£38m planned for West Berkshire's roads

West Berkshire’s roads are in for a £38.2m investment over the next five years.

The council is planning to spend the cash on a range of infrastructure projects and the roads budget strategy goes before the district council's executive committee for approval this Thursday (February 10) before debate at full council in March.

Network capacity improvements at the Robin Hood roundabout in Newbury will get £1.5m, and the Kings Road link road another £1m.

Cash levied from developers – known as Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) – will pay for improvements and a signals upgrade at the A4/Faraday Road junction, costing £320,000.

Burger King junction improvements are also scheduled to cost £440,000 and a further £500,000 is to be spent on intelligent traffic signs.

And a five-year modernisation of the council's traffic signals will cost £750,000.

Villages hoping for speed restrictions have been allocated £30,000 a year for five years to assess and implement speed limits resulting from the speed limit review process.

And £75,000 a year goes to road safety improvements as a result of accident investigations.

There are expected to be a lot more street lights – £100,000 a year’s worth.

But the big spend goes on developing and implementing active travel solutions, such as cycle paths, costing £3.5m over five years – with £69,000 allocated to improving pedestrian routes and £83,000 to improve existing cycle routes.

The council also wants to spend £1.5m to plan and deliver infrastructure for zero emission vehicles hoping to allocate 20 per cent of their parking spaces, including on-street, to be converted to electric vehicle charge points by 2025.

Footpath improvements on the main A338 and A4 approaches to Hungerford get £200,000 and repair and reconstruction of footpaths at Aldermaston gets £244,000.