FURTHER to Skip Walker’s piece in the Wilts and Glos Standard of December 12, 2013 (et sequitur), I pass on this slightly edited e-mail and Google Earth map, previously sent to Paul Hodgkinson early last year with reference to the A417 ‘Missing Link’.

The three miles of single-track A417 is nothing short of a national disgrace, and it is the only length of single-carriageway trunk road between Genoa and Glasgow, never mind between Dover and Carlisle.

I cannot for the life of me understand the apparently fixed mind-set of retaining almost the same route as at present but cobbling together a slightly wider road. If the gradient up Crickley Hill causes problems for heavy lorries now (and we all know it does) then it cannot be the correct solution, as the gradient of the widened road by definition must stay much the same and the complex junction and climbing 170 degree turn close to the Air Balloon will cause its own problems.

The highways agency and the county council must bite the bullet and sort out this problem once and for all by building a new piece of road to by-pass the Air Balloon section completely. I am well aware of the major problems (the fractured limestone escarpment) and the cost (expensive) but if the French can build a 2.5 kilometre viaduct 900 feet high over the Tarn valley at Millau (albeit with a British architect) surely we can build a road up a hill? If the new gradients were within EU recommendations, I suspect that an EU grant might be obtained for the project.

I have studied the section in great detail and I do not under-estimate the scale of the undertaking, but faffing about with wider lanes up Crickley Hill and a changed roundabout layout at the Air Balloon is not going to solve anything, not even short-term and particularly not with a 50 mph limit imposed. It also still leaves the maximum road elevation at over 900 ft (275 m) amsl with its attendant added winter difficulties of ice and hill fog.

Thus despite some added costs (surely not an extra £1 billion?) I urge the powers-that-be to consider an alternative westerly route from just a little south of the present roundabout at Cowley, following the existing valley running south of Birdlip, under the escarpment with a short tunnel, and then east of Great Witcome, rejoining the existing A417 dual-carriageway at roughly Bentham Lane. I have drawn my proposed route on a Google Earth map which is attached to this e-mail, and it is around half-mile shorter than the Brown Route currently proposed (Editor's note - not the map shown).

I am not generally in favour of tunnels, as a major accident could close one for months (ref many Continental tunnel fires), however a short section of dual tunnel (ie separate tunnels for up and down traffic) would be necessary under the top of the escarpment, but only for about three-quarter mile.

The advantages are many-fold, not the least of which is that further disruption to the traffic flow is avoided until the very last few weeks when the new road is joined up with the existing sections at either end, in exactly the same fashion as was done for the Blunsdon by-pass section of the A419. In addition, the maximum elevation is reduced to 800 ft amsl, which reduces the amount of new carriageway required and the maximum gradient. The major disadvantage would appear to be cost, but I would like to see comparative figures produced before the tunnel option is rejected out of hand. If we are planning to do this thing at all, then for Heaven’s sake let’s get it right first time.

None of it is going to be pretty whichever route is chosen, and the objections would be many and vociferous as they always are, however, I reiterate that doing nothing is not an option. It would leave all the villages untouched and the Air Balloon pub and the houses opposite it would at last get some peace.

I further believe that with a careful choice of the exact route, my proposal need not result in the destruction of any dwellings. However I accept that the route would pass through a small section of the Beechwoods SSSI.

ROBIN F. MORTON

Pancake Hill

Chedworth