Truro Eastern District Centre Park and Ride

The eastern park and ride is a key part of the Truro transport strategy which planned to remove 15% of inbound traffic from the north and east of Truro, significantly reducing congestion and journey times. Truro’s historic narrow streets were not designed to accommodate the ever-increasing number of residents and commuters, and so Cornwall Council developed an integrated transport scheme to help ease the crowding. This scheme began with the successful park and ride facility in Langarth on the city’s outskirts and grew to the development of Truro Eastern District Centre Park and Ride.

Cormac delivered £17million works on this project comprising of:

• Design and Construction of a new Park and Ride facility
• Design and construction of an integrated terminus hub building
• 1,379 parking spaces within retaining structures, coach park, decked parking structure, footways, street lighting, CCTV, signage and electric car charging points
• Upgrading of the A390/A39 Union Hill Junction
• Pedestrian and cycle access measures
• Bus priority measures on the A39 Tregolls Road to improve journey time reliability to/from Truro city and beyond;
• New junctions to the site from A390 & A39 to intercept traffic heading into Truro and accommodate pedestrians and cyclists.
• Extensive hard and soft landscaping, sustainable drainage system and habitat creation

The project won several accolades including the CEEQUAL awards including ‘Excellent’ status with an overall rating of 87.8% in 2009, British Parking Awards 2009 ‘Best Surface Car Park’, ‘Highly Commended’ for the Landscape and Ecology and Biodiversity in 2011, and the BREEAM Excellent award.

The project was not without certain topographical and ecological challenges. The extensive landscape preservation of valuable national heritage and ecology. Over the course of the project six thousand new trees were planted, and over 17,000m2 sustainable, ecologically intelligent geotextiles laid. An array of hard and soft landscaping were installed along with a sustainable drainage system and habitat creation.

One of the conditions of the planning permissions approval was that further archaeological research could be conducted. The 2012 excavations of the area found in a Middle to Late Neolithic enclosure dating to the period 3400BC to 2400 BC. The enclosure occupies a striking piece of land, lying on a slightly projecting spur above the rapidly deepening valley. This monument is unusual for Cornwall because of the astonishing number of pits, hearths and furnaces being found in a localised area. Some of these pits contained large amounts of prehistoric artefacts. The various archaeological finds ranged from the neolithic period, Iron age and post medieval periods. It was imperative that these features were not harmed in any way, and so our teams working in conjunction with archaeologists and Cornwall Council carefully preserved and protected the sites before further development occurred.