City-centre bypass is expected to bring relief within three years

A new link road expected to take thousands of cars a day away from the gridlocked city centre will be ready within three years.

The half-mile route is part of the Howe Barracks housing redevelopment and will connect Chaucer Road, near the Crown Court, with the A257 Littlebourne Road.

The scheme was approved on Tuesday by the city council’s planning committee, which heard it could be used by up to 800 vehicles an hour, including HGVS at peak times.

The development also includes improvements to the Military Road/tourtel Road roundabout.

A spokesman for Taylor Wimpey, which is to build 500 homes on the site, says the new bypass will be open to traffic by early 2020.

The route – widened to 6.5 metres in places – will follow the existing line of some service roads already on the former military base and include a cycle path for most of its length.

But the scheme sparked six letters of objection from neighbouring properties, raising concerns about parking and noise.

The cycling campaign group Spokes East Kent also complained that the cycling provision “lacked coherent connections” to the national and regional cycle network and there was a missing 450-metre section of path along the new route for riders.

A significant benefit of the new road could be reduced traffic in Broad Street on the ring road, where there are air quality problems and a failure to meet government targets.

Work on the new link road is expected to start in 2019 and take about a year to complete. A condition of the planning permission for the housing is that the road must be in operation by the time the 250th new home is occupied.

The first phase of the former barracks redevelopment, due to start early next year, is for 171 homes and will be known as Royal Parade.