There is still no opening date for the £40 million motorway junction in South Gloucestershire that has been unused since 2019, a government minister has said.
The junction above the M49 motorway near Bristol already faces extensive repairs despite never being used, due to defects found little more than a year after it was finished.
In a House of Commons debate Claire Young, MP for Thornbury and Yate asked roads minister Justin Madders if he was as “baffled” as she was by the situation.
“Just off the M49 in Severnside is a junction that has never carried a single vehicle. It was built six years ago and cost the taxpayer £40 million,” she explained, “but in those six years not a car, van or lorry has used it. The national press has dubbed it the ‘ghost junction’. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this matter before the House today, because the future of the M49 Severnside junction is one of real consequence for my constituents in Thornbury and Yate.
“I am here because I want the junction to be fixed and so do my constituents. I hope the Minister listens and acts: doing something about this kind of issue is exactly how he can show people he is here to serve them and not himself. We are all quite fed up with ineptitude.”
Madders said the government had already provided around £10 million of support for the junction’s development and said it was not possible to provide a “definitive timeline” for its opening.
In June National Highways, which finished most of the construction work seven years ago at a cost of £50 million, revealed ‘defects’ had been discovered at the two-bridge roundabout near Bristol linking Severnside and Avonmouth, along with a huge retail distribution park, causing even more delays.
The completion of the junction has been delayed for years because of a hotchpotch of ownership of adjacent land, verges, wasteland, drains and access rights, with some plots as tiny as two square metres.
That obstacle appeared to have been overcome in February 2023 when the council announced plans for compulsory purchases so the 160-metre link road could be built, but it took another two-and-a-half years for work on the ground to begin.
The council said last week that it remained on track to deliver the link road by the end of 2026 but that it was up to National Highways when it would be connected to the motorway junction.
(Picture: National Highways)
