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02
Jan
Transport chief reveals likely length of Kex Gill road closure
The A59 looks set to remain closed at Kex Gill for “a few weeks”, North Yorkshire Council’s highways chief said today.
The main route linking Harrogate and Skipton closed suddenly yesterday morning due to a landslip.
A £68.9 million scheme to realign four kilometres of the road is taking place nearby because of the history of landslips in the area,
Councillor Keane Duncan, the council’s executive member for highways and transport, said today the latest landslip was a result of severe weather and “unrelated to the A59 realignment project”.
He added:
We have made an initial assessment and discovered we will need to conduct some repairs to the southern bank of the land adjacent to the road, where there is currently a large amount of loose material.
Given the predicted bad weather in the next couple of days, we believe this material is also at significant risk of falling onto the carriageway.
We plan on being on-site from Monday (January 6) to start to clear the material and stabilise the bank. This could take a few weeks however, if we can, we hope to have the road opened sooner depending on the weather.
Road users are advised to follow diversion routes via the A658, A660 and A65. Cllr Duncan added:
We understand the closure will cause delays to journeys and I would like to reiterate that we are doing all that we can to complete the repair as quickly and as safely as possible. We will endeavour to provide a further update next week.
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