Having built the A354 Weymouth Town Centre Relief Road in the mid 1980s, and intending to extend it north as the Weymouth Relief Road, laurels couldn’t be rested on. Things turned south, as proposals were made to lay a similarly big road across the old Portland Railway through Rodwell — now instead the lovely, calm, green Rodwell rail trail walking and cycling path, thankfully!
Shaftesbury was one of the first Dorset towns to get a bypass. I didn’t even realise there ever was a plan to give it a second bypass until I stumbled upon this status record.
From 1984, a consultation on alternative options for a Corfe Castle Bypass. Five routes that would create catastrophic destruction to this chocolate box village (two of them blocking the subsequent extension of the heritage railway which is such an important part of the village’s tourism economy today) and/or drive massive scars through the chalk hills, leading to the obvious choice for local consultees: a prohibitively expensive tunnel. Which will be why a bypass on this dead-end road to Swanage always remained on the shelf.
Highways and byways in Dorset 