A30 road
Encyclopedia : A : A3 : A30 : A30 road
The A30 is an old trunk road (main road) which runs from central London right down to Land's End, the westernmost point of the mainland of England (though not of mainland Great Britain, see Corrachadh Mor), and is sometimes called the Great South West Road. At 284 miles (457 km) long it is the third longest 'A' road in the United Kingdom, behind the A1 and A38. The A30 makes up part of the main freight and tourism route to South West England, and in many parts it has been dualled and also now bypasses many of the old towns through which it originally ran.
The A30 runs through many towns and villages, including Basingstoke, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Yeovil, Honiton and Exeter. Between west London and Basingstoke the A30 has been deprecated by the M3 motorway, and the road is no longer trunked here. Between Basingstoke and Honiton the A303 runs parallel to the A30 between five and ten miles to the north, and since 1946 the A303 has been the trunk road and taken the bulk of traffic. The A303 is being upgraded to make it continuous dual carriageway East of Ilminster. West of Ilminster the A358 will be upgraded to the M5 motorway at Taunton. Between Basingstoke and Honiton the A30 remains, for most of the route, a single carriageway carrying only local traffic.
A major new portion (from the 1980s onwards) bypasses Okehampton and skirts the northern edge of Dartmoor in Devon, thence into Cornwall via the gateway town of Launceston and then on into Cornwall via Bodmin Moor.
Opened in August 1999 is a new dual carriageway link between Honiton and Exeter in East Devon, giving ready access to Exeter Airport. There were many protests by environmentalists against the damage caused by the building of this road, with a long-lasting occupation of sites on the planned route, focused around the village of Fairmile.
In Cornwall it currently crosses Goss Moor along a single carriageway section of the road. This has been a major bottleneck in the county's transport system and has been subject to a long running campaign for expansion. As Goss moor is a National nature reserve [link] it is one of the most highly protected wildlife sites in the UK, and plans for expansions have been strongly opposed [link]. In late 2004 a decision was finally reached and a new dual carriageway will now run around the moor with the existing road converted to a cycle lane [link]. It is expected that the new road will take two years to complete. The remains of a stoneage settlement has been discovered along the new route [link].
Two other improvements: Temple to Higher Carblake and Carland Cross to Chiverton Cross were planned and would have created a continuous dual carriageway from Exeter to Camborne but were shelved in 2006 as they were not cosidered a regional priority [link].
John Betjeman immortalised the road in his poem [Meditation on the A30].
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