More than 450 miles of major roadworks will be lifted over the four-day Easter break to make travelling easier for drivers.
Highways England aims to complete or suspend 208 sets of roadworks on Thursday March 24 to reduce delays over the bank holiday break, leaving more than 97 percent of its 9,534-mile network free of roadworks.
That includes major roadworks on the M25 where 15 sets will be lifted, while 11 schemes will be removed from the M6, freeing up 59 miles in total.
Thirty miles of roadworks at M2 junction 5 (near Sittingbourne in Kent) will be gone over the weekend, plus a further 18 miles across five sectors of the M20. A total of 13 miles of cones will be removed from seven projects on the M40 and 11 miles will be freed across eight schemes on the M62.
Roads minister Andrew Jones said: “We want to deliver fast and reliable journey times for drivers over the bank holiday weekend so I am pleased hundreds of miles of cones are being lifted. This is good news for millions of families and hardworking people who will be travelling and taking advantage of the four-day break.”
Highways England will complete 257 miles of roadworks at 133 locations before the Easter holiday. A further 75 sets of roadworks and lane restrictions will be suspended across 219 miles of carriageway by 6am on Thursday March 24, until just after midnight on Tuesday March 29.
According to the agency, for safety reasons lane restrictions or temporary speed limits will need to remain at major schemes with large excavation areas or major structural projects that require on-going traffic management.
Although frustrating when sat in traffic, the current roadworks form part of a £15 billion investment which will see more than three quarters of England’s motorways and major A-roads resurfaced and more than 1,300 miles of new road built by 2020.
