Residents, councillors and the local Member of the Senedd have voiced their disappointment that a bypass in the Cynon Valley won’t be going ahead at the moment. Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s plans for the Cynon Gateway North are to create a single carriageway from a new roundabout at Croesbychan on the A465 to a new roundabout off the A4059 (the Aberdare bypass).
But an announcement on Tuesday, February 14, by the Welsh Government included the Cynon Gateway North in a list of “local authority” schemes which won’t be funded at the moment but that will be considered in future rounds of transport grant funding if they meet the new tests for road building. There was a freeze on new developments announced in June, 2021, and now the results of a wide-ranging roads review by a panel of experts have been published.
The latest announcement by deputy minister Lee Waters in the Senedd affects more than 50 road-building projects around Wales. The arguments for the Cynon Gateway North raised at the planning committee in March, 2022, were around the volume of traffic in the villages of Llwydcoed and Penywaun, pollution, large vehicles travelling through and the safety of children and elderly people crossing the road.
