve society just because we’re destroying parts of history that are already in abundance within this same landscape is just non-sensical to me.

    So,the questions are – how much of the past do you need to preserve ? who decides what are the important bits ? what usable function do they serve as heritage ?

    wordnumb
    Free Member

    So,the questions are – how much of the past do you need to preserve ? who decides what are the important bits ? what usable function do they serve as heritage ?

    1. The bits tourists and film crews will pay for coffee while taking selfies beside.
    2. Accountants.
    3. See answers 1 and 2.

    ElShalimo
    Full Member
    tjagain
    Full Member

    Anyone want to bet this is either dropped oncost grounds orchanged to cut and cover?

    grimep
    Free Member

    “Just getting across the junction with the A303 heading south on the A350 to Salisbury” .. .Think you mean A360. That roundabout is pretty much my least favourite in the country, drives me nuts. No one is able to follow the white lines and stay in lane. Travelling East the junction has 3 lanes, the left is straight on or left, the middle straight on and merge on the other side, the right is to turn right. So pretty much everyone uses the middle and right hand lanes to go straight on, and then there’s a 3-way merge on the other side with **** trying to push in and get one car ahead. I was in a hire Astra one time in the middle lane going straight, when the car on the left of me started drifting into my lane, I had to swerve into the right lane to avoid a crash. And she had the cheek to beep me. There’s something very wrong with the design of that roundabout.
    Shame the dual carriageway will cut a swathe through the pretty countryside north of Winterbourne Stoke, but then again a bypass couldn’t come sooner. I guess the idea is continuous dual carriageway which is all fine and dandy, but travelling West I’d imagine it will just move the mile-long merging queue to after Deptford where it goes back to a single carriageway, so what’s the point?

    iffoverload
    Free Member

    Waste of money, 1 point whatever billion (which is sure to increase) so mr “I got stuff to do” will possibly have a 2 minute (at most) shorter journey time..before he gets to the next traffic hold -up..

    If you dont like being in traffic hold-ups drive less, if your mission is time critical leave a few minutes early and stop being part of the problem/ “incessant whining entitled asshole snivelling” 😉

    cinnamon_girl
    Full Member

    Shocking. Firmly oppose this destruction and it shows a total lack of respect for our history and those who have gone before us. It really is a special landscape and doesn’t deserve this.

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