IT'S BEEN nearly a whole year now and, for the 50,000 frustrated motorists who use Castle Lane East every weekday, it HAS seemed many, many days too long.

But, at last, the £3.5 million improvements to Bournemouth's busiest road - removing the roundabout, replacing it with traffic lights and extra lanes, adding sliproads in and out of the Littledown Centre, and a separate entrance for the hospital have been completed and, it seems, they've worked!

According to Royal Bournemouth Hospital employees, who were taking more than an hour in some cases to even get out of their car park onto the notorious route, traffic is flowing freely for the first time in recent decades.

The Royal Bournemouth Hospital's Jigsaw scanner appeal coordinator, Diana Newbury, said: "Before the new Castle Lane traffic lights were in operation, it would regularly take me 45 minutes to an hour, just to leave the hospital site after work.

"Coupled with a journey of 11 miles, that could mean my travelling time home could take one and a half hours. Now I drive out of the hospital without any delays - it's great."

Bournemouth Borough took the decision to improve the road after traffic surveys showed it up as the area's worst bottleneck. Within a space of less than a mile, there is one of Britain's busiest leisure centres, the Tesco superstore, the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Bournemouth's biggest private sector employer, J P Morgan.

It all adds up to a staggering quarter of a million plus car journeys a week, or 69 cars per minute during the rush hour on the average working day.

Borough spokesman, Georgia Smith, told the Daily Echo last year that the scheme was; "Short term pain, for long term gain."

Does the council stand by that?

"I think we do. It has been very difficult for the people who use that stretch of road but we hope now that they'll be able to feel the benefit," she said.

She said there would still be a few lane closures, to finish off work at the side of the road, but the scheme itself was opening six weeks ahead of schedule and already, the council has received positive feedback.

Comments received by the Daily Echo about the confusing nature of the new lane system on the route were, she said, "usual" when familiar routes are changed.

"This often happens with new systems and we know that after a while, motorists will start to know which lanes they need to be in for their destination."

However, motorists would be advised to make the most of their jam-free road - in just over a week's time, it will probably become an overspill for all the drivers desperate to avoid Dorset County Council's work at the Blackwater Junction!

First published: August 28