Historian Martin Pritchard has been looking back at the history of the bypass…

September 2021 marks 10 years since the bypass of Porthmadog, Tremadog and Minffordd opened.

Work started on the £35m project in January 2010. The contract was awarded to Balfour Beatty and Jones Bros as a joint venture.

The highway is 5.3km long, has a 7.3m wide carriageway with 1m hard shoulders and 2.5m grass verges. It has three roundabouts and eight bridges, including a three-span viaduct over the River Glaslyn.

A temporary Bailey bridge was installed over the Glaslyn to enable the 900,000 tonnes of stone from Minffordd quarry to be used as fill material – said to have cost £600,000!

This avoided 106,000 lorry movements through the centre of Porthmadog.

All the 183,000m3 of excavated material was reused in the scheme; 8,500m3 of Japanese knotweed infested material was sealed in an onsite cell.

Habitats were improved or created for water vole, bats and reptiles with the 3,000m new stone walling being modified to contain reptile refugia in the rear elevation.

During the construction slow worms were captured and released, bat routes realigned and temporary artificial setts constructed for badgers.

The Cambrian railway Line (850m of it) had to be realigned by up to 25m onto a new embankment built alongside to make way for the new road.

Two bridges had to be built over the two narrow gauge line, and at Minffordd a new bridge was made to carry the Ffestiniog Railway over the new bypass.

One of the largest crawler cranes in Europe at that time, which weighed in at 630 tonnes, was brought in for the construction of the permanent river viaduct.

A lot of archaeological discoveries were made, especially around the Roman bath house area in Tremadog where a large amount of Roman roofing tiles were found. Survey work was done by the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust.

By September 2011 the project was completed seven weeks ahead of schedule.

On 25 September 2011, the public was invited to walk the new road. The Rotary Club of Porthmadog were responsible for supervising the event, and money was collected in buckets for charity during the day.

On Monday, 17 October 2011 the road was officially opened for traffic opened by Carl Sargeant, then minister for local government and communities.

Traffic flow has decreased in the town considerably in the 10 years since the bypass opened.

There are no queues at either entrance to the town.

Light goods vehicle traffic still comes into town from the Bodawen roundabout and then on to Pen Ll?n, which include tankers 24/7 with loads of milk whey taken from the Rhydygwystyl creamery at y Ffor.

A height restriction on the railway bridge at Penamser prevents articulated loads going that way, otherwise the traffic would be a great deal less into town.

It has not affected trade in Porthmadog; it is still as popular as ever.

There have, unfortunately, been quite a few serious accidents on the road.

A roundabout should be made there, this would slow the traffic down and prevent any high speed accidents.

There seems to be a lot more flooding on land around Ynys Gron area, but the change in the climate could be blamed for this?

It was said that an additional gate was to be made in the Dora, but this was never done.

It would have been a great advantage to relieve the flooding from the river.