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Bypass plans still on track for autumn
18/ 6/2008
THE Highways Agency has repeated its promise that revised evidence for the Longdendale Bypass will be ready by October.
The pledge was in response to a question from inspector John Watson, who is in charge of the public inquiry into the bypass.
In March 2008 the Highways Agency told inspector John Watson they would have an update in May.
Hearing nothing, he asked them on 4 June to confirm whether the agency intended to submit revised evidence to the inquiry and if so when. They replied a week later that they are on schedule to submit it by October.
The inquiry was dramatically halted in autumn last year when it emerged the Highways Agency had miscalculated how much traffic would use the A616 trunk road.
It was expected to reconvene this summer, but the agency now admit it will take much longer.
A spokesman for the Highways Agency said: "It’s such a huge undertaking we’re having to redo all the traffic modelling and the software that goes with that. That has knock-on effects for other figures that have been supplied and the environmental effects and so on."
The hearing started in June last year and was scheduled to last 10 weeks but the agency is currently making its fifth attempt to draw up the right plans for the bypass.
The proposed 3 and a half mile route would take traffic from the congested roads of Mottram, Hollingworth and Tintwistle, and link Tameside with the A628 Woodhead Pass to Yorkshire.
Residents of the towns have been campaigning for a bypass since the 1970s as lorries have switched from the M62 across the Pennines to Sheffield and the south. But anti-bypass campaigners such as the Save Swallows Wood campaign say it will destroy wildlife and valuable habitats.
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7/07/2008 at 01:26