A road linking Thamesdown Drive with Great Western Way remains on Swindon Borough Council’s agenda, despite an unsuccessful initial bid for government funding.
The Council, working in partnership with Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP), submitted a bid for £1.27 million from the Department of Transport’s Large Local Schemes Fund in order to pay for a detailed design, all the environmental surveys, and the preparation of both a planning application and business case.
It was hoped that, if successful, a further bid would be submitted to the Government for full funding support of the £44 million scheme in two years’ time.
The bid for funding formed part of the Council’s Pledge 4 to “make a case to government to invest in a Thamesdown Drive extension”.
However, despite receiving positive feedback from the Department for Transport regarding the strength of the case for the scheme, the bid for funding proved unsuccessful, up against 55 similarly strong submissions for other schemes across the country. In total, the submitted bids sought more than three times the available funding, and only a dozen schemes were successful in this round of bidding.
Due to the feedback received from the Government, the Council will continue to explore options for the development and delivery of the scheme.
The Council will carry out a Transport Strategy Review during 2017, which will provide an opportunity to review the objectives of the relief road.
The review will also identify any alternative options that are available to meet these objectives as well as look at the options for improving the transport network in West Swindon to address current and future problems.
The views of the local community will be sought as part of the review, including those of the West Swindon Forum, and a wide range of transport issues will be explored including the need for new highways infrastructure.
The Thamesdown Drive to Barnfield relief road was put forward as a preferred solution as it would alleviate significant congestion during morning and evening peak periods along Akers Way and Mead Way and discourage drivers from rat-running through residential areas in order to by-pass the congested routes.
Future development at nearby Tadpole Farm and Ridgeway Farm is also likely to increase traffic levels in the area over the coming years.
The Swindon Transport Strategy forecasts that demand on the borough’s highway network will increase by 48 per cent by 2026 as a direct result of the 22,000 new homes that will be constructed in Swindon over the next 10 years.
Cllr Keith Williams, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for StreetSmart, Highways and Transport, said: “I am naturally disappointed our funding bid fell short as I felt we made a very strong case to the Government. The good news is that the Department for Transport gave us some encouraging feedback and we intend to build on that to look at alternative ways of providing this much needed relief road.
“As a West Swindon councillor and resident I am acutely aware of the current pressures on our local road network and I want to assure people living in the west and north of the town that we will do everything we can to alleviate congestion in the area.
“The Transport Strategy Review is an important part of that and we want to work with the local community over the coming year to identify some clear goals for keeping traffic moving on our roads.”
