Repair options being considered for buckled and cracked Wiltshire road

An emergency highway closure was place in place on the B4069 Lyneham Banks in Wiltshire in February 2022 right after a landslide brought about the surface of the freeway to buckle and crack. Some sections were despatched additional than 25m down the hillside.

The council has explained that floor investigations have been accomplished at the internet site. The info from these is now being utilised to carry out style and design function that will support the council understand its choices for restoring the troubled street.

It formerly claimed that the B4069 at Lyneham Banking companies would be reopened in the autumn of 2023, but it has given that revised its programme timescales, with development now envisioned to commence in spring of 2024. Layout perform is envisioned to run from spring to winter season 2023/24.

Wiltshire Council appointed Atkins to carry out a geotechnical report on the road next the landslide.

It is hoped that facts from these floor investigations will offer a increased perception into how and why the substructure unsuccessful.

Speaking to GE in February of very last year, geotechnical professional Clive Edmonds mentioned that ground motion brought on by increased pore drinking water strain build-up is likely to have brought on the cracks.

He described that the B4069’s area coincides geologically with an spot exactly where the Jurassic age Stanford Formation, comprising limestone, appears to overlie the Hazelbury Bryan Formation’s sandstone. Equally of these strata are then underlain by the Oxford Clay Formation.

Wiltshire Council cabinet member for transport Caroline Thomas explained the hurt to the highway and the ongoing closure as a “huge problem”.

She also famous that the rebuilding of the street “is a important undertaking of considerable scale, and it is presenting several engineering challenges”.

“In particular, due to the fact the floor has continued to move, it has been hard to get each people today and equipment to perform on the web page securely, which is of paramount great importance,” she reported.

“We recognize how complicated the closure of the B4069 Lyneham Banking institutions has been for the community neighborhood, and we have been working tough to the two mitigate the targeted traffic challenges that the closure has caused and have an understanding of what is required to mend the highway as rapidly as probable.”

Last calendar year it was estimated that, thanks to the scale of the destruction at the web-site, the price tag of repairs to the road could operate more than £1M.

Wiltshire Council is inviting persons to uncover out extra about the development of the big task to mend the B4069 Lyneham Banks at a public webinar on Monday 24 April from 6pm-7pm.