A417 missing link scheme near Gloucester 'making good progress'

The plans include a 37m (121ft 3in) wide crossing for walkers using the Gloucestershire Way

A £460m road scheme to improve a traffic bottleneck and accident blackspot on the A417 is making "good progress", National Highways have said.

A three-mile (4.8km) dual carriageway will be created on the A417 between Gloucester and Cirencester.

The scheme will bypass the Air Balloon roundabout to help reduce delays.

Construction between the roundabout and the Cowley junction is due to begin at the end of this month.

The stretch of the A417 near Gloucester carries about 40,000 cars a day and congestion is frequent.

The route links the M5 and M4 motorways and the section being worked on is known as the missing link as either side of the single carriageway section, the road is dual carriageway.

The National Highways Project Director for the A417, Steve Foxley, said it was a "massive project".

"We will have to cut 1.3 million tonnes of rock, with 800,000 tonnes being used to fill in the valley and the other 500,000 tonnes on to Crickley Hill to build the new road on," he said.

'Disruption kept to minimum'

"Lots of big pieces of plant are being moved around, so as people are driving down the existing road they'll be able to look across and see some quite big toys [machinery] moving up and down over the next two years.

"Disruption to motorists is being kept to a minimum," he added.

It is hoped the new road between Gloucester, Cirencester and Swindon will reduce traffic congestion at the single-carriageway bottleneck stretch past Birdlip.

As well as the dual carriageway, a number of "green bridges" will also be built to boost wildlife in the area. The new road is expected to be completed and open by 2027.

The project is also featuring on the BBC Two series Digging for Britain, after an archaeological dig around the A417 scheme revealed a number of Roman artefacts.

A "very rare" cupid figurine has been found

Finds included a "very rare" cupid figurine and a ring used as a keyring to open a small lock box.

Archaeologists from Oxford Cotswold Archaeology have now completed the excavation of the site which too place over a two-month period.

The best finds from the archaeological dig will be displayed at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester.

Jim Keyte, National Highways' Archaeology Project Manager for the A417, said: "It's a great pleasure to be able to share our findings with the viewers of Digging for Britain.

"As a landscape-led project within the Cotswolds National Landscape, being able to explore the traces left by our ancestors provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the story of the Cotswolds and leave a lasting legacy of knowledge for the local community."