IT could be just a few more days until the Spur Road reopens following nine months of gruelling road works.

The £22 million project has seen the entire length of the Spur Road rebuilt to create a new quiet carriageway, from the Ashley Heath interchange to Blackwater Junction, as part of a major initiative to improve transport links across the conurbation.

But over the last few days there has been some confusion about when the road will reopen, what the speed limit will be and why dozens of new traffic cones have appeared altering the route layout.

Here’s what we know about the roadworks…

The work is still expected to be completed by this weekend.

The final overnight closure will take place on Friday night from 8pm and the road will reopen again at 6am on Saturday morning.

Travel Dorset have been tweeting some drivers to say that the road will be fully reopen then. However this is not guaranteed. 

Travel Dorsethave told us they will only know when they can completely reopen the road 24 hours in advance.

Drivers on Saturday morning could find traffic management still in place, or all four lanes open but the speed limit still 40mph.

Wait, an overnight closure on a bank holiday Friday? what about the holiday traffic?

For those worried about getting out of Bournemouth on Friday ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend – don’t panic. The road will not be closed while there are queues of traffic.

According to Travel Dorset they can only close the road when traffic falls below 1,200 vehicles an hour. If the road is busier then it won’t close until traffic is below this count.

Whether any delay closing the road would impact the chances of it being fully reopen on Saturday morning is unclear.

How long do we have to live with the Blackwater Cones of Doom?

Despite it being the last week of planned works on the Spur Road traffic has been worse than ever after the route’s layout was altered.

New traffic cones were introduced on Monday forcing vehicles to merge much earlier on the northbound side of the carriageway just past the Cooper Dean flyover.

Traffic is now being filtered to a single lane for 600m before the Blackwater junction.

Motorists have been left furious with the sudden, unexpected, change to the layout which has resulted in huge tailbacks not only on the Spur Road but also on Castle Lane in both directions, and over the Cooper Dean flyover.

Travel Dorset says: “We’re sorry for the additional delays at the moment. Due to significant rainfall over the weekend the barrier in the centre reserve was not completed and we were unable to complete the southbound line markings.”

What's happened to the speed cameras?

Eagle-eyed drivers will have noticed that the average speed cameras have been removed, although the limit remains in place. Update from Travel Dorset to come on this.

Here’s what we don’t know…

We don’t know why the layout was changed. 

We also don’t know whether Travel Dorset knew about the introduction of the cones and the decision to filter traffic much earlier.

Currently it is not known whether the cones will still be in place on Friday when thousands of people take to the roads for the Bank Holiday weekend.

And as stated earlier, we don't know if the road will be four lanes on Saturday morning or not.

We will update as we get more information!