21 miles of the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon are being upgraded to three lanes in each direction including a brand new 17-mile bypass south of Huntingdon, with four lanes in each direction between Bar Hill and Girton. The project will add additional capacity, boost the local and national economy and cut up to 20 minutes off journeys.
The 2,200 strong construction team is keeping to the project’s challenging timetable, with the improvements on track to open to traffic by the end of 2020.
More than a quarter of the project’s main construction work has been successfully completed: a total of 3 million hours have been worked, and 2.5 million cubic metres of soil (equivalent to 1,000 Olympic swimming pools) have been moved into position to create foundations for the road and junctions.
34 bridges and structures are being built as part of the scheme including the new 750-metre long River Great Ouse viaduct. One is already open to traffic, and on the others nearly 750 major components have been built.
David Bray, A14 project director at Highways England, says:
“This is a huge amount of progress, and we are well on the way to transforming journeys on this vital link between East Anglia and the Midlands, connecting businesses, communities and families.
“The improvements we are delivering between Cambridge and Huntingdon are vital for the local area and for the country’s economy. We set out to deliver world leading infrastructure improvements a year ago and this is exactly what we have been doing so far.
“We’ve been using innovative ways of working to speed up construction such as making our own concrete building parts on-site and using temporary bridges to move construction materials across site without having to use the main roads.
“And we’ve done all this while looking after the environment alongside the project – we plan to have a positive impact by the time we finish – and giving local people opportunities to find out more, get involved or get funding for relevant projects.”
The project’s ecology team has already created three of the 18 wildlife habitats which will be built as part of the scheme, covering a total of 271 hectares of new habitat by the time the scheme is completed.
The A14 Community Fund has allocated more than £110,000 to 16 local projects over the past year. Examples include a project to help people who have been out of work for a while to gain skills to get them closer to employment by growing plant plugs and looking after the natural environment locally. Another project seeks to encourage people to create poems and other pieces of creative writing about the A14 as a road within the local community. More than 2,000 people are estimated to benefit from the community fund projects so far.
