Despite some challenges, the £5.5 million project is set to finish on time next month.
Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for highways, said: “Since starting last September, our site team has been working tirelessly on fully excavating this six-mile stretch of Lincolnshire’s coastal carriageway between Sandilands and Chapel St Leonards.
“This includes digging out the old road and laying roughly 20,000 tonnes of new road-building materials to bring it back up to height, but more level and with much better grip than before.
“Carrying this work out hasn’t been an easy task. Despite several pre-works ground surveys, the team found they needed to increase the level of the new road in places because the condition of the bottom layers were so soft. This meant re-engineering these sections to increase the road’s depth and strength while also re-adjusting verge heights for safety.
“Despite this unexpected challenge, the team’s carried on at full steam with a view to being fully wrapped up on-site by the middle of March.
“Over the next few weeks, the focus will be on laying the final sections of road surfacing in Chapel St. Leonards before focussing all effort on rebuilding verges; installing new signs and new ironworks; and painting new lines on the carriageway.”
When complete in March, the Old Roman Bank Coastal Carriageway project will have seen:
- spent over 18,000 hours working on the project
- rebuilt 6 miles of the old road
- used over 25,000 tonnes of road-building materials
- built a total of 29 new passing bays
- laid over 80,000m2 of reinforcement grid (roughly the size of Buckingham Palace)
- laid 200m of new drainage
- installed 6 new gullies
Cllr Colin Davie, executive member for environment, economy and planning, and county councillor for Ingoldmells Rural, said: “This £5.5 million project is a great investment by the county council in improving this road, not just for residents, but for businesses and visitors alike.
“This road is key to our development of the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Lincolnshire Coastal Country Park, with National Trust investing at the other end at Sandilands. We expect this to be a huge tourist attraction in the years ahead so making this investment now, thanks to capital funding allocated to us last year as part of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority devolution deal, is the right thing to do.”
Update on Broadway and York Road improvements in Sutton on Sea
Cllr Davies added: “These Old Roman Bank improvements are part of a wider set of works to enhance sections of Lincolnshire’s coastal road network. We completed a full resurface of the A1104 between Mablethorpe and Malty-Le-Marsh, and we are now in the middle of working on a full rebuild of Broadway and York Road in Sutton on Sea. This nine decades-old concrete slab surfacing is starting to fail, creating a massive headache for residents thanks to the rattling vibrations from passing traffic.”
Cllr Colin Matthews, county councillor for Alford and Sutton, said: “These works are really coming along, and the first section that’s been finished, between Station Road and Marisco Road, looks spectacular.
“I’m impressed with how fast the team is working to get this job done so that the residents here can finally have some peace. In fact, from what I’ve been told, the new, all-tarmac surfacing is already making a difference to residents where it’s been laid.
“The Broadway has served us well over many years but of late had become unfit for service. The funding for this project has come from the devolution grant, and it means that after seven years of striving to get this road resurfaced for the benefit of residents, we can all celebrate its opening this spring. Especially in the context of the new colonnade and the improvement works to the Broadway car park, the whole area will be transformed.”
As part of the project, the site team is also widening the footway on Broadway to allow more space for pedestrians and installing a brand-new drainage system on both roads while on-site.
Cllr Davies ended: “Even though the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority isn't established yet, we're already seeing benefits to having a devolution deal, as these Coastal Carriageway improvement projects are being paid for by a portion of the capital funding allocated to the county council last year.”
For more information about these Coastal Carriageway improvements, visit www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/coastalcarriageway.
