I love the little brochures they put together for these things…
Tag Archives: bypasses
Letter to the editor: County Structure Plan, 1993
Rodwell Relief Road, 1991
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!
Weymouth Relief Road: Non-technical Summary, 1994
The zombie Weymouth Relief Road at least provides a nice illustration of how council comms developed over the decades, from the spartan monochrome typo-filled typewriter texts of the 1970s and 80s, through the gaudy desktop published factsheets of the 1990s and more cleverly designed leaflets of the 2000s to today’s website.
Shaftesbury Outer Bypass, 1991
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.
Wareham Bypass Stage 2 and Norden Improvement, 1988
Improved road links for Weymouth & Portland: route options (1991)
From the many decades spent drawing and redrawing Weymouth relief roads. One of those killed off by the new realism, Weymouth’s hosting 2012 Olympic events meant that something like the Orange route eventually did get built (but scaled back to single carriageway and with slightly better attempts to make it an actual relief road rather than the typical 1980s pump more traffic in road).
Tunnel vision: a Corfe Castle Bypass, 1984
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.