National Highways has announced that Cornwall’s notorious accident blackspot, The Chiverton Cross roundabout, will become a thing of the past next month.

As part of National Highways’ A30 Chiverton to Carland Cross upgrade, work will take place to realign traffic on a gyratory under new structures across the existing roundabout, ahead of work to align and elevate the new A30 dual carriageway across the junction.

The work, which will take place under a weekend closure between Scorrier and Boxheater, will see the A30 realigned to the east and west of the current roundabout, and with a contraflow in place, which will maintain access to the A390, A3075 and B3277 while further work continues during the year.

Traffic flows on the A30 are forecast to rise by up to 29% to 2038, and National Highways says the removal of the current roundabout will ultimately help to meet two of its objectives for the scheme, to remove congestion and improve safety along the route.

Neil Winter, National Highways’ Senior Project Manager for the scheme, said: “We’re not only removing the Chiverton roundabout but also Cornwall’s worst accident hot-spot.

“Safety is our number one priority, the collision data highlighted the issue at the roundabout before we started the scheme and the latest police data shows Chiverton has the highest number of collisions, 14 between the start of 2019 and end of 2021.

The scheme is progressing this year, the reconfiguration of the A30 at Chiverton represents a real milestone for the project, and with the Chiverton roundabout effectively disappearing, drivers using the A30 will see this taking shape after the weekend and will see a real difference once the scheme’s completed.”

The weekend closure will also see a two-mile section of the A390 closed from the Chiverton roundabout to Langarth Park to allow for works to construct the new westbound slip road configuration at Three Burrows.

(Picture – National Highways)