The Felpham relief road will be 3km in length and will feature a spectacular 0.5km long viaduct that rises 8m above the Lidsey Rife, the Barnham to Bognor Regis Rail Line, and the Bognor Regis Flood Plain.
This project is expected to cost in the region of £26m. The Felpham relief road is one of the two roads which make up the Bognor Regis Northern Relief Road project – the other being the North Bersted Relief Road.
Once completed the Felpham Relief Road will give access to 700 new homes at Blake’s Mead, built by developer Barratt Homes and help to ease Bognor Regis’s traffic congestion.
County Council Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, Pieter Montyn, said: “This ambitious engineering project to construct the viaduct has been many years in the making. Our officers have been working closely with developers and Police to manage the way these beams are transported – both locally and across the county – with as little disruption as possible. This is an exciting step towards ridding Bognor Regis of its problems with traffic congestion and we ask the public to bear with us in the weeks ahead.”
Progress of the Work
Barratt Homes, which is building this part of the project has 50 plus people working on this project and has confirmed work is progressing well and on schedule for completion by the end of February 2015 weather permitting.
Barratt says “The next step will be to continue the sequence of erecting all remaining bridge beams and spans to the East of the viaduct while also starting work on the construction of the viaduct deck. Construction is also ongoing to complete all columns and to finish the remaining supports ready for erection of the beams that will form the Western end of the viaduct. So far there have been no adverse issues, only some windy weather which stopped construction on a few days as this meant the cranes could not be used to lift the beams”
