Stonehenge road tunnel

The Stonehenge road tunnel is a planned tunnel in Wiltshire, England drawn up by Highways England to upgrade the A303 road. It would move the A303 into a tunnel under the Stonehenge World Heritage Site completing the removal of traffic begun with the closure of the A344 road.. The wider project was designed to improve the landscape around the monument and to improve safety on the primary A303, and was part of proposals to change the site in other ways including moving the visitors centre.

The A303 is one of the main routes from London to the South West of England. Sections have been upgraded to dual carriageway status, though one third of the road remains single carriageway. Traffic flows on the A303 between Amesbury and Winterbourne Stoke (the section including Stonehenge) are above the capacity of the road and the Highways Agency expressed concern about safety on this road and the A344. The two roads currently pass through Stonehenge and land owned by the National Trust with the A303 passing directly south and the A344 directly to the north with a pedestrian tunnel passing from the Stonehenge visitor centre to the site underneath this road. As part of the development of the proposals, over 50 routes were considered by the Highways Agency.

Since 1991 51 proposals have been considered for improving the A303 in the area and to remove it from the Stonehenge site.

In 1995 it was proposed to build a tunnel for the A303 underneath the World Heritage Site. A conference agreed on a 2.5-mile (4 km) bored tunnel, however the government instead proposed a cut and cover tunnel, with plans being published in 1999. These plans were criticised by the National Trust, Transport 2000 and others who expressed concern that it would cause damage to archaeological remains along the route, destroy ancient sites and not achieve an improvement in the landscape.

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