Work has begun on constructing a £1.9m roundabout at Balthane junction – which consultants said was not the safest option.

A terrace of houses has had to be demolished and a number of mature trees felled to make way for the new-look junction.

The roundabout replaces the existing mini-roundabout and will link to the bypass built as part of the planning consent for Dandara’s Reayrt Mie housing development.

The bypass is designed to re-route the main A5 Douglas to Castletown road away from the centre of Ballasalla, although it appears narrower than the existing road.

Dandara constructed the main section of the new road, including a roundabout that accesses it at Glashen Hill to the north of the village and a bridge over the Steam Railway line.

But the Department of Infrastructure is responsible for building the new junction at the southern end.

It appointed consultants Systra to look at the various options.

Systra considered four options – a four-arm roundabout with 3m wide shared footpath and cycleway, a four-arm junction with traffic lights, two priority junctions on the existing A5 alignment and two linked signal junctions on the bypass alignment.

It estimated the total cost of the four-arm roundabout at £757,000 plus VAT, or £1,090,000 plus VAT including a 44% ‘optimism bias’.

But the budget Pink Book gives a total cost of the scheme as £1.929m, with £600,000 of that having been spent up to the end of March this year.

Systra concluded that the four-arm roundabout offered ‘reasonable junction performance’ but ‘is not considered as safe in terms of vehicle, pedestrian and particularly cycle movements’.

It said the best option in terms of safety was the single signalised junction, which would cost the same to construct.

Nevertheless it was the large roundabout option which was taken forward and secured planning approved last September (22/00567/B).

In its planning statement of case, the DoI said the new layout will improve safety and enhance pedestrian and cycle facilities as well as its removing through traffic from the village.

It said wider footways and new crossings will improve safety and the cycling and walking facilities will link in with the shared use route through the new development.

It said the current main road has about 12,000 vehicles movements a day and this was forecast to grow with the development of Reayrt Mie.

The DoI said the existing mini-roundabout had ‘poor compliance’, with southbound traffic cutting across the markings.

A 200-year-old stone cottage was demolished in 2020 to make way for the new junction. Demolition of Station Terrace, the row of unoccupied Commissioner’s houses, followed in April this year.

A small part of a wooded area on the other side of the A5 will be taken over for the roundabout and shared footway/cycle path.