A £7 million flood resilience scheme for the A66 road in Cumbria, which was undertaken by Highways England due to the fact that it was affected by the storms of November 2009 and 2015, has just been completed.
The work undertaken on the A66 by the highways agency included a series of major engineering improvements such as raising carriageways near to as well as alongside the lake and creating new drainage culverts under the road in order to improve severe weather resilience.
According to Highways England project manager Peter Gee, “This is a significant investment in the county’s road network and will provide even greater resilience during severe weather incidents – keeping local people and the economy on the move. Working to deliver these improvements at five different sites has been a major engineering and project planning challenge – not least in raising the height of the carriageway by almost 1.5 metres in places.”
The project included improving five different sections of the route, which is a mixture of single carriageway and dual carriageway sections, and included:
- £1.1 million stabilisation work along the rock face along the westbound carriageway to prevent severe weather land slippage
- £1.5 million spent on raising the eastbound and westbound carriageways by 70 centimetres at Embleton where it runs alongside Dubwath Beck.
- £2 million and £1.7 million projects to raise the carriageway alongside the lake’s 2 Osprey-watching sites alongside the lake near Thornthwaite
- £600,000 realigning and raising the westbound carriageway alongside the lake near Smithy Cottage
A total length of 1.6 km of the carriageway was raised and 3.2 km of the road was resurfaced, requiring 31,000 tonnes of surfacing material. Other improvements included 1 km of new kerbs and drainage; 250 metres of gabion wall; 6 new flood relief culverts and 800 metres of filter drain; 1600 large soil nails to improve embankment stability, and 2,550 square metres of rock netting.
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