Shinfield Eastern Relief Road

The Shinfield Eastern Relief Road is a single carriageway, 7.3m wide, road running eastwards in an arc from a new bridge over the M4. It passes to the north of a small reservoir and joins to a new roundabout allowing access to the planned Reading University Science and Innovation Park (SIP). From the SIP roundabout the relief road continues southwards crossing Cutbush Lane, to a new roundabout junction with the A327 Arborfield Road, east of Parrot Farm.

The new bridge over the M4 has a span of approximately 45m and a width of approximately 33m, carrying six lanes of traffic. The bridge links the Black Boy junction to the north of the M4 with a new three arm signal-controlled junction to the south. The existing A327 Black Boy Bridge will be closed to southbound vehicles to allow its use by pedestrians, cyclists and northbound buses only.

The northern section of the relief road is constructed on a slight embankment lifting the road by approximately 1m above the existing ground level to link to the M4 bridge. To the south of the SIP roundabout the road is at grade with the existing ground level and then drops slightly below this as it approaches Cutbush Lane. Approximately 600m of the southern section of the road, which falls within the River Loddon floodplain, has been raised around 2.2m above existing ground levels. The roundabout with the A327 Arborfield Road has also been raised by between 0.5m and 1m above previously existing levels and the area to the east and west of the new roundabout re-profiled to suit.

The majority of trees and hedges within the site were retained with substantial planting added along the entire route, with around 5000 new trees, plants and shrubs being provided. Badger proof fencing is also provided along both sides of the relief road with a series of badger tunnels located at strategic points beneath the road. Within the southern section of the road a bat ‘fly-over’ encourages bats to cross the road at a high level thus avoiding collisions with vehicles.

Drainage for the scheme is generally in the form of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) and has been incorporated in the form of swales positioned to either side of the road carriageway. This enables surface water to infiltrate into the ground and allows the transporting of water to the surrounding drainage infrastructure in the case of heavy rainfall.

The majority of the existing outbuildings at Lane End Farmhouse were demolished to construct the new Lane End junction, with minor modifications made to a Grade II listed building and boundary wall that enabled them to remain in-situ.