Wichel Way, the new £30m road officially known as the Wichelstowe Southern Access road, opened on Monday, running from the Wichelstowe development through a brand new underpass beneath the M4 to Junction 16. Swindon Borough Council said the route was needed to support the area as it continues to grow, with thousands more homes planned.

Nick Gardiner of the council called the underpass a significant feat of engineering, built while keeping the motorway moving above it and without major lane closures. Planning began in 2019, the underpass itself was finished in 2023, and the wider Wichelstowe development is expected to eventually deliver around 4,000 homes, a new district centre, and freshly dug sections of the Wilts and Berks Canal. The council has stressed the road is not a relief road and should not be used for through traffic, a sentence that will be tested the first time anyone finds it quicker than the Magic Roundabout.

The council also confirmed the underpass will one day feature artwork, designed to give drivers passing beneath the M4 a welcoming gateway experience, though no date has been set for when the welcoming part begins.

Until the artwork arrives, the underpass will instead welcome drivers with plain concrete, ambient motorway rumble, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing it took four years and significant feats of engineering to get this far.

Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had been assured for years that a new road would ease the traffic and was now being assured, separately, that this one would do no such thing. 'Ron always said you can't have a road that isn't a relief road and isn't a through road either. He said that's not a road, that's a corridor with ambitions.'

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the gateway artwork plan had given him a new way of describing the reception area at Tench Paper Solutions, where a single framed photo of a photocopier has been awaiting a 'proper unveiling moment' for three years. He added that his band would happily perform at the underpass's eventual opening ceremony, 'assuming there is one, and assuming Julie can get the amp in the car.'

The underpass, for its part, remains unfinished in spirit, if not in concrete.