00:00It's been years in the making and has taken more than £18 million of funding, but the
00:04Bean Road underpass linking Ebsfleet Garden City to Bluewater has finally got shovels
00:09in the ground. With thousands of new homes being built in the area, it's providing them
00:13with transport without putting more pressure on the county's roads. This will be provided
00:18by an electric bus service going through the underpass and it's being billed as an affordable
00:22one with tickets costing only £2. But will that stay the case by the time the journey
00:26start? You might be wondering, why do we actually need this? We can get to Bluewater with the
00:51existing roads we already have from Ebsfleet. Because Ebsfleet Garden City isn't going to
00:55be a construction site in the next 10-20 years. It'll have 15,000 more homes, 30,000 more
01:01jobs. So the roads will need to keep up.
01:04So we'll have to link to the existing road network, widen roads, to account for the buses.
01:12But the main work is putting the tunnel, which is going to be a spray concrete line tunnel,
01:17which is essentially as simple as we dig in one and a quarter metre advances and then line,
01:26dig, line, dig, line and work our way through the tunnel till we get to the other side. Then
01:33there's some linings that need to go in it. The road construction will need to be put in
01:37the bottom of the tunnel for the buses and the pedestrians to come through, some lighting.
01:42And essentially, in a nutshell, that's it.
01:44The project has been anticipated for many years, with two tunnels being dug in the 1990s
01:49to help with Bluewater's construction. Fast forward to 2020 when planning permission was
01:54approved for the underpass, but it expired and had to be renewed three years later than
01:59originally planned. With that in mind, the Fast Track Service won't just support the Garden
02:03City, but aims to increase the connection between North Kent's towns like Dartford, Ebbsfleet
02:08and Gravesend.
02:09Aeriths say the project will take 18 months to complete, and the council are hoping the
02:13underpass and the bus service will help support Ebbsfleet's growth rather than its gridlock.
02:18Finn McDermid for KMTV in Ebbsfleet
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