Planning application submitted for long-awaited Stoke Gifford By-Pass

Stoke Gifford Transport Link (Stoke Gifford By-Pass).

A planning application to build a new by-pass for Stoke Gifford has been submitted to South Gloucestershire Council.

The application comes less than two weeks after the council agreed to buy up land along the route in an effort to speed up its construction.

The officially-named Stoke Gifford Transport Link (SGTL) – known locally as ‘the by-pass’ – will be a new 1.6km single carriageway highway linking Great Stoke Way at the Parkway North Roundabout to the A4174 Avon Ring Road.

The new road will be used as part of the North Fringe to Hengrove Bus Rapid Transit network, which is a major new transport scheme.

The SGTL will provide congestion relief for general traffic users in the Stoke Gifford area, providing an alternative crossing over the Great Western railway line and by-passing existing congestion bottlenecks near Bristol Parkway Station and along Old Gloucester Road and Brierly Furlong.

The by-pass had been due to open over ten years ago in order to deal with the huge congestion in the North Fringe of Bristol created by large-scale new development, including the new town of Bradley Stoke, but was shelved by a previous council administration.

Stoke Gifford Conservative councillors Keith Cranney and Justin Howells said:

“Many local people will remember that this link road was planned as part of the development that saw thousands of new homes built at Bradley Stoke and other nearby locations in order to ensure that there was new infrastructure put in place to cope with all these extra commuters.”

“But – in a moment of madness – the link road was cancelled by the Lib Dems, thus ensuring that this huge volume of extra traffic has had to negotiate the tiny and dangerous route under Parkway railway bridge.”

“This has brought misery not just to Stoke Gifford residents but everyone who has to sit in the jams and it has put at risk the large number of pedestrians, particularly Abbeywood Community School students, who walk under the bridge to get to school.”

“All these years later, it will come as a relief to local residents to see that this transport link is making progress because another route across the railway at this location is the only way to ensure that a rapid transit really is rapid.”

A decision on the planning application is expected in August and construction of the rapid transit scheme is planned to start in Spring 2015.

Source: Press release from the Conservative Group on South Gloucestershire Council

Image: Indicative plan of the Stoke Gifford By-Pass, published during a public consultation on the North Fringe to Hengrove Package bus rapid transit scheme in 2012.

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2 comments

  1. Good news for us commuters who battle with congestion along Hatchet Road and negotiate the gridlocked B4057 Gypsy Patch roundabout.

    Although I don’t quite understand why they haven’t proposed a single carriageway with 4 lanes in order to aid flow along from dual-carriageway sections of Great Stoke Way and Filton Road (vice-versa).

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