Roadworks are continuing at Dawsons Corner and on Stanningley Bypass. Community reporter NEIL CULLEN reviews the progress made so far…
Excavation on the former Calverley Charity land has reached ‘formation’ level – the point from which road structure can be built up. The skeleton outline of five of the new westbound lanes is visible, (seen on an abstract from the design drawings).
Meanwhile, as promised, drivers and passengers need extreme patience as they endure delays in all directions, being channelled into single-lane and contra-flow working. Not much can be seen from the road, but the photos from the site boundaries give an idea of progress.
Contractors are working day and night to achieve as much as possible during the school holidays.
Construction noise connoisseurs can sample a discordant symphony: rhythmic hydraulic concrete breakers, clattering excavator buckets, crashing of broken blocks and unwanted soil being dumped into trucks for disposal, and the regular siren wail of a road sweeper minimising dust from the road repair works on the Stanningley Bypass throughout the night.
Recently the triumphant whoosh of a 40-tonne loads of crushed stone for building up layers of the new road heralds the start of construction.
A visual cacophony of road signs shepherds traffic through the ever-changing route; there are few alternatives, so tailbacks exist throughout the day. Traffic flow is smooth but slow.
Remarkably large amounts of concrete have been extracted from the Charity site, presumably the bases of old Workhouse buildings.
In addition, many original concrete sections of the Bypass – over 50 years old – have been dug out for repairs. The full road is being scarified – scraped clear – prior to resurfacing. Hence the dust. Meanwhile, nearby residents’ cars have developed thin coatings of yellowish-brown soil dust.
Elsewhere on the project, traffic queues in single file on the ring road from Horsforth while the road is widened to four lanes at the junction.
A huge stockpile of soil lies on the land at the end of The Fairway, levelled off and sloped dexterously with the long arm of an excavator, to assist runoff. Lack of rain to date has blessed the work; wet clay would be a nightmare and the rush must be on to cover it with construction stone.
There will be a lot of stone, size graded in layers to suit the design. With 57,000 vehicles currently using the junction every day, a rough calculation shows that during the next 50 years about 780,187,500 (nearly a billion) 10-tonne HGV axles will pass through the junction, and these loads must be transmitted evenly down to the clay below.
Trial holes are excavated in the clay for ‘soil vane’ strength testing to aid design. Will it serve us for another 100 years?
Around October, there will be a major change to routing while the northern carriageways are realigned and the old roundabout removed so patience will still be needed from drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists.
Final landscaping is expected during the latter part of 2026.
