Portsmouth’s M275 motorway is a barrier severing outlying communities from central Portsmouth, it blights the city’s western entrance, causes NOx pollution, and damages the urban environment. Off a peninsular beside the M275, at Tipner West, development is being proposed on land to be reclaimed from the sea. This land will remain at risk from sea level rise, create an isolated community and incur into an SSI.

This report on the M275 evaluates and proposes the route’s re classification into an ‘A’ road, its adaptive reuse and modification. This enables land to be released to meet projected housing needs, without further reclamation, and allows Portsmouth’s expansion to be accessible, sustainable, and resilient – offering better quality and higher value. Pipelined investment in, for example, 25ha. of land reclamation and a new c. £36m bridge, is shown to be unnecessary.

With adaptive reuse of the urban infrastructure and wider engagement with city issues and assets the report shows how the required housing sites, better urban connectivity, mixed modal transport, accessibility, and amenity can be planned more effectively to deliver a resilient and sustainable community of better long term value.

Postscript. In 2021 it now seems that the Mayor of NYC wants to add bike lanes on the Brooklyn & Queensboro Bridges (NYT 28 Jan. 2021).