Glanville has been involved in the Pennyfeathers development on the Isle of Wight since the initial planning application was submitted 10 years ago.
Plans to build up to 904 houses, a school, community centre, commercial buildings and a sports building on the edge of Ryde were approved in September 2017 but construction has not yet commenced. An application for reserved matters for Phase 1 of the development was made in August 2020 and, once approved, building works can begin within 2 years of that permission.
Glanville played a key role in providing evidence that the whole development is deliverable in terms of highways. Unlocking the traffic issues was a crucial factor for developing the site in a conventional way. Glanville’s Transport & Highways team came up with a viable solution that solves the issue of traffic congestion in the area by designing a road layout that incorporates both the strategic through routes and the local roads in the development itself.
Pennyfeathers is located adjacent to the constricted junction between the already busy main route from Ryde to Sandown and Shanklin and a popular secondary route to Newport with a pinch point over a humped railway bridge. The new development will unlock land that would enable a major relief to ease existing congestion at the junction by diverting traffic away through the site to and from a new roundabout on Brading Road.
Peter Whitehead, Glanville’s leading expert in traffic and transport engineering, said, “We worked closely with the architects to find a solution for this site, which has a complex mix of physical, ecological and environmental constraints, not least being situated on a significant slope. This, combined with difficult drainage issues, presented challenges in terms of planning a layout that can be built, so it has been quite an iterative process to arrive at a workable outcome.”
One consideration was around keeping the large amount of earth that had to be moved in order to construct the houses, to a minimum. To accommodate this, Glanville has proposed that some roads are dug in deeper in certain areas, which entailed expert civil engineering advice to overcome the design challenges.
Peter adds, “The road design looks rather strange now, but it will only make sense when the whole scheme is finished in 20 years time.”
Glanville produced the designs using 3D modelling as an interface between the architects and Glanville’s systems.
Architect: Farrell Design
Client: Pennyfeathers Limited
Drainage: RSK
