Major new plans have been unveiled this week to redesign the motorway roundabout next to Burnham-On-Sea’s M5 junction in a bid to make it safer and reduce congestion.
Somerset County Council displayed the proposals to town councillors for the first time during a virtual meeting of the Town Council’s planning applications committee on Wednesday evening (April 21st).
The improvements are part of the county council’s A38 Major Road Network Scheme, which aims to deliver safety improvements along the busy route.
Burnham’s M5 roundabout at Edithmead will get more lanes, a new ‘through-a-bout’ cutting across the middle of the current roundabout, as shown on the plans below. It aims to improve traffic flows at peak times.
The County Council’s Andrew Wiles explained: “Our proposal is to increase the capacity on the approaches to the roundabout by adding extra lanes and adding a ‘through-a-bout’, which is an additional lane that cuts through the centre of the roundabout to allow traffic coming off the M5 and travelling north up the A38 to move through more freely.”
Cllr Andy Brewer said “safety has become a particular concern at peak times” and he added: “We are concerned about traffic coming out of Burnham along Queen’s Drive – there is often significant congestion as traffic heads towards the M5 or A38.”
The County Council’s Mike O’Dowd responded: “We are looking at widening of all the ‘arms’ onto the junction and also including traffic signals which change according to capacity in order to move traffic around. We’ve introduced a similar new design in Yeovil with a ‘through-a-bout’ and it works very well.”
But Cllr Sue Harvey added: “The main problem there is the traffic back-up from Burnham and Highbridge approaching the roundabout from Queen’s Drive. It’s awful in the mornings. There needs to be an extra lane into the junction – there’s a wide grass verge there to allow a new feeder lane. The ‘through-a-bout’ sounds welcome but the extra lane from Burnham is needed.”
Mr O’Dowd replied: “We will look at that. The way this works is that traffic is flowing more freely around the junction and that means the delays approaching the junction are a lot less. So we may find we don’t need to provide extra lanes. We will certainly make sure the junction works well for all directions and if it does need extra lanes we will certainly look at those.”
Cllr Brewer added that providing ‘safe cycle routes’ around the junction needs to be considered.
Public consultation on the scheme is set to begin shortly, with building work expected to start “in the middle of 2023.”
The scheme is being funded by an initial DfT Grant of £257,000 with further contributions from North Somerset Council and Somerset County Council.
