THE real thing may be years away from completion but motorists can already get their first virtual experience of driving through the Hindhead Tunnel.
A computer simulation of the £371m tunnel, which will slash journey times on the A3 between Portsmouth and London, has been produced by the Highways Agency to give people a taste of what it will feel like to travel along the road without the usual daily diet of tailbacks and traffic jams.
The video, which is now being shown by the agency at exhibitions about the project, takes people along the journey, providing a driver's-eye view of the journey in incredible amounts of detail, including road signs, trees and streetlamps.
The video sees the driver travelling northbound on the new dual carriageway approaching the Hammer Lane junction on the Hampshire/Surrey border about two miles before the tunnel begins.
Project manager Paul Arnold said: 'With the best will in the world it is sometimes difficult to imagine what a scheme will look like from a map, but this enables somebody to look at it from a driver's point of view.
'In the real world, the time that the journey takes on the video would mean the driver going at about 100mph, otherwise the video would be very long.'
An artist's impression of the tunnel
The video was designed by contractor Mott McDonald, which is carrying out the work on behalf of the Highways Agency.
Last month, transport minister Douglas Alexander visited the site in Hindhead where clearance work has begun.
The two mile-long tunnels will be bored through the Devil's Punchbowl, and will mean that the stretch of road between London and Portsmouth will now be all dual carriageway.
It is estimated that it will cut at least 30 minutes off journey times between Portsmouth and the capital.
Work on the tunnel is expected to start in March next year and the project is expected to take four years.
