Major road closures revealed for Leeds city centre as flyover bridge gets demolished

For the past 11 months, work has progressed at pace to demolish and rebuild the southern bridge section of Regent Street Flyover and the project is now entering the next phase where the northern bridge will be taken down and rebuilt.

A contraflow has been in place for the duration of the work with traffic flowing in both directions on the eastbound carriageway of the A64(M). With the transition to the next phase, the two-way flow of traffic will be moved to the westbound carriageway and on to the newly constructed southern bridge, with the eastbound carriageway closing to all traffic from North Street to Burmantofts Street.

The contraflow switch is expected to happen during night closures of the A64 and A64(M) Inner Ring Road between Tuesday and Thursday of next week between 8pm and 5.30am.

After that, there will be closures on four consecutive weekends to allow for the demolition of the northern section.

The A64(M) westbound off-slips to the A61 Eastgate/Leeds Playhouse and North Street are expected to reopen by the end of May and diversions will be signposted.

Leeds City Council's chief officer for highways and transportation, Gary Bartlett said: “This past year has been challenging but I’m pleased to see that the programme is on schedule and we are now progressing to the next phase of this major project.

“We are in close conversation with businesses in the area to mitigate the impact of these road closures and our contractors have worked to rejig the programme slightly so the diversions are in place for as little time as possible.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this work but it is essential to maintain this key piece of infrastructure on the city’s road network.”

The work is set to be fully complete by spring 2022.