National Highways has stressed the safety benefits of a £330m upgrade to the A30 as it prepares to erase a roundabout it describes as ‘Cornwall’s worst accident hot-spot'.
Work will begin next month to realign traffic at the Chiverton Cross roundabout, which will eventually be remodelled to allow an elevated A30 to flow freely across the junction as part of A30 Chiverton to Carland Cross upgrade.
The work will take place under a weekend closure from Friday 16 June to 6am Monday 19 June 2023 between Scorrier and Boxheater, requiring significant diversions for eastbound and westbound traffic.
It will see the A30 realigned to the east and west of the current roundabout, and with a contraflow in place, which will maintain access to the A390, A3075 and B3277 while further work continues during the year.
The current Chiverton Cross roundabout with works underway
Neil Winter, National Highways’ senior project manager for the scheme, said: ‘We’re not only removing the Chiverton roundabout but also Cornwall’s worst accident hot-spot.
‘Safety is our number one priority; the collision data highlighted the issue at the roundabout before we started the scheme and the latest police data shows Chiverton has the highest number of collisions, 14 between the start of 2019 and end of 2021.’
Of these, 13 collisions resulted in ‘slight’ injuries, with one ‘severe’.
A visualisation of how the remodelled Chiverton junction will look
Mr Winter added: ‘The scheme is progressing this year; the reconfiguration of the A30 at Chiverton represents a real milestone for the project, and with the Chiverton roundabout effectively disappearing, drivers using the A30 will see this taking shape after the weekend and will see a real difference once the scheme’s completed.’
National Highways said the new carriageway is scheduled to be opened in winter 2023/2024. It had previously said it would be open to traffic by the end of this year, although completion by the end of the financial year would still be in line with the company’s 2020-25 Delivery Plan.
When National Highways applied for a development consent order (DCO) for the scheme in 2018, it said construction was anticipated to start on site in 2020 with the new road open to traffic from the end of 2022.
A DCO was granted in February 2020 and the following month National Highways awarded Costain a contract for the work and began preliminary works.
