Tunnel marks 15 years of ending traffic queues

A tunnel in Surrey that ended a traffic bottleneck has marked 15 years since it opened.

The Hindhead Tunnel was built after decades of severe congestion on the A3, which links London and Portsmouth.

The dual carriageway previously narrowed to a single lane in the village of Hindhead, causing routine delays of up to half an hour.

The congested road also passed through the Devil's Punch Bowl, a natural heathland amphitheatre and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

Dominic Holyoak, an operator coach at the tunnel, told the BBC that before it was built there was "famously... an awful lot of queuing".

He added the tunnel had certainly helped local businesses because it freed the area up of traffic "so now people can get around Hindhead more easily and visit all the individual outlets there."

Holyoak continued that no longer having to drive around the Devil's Punch Bowl had "exponentially helped the wildlife".

The old part of the A3 that was no longer needed was also broken up and covered with topsoil, allowing nature to reclaim it.

Engineers working on the project said when it was opened in 2011 that this, along with the planting of more than 200,000 trees, had resulted in a net benefit for the environment.

Paul Hoyland, who was the project director for eight years, said at the time the tunnel was the result of a lot of hard work.

The 1.25-mile (1.8km) long tunnel, which is nearly the Hampshire border, cost £371m.

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