The £50million M49 junction-to-nowhere is still two years away from opening – a whole five years after it was built, according to metro mayor Dan Norris. Mr Norris says he is “absolutely furious” at the “colossal mistake” between officials at South Gloucestershire Council and National Highways – formerly Highways England – that has left the dead-end motorway roundabout near Avonmouth, completed in 2019, unconnected to the local road network.
But despite the Labour regional mayor providing a timescale for the saga to be finally resolved, the council says it cannot confirm a programme of work because it is “technically complex” and the “best engineering solutions” still need to be decided. It says that to build the link road, it “needs to obtain privately owned land” and that it is working on this while designing the highway.
Mr Norris, however, also revealed that £1million allocated last February by the West of England Combined Authority (Weca), which he now heads, to try to resolve a land dispute that has left the link road unfinished was done so “incorrectly” by his predecessor, Conservative Tim Bowles. Speaking to BBC Radio Bristol’s John Darvall on Monday, May 16, the West of England mayor said: “It was the previous mayor who said he would make £1million available but it wasn’t in his powers, to be honest, so that was incorrect.
