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   / Updated By Alastair Jamieson 
   
   LONDON – A controversial four-lane highway will be constructed under Stonehenge, planners announced Thursday in an effort to solve a decades-old traffic problem at the ancient British monument. 
   
   A new 1.8 mile tunnel would remove the sight and sound of traffic for visitors to the prehistoric landmark, England’s Department for Transport said. 
   
   The World Heritage Site is among Britain’s top tourist attractions and pulls in in more than 1.3 million visitor annually. 
   
   The busy A303 trunk road in Wiltshire, England runs right past Stonehenge. Matt Cardy / Getty Images 
   
   However, it sits yards from the busy A303 — a historic road linking London with southwest England that has grown increasingly traffic-choked. The stretch of highway nearest Stonehenge is single-lane, creating a notorious bottleneck and prompting many drivers to slow down to get a look. 
   
   Plans for a tunnel at the Wiltshire site were first made almost 30 years ago but have been repeatedly shelved amid concerns about the environmental impact. 
   
   Campaign group Stonehenge Alliance says the latest scheme, which would carry two lanes in each direction, would do "irreparable damage to the landscape" and it wants a much longer tunnel that would minimize the road’s impact. 
   
   Supporters of the government plan include heritage charity, National Trust. Helen Ghosh, director general, said in a statement: “I know there will be some sadness that people will no longer be able to see the stones from the road, but visitors will once again be able to hear the sounds of skylarks singing rather than the constant noise of traffic.” 
   
   She added: “After many false starts and challenges, this does for the first time feel like a real opportunity to tackle the blight of the road that dominates the landscape of Stonehenge.” 
   
   The Department for Transport said the Stonehenge tunnel was part of a $2.45 billion program of investment in the region and would cut traffic congestion. A public consultation on the scheme will run until March 5. ||||| Visiting Stonehenge becomes ever harder. You have to book ahead as if it were a swanky West End show, endure a visitor centre when what you really want to do is commune with the mysterious past – and when you do finally get your chance to walk around (not among) the stones, you need to assiduously ignore the hum of traffic from the heavily congested nearby A303. 
   
   Chris Grayling gives go-ahead to road tunnel under Stonehenge Read more 
   
   That, at least, is going to change. The government has decided to go ahead with a tunnel that will take this very busy road underground for 1.8 miles, removing the horrible stream of honking traffic from the visible surroundings of Stonehenge, and so making it much easier to concentrate on the wonder of Europe’s greatest neolithic monument. 
   
   Archaeologists are understandably delighted... oh wait, they’re up in arms. Campaigners claim the road project will wreck the extraordinarily rich and complex archaeology of the area. “We have recently started to realise that the standing stones are just a beginning,” protests Dan Snow, president of the Council for British Archaeology. “They sit at the heart of the world’s most significant and best-preserved stone age landscape. The government’s plans endanger this unique site.” 
   
   Facebook Twitter Pinterest Winter solstice celebrated at Stonehenge in 2016. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images 
   
   This is a battle between the aesthetic and the archaeological. The A303 really is a monstrous intrusion into the immediate landscape of Stonehenge. A tunnel will make the site more peaceful, more romantic, more emotionally powerful. It should therefore make it much easier to appreciate the grandeur of Stonehenge. How can that be a bad thing? 
   
   It is true that modern research keeps expanding Stonehenge in time and space, until experts can see the stones just as the tip of an archaeological iceberg. One study has even explored the acoustic archaeology of the site. Above all, instead of seeing Stonehenge as an isolated stone structure in the middle of an empty Wiltshire plain, archaeology now conceptualises it as part of the “Stonehenge Landscape”, a multilayered ceremonial space extending far beyond the stone circle itself and including everything from lost henges to barrow tombs. It seems this really was an incredibly important place in ancient times. 
   
   But archaeologists are putting fashionable theories before the pressing need to make Stonehenge a better place to visit. It may not be just a stone circle – but it does include the world’s most impressive stone circle, and it needs to better presented. Researching the past is important, but so is making it accessible to modern eyes. Stonehenge has been blighted by the A303 for too long. This and other modern intrusions make it impossible to see it as John Constable or Thomas Hardy did, as a bleak romantic marvel. 
   
   
   
   Facebook Twitter Pinterest Constable’s painting Stonehenge, c.1835, which hangs in the V&A Museum, London. Photograph: Paul Robins/Bequeathed by Isabel Constable, daughter of the artist 
   
   The very name Stonehenge suggests romantic bleakness, for it comes from Anglo-Saxon and means “hanging stones”. Medieval people must have thought it had a gallows-like darkness out there on Salisbury Plain. The chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed this strange marvel to the wizard Merlin. In Romantic art it is a remote secret, and in in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles a place lonely enough for a fugitive to take refuge. 
   
   The 20th century changed all that. Modern blights from busy roads to army manoeuvres to mass tourism have made it much harder to experience the mystery and magic of Stonehenge. 
   
   These angry archaeologists can’t see the stones for the sonar studies. It is actually not news that Stonehenge is part of a vast ancient landscape – the antiquarian William Stukeley observed as much in the 18th century. He published vivid drawings of such nearby monuments as the Cursus, a huge ceremonial earthwork. Yet the sculptural and architectural authority of Stonehenge itself, those silent yet eloquent stones, can touch us across time in a unique way. Putting the A303 underground will get us closer to this ancient power. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The plan involves building a tunnel for the A303, which runs past the ancient monument 
   
   A controversial plan for a road tunnel past Stonehenge has been finalised by the government. 
   
   Campaigners claim the 1.8-mile (2.9 km) dual-carriageway tunnel will cause "irreparable damage" to the landscape. 
   
   However, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the plan will "transform" the A303, "cutting congestion and improving journey times". 
   
   A public consultation to get the views of drivers and residents will run until 5 March. 
   
   The busy A303 currently passes within a few hundred metres of the ancient monument. 
   
   The tunnel forms part of a £2bn government scheme to upgrade all remaining sections of the road between the M3 and M5. 
   
   'Time bomb' 
   
   However, campaign group Stonehenge Alliance believes any tunnel shorter than 2.7-miles (4.3 km) would do "irreparable damage to the landscape". 
   
   Chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, Andy Rhind-Tutt, described the tunnel plan as a "self-destructing time bomb" which would "do nothing" for traffic problems in the area. 
   
   In 2015, a Stonehenge Alliance petition calling for a longer tunnel gained 17,500 signatures. 
   
   In a statement, the group said: "The Alliance does not advocate new road building at Stonehenge, but accepts the need to improve the tranquillity and appearance of the World Heritage Site and its setting. 
   
   "If the government insists on widening the A303 by means of a tunnel, it must be sufficiently long to avoid any further damage to [Stonehenge] and its setting." 
   
   Image caption Thousands of people have backed a campaign calling for a longer tunnel to protect the landscape 
   
   English Heritage and the National Trust have also given their support to the option of "the longest tunnel possible". 
   
   Highways England's Jim O'Sullivan said: "Our plans for the A303 recognise the national importance of the route and these improvements will bring real benefit to the region and local communities. 
   
   "The public exhibitions will provide an excellent opportunity to explain further our plans and to hear feedback from stakeholders." 
   
   However, a report by UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites has recognised the benefits of the project. 
   
   Tunnel history 
   
   Plans for a tunnel past the Stonehenge site have had a long and chequered history. 
   
   Proposals for a bored tunnel were first mooted in 1995 but the government insisted on a "cut and covered" tunnel, which was unveiled in 1999. 
   
   The plans for the 2.5-mile (4 km) tunnel was criticised by the National Trust and other groups who were concerned about possible damage to the site. 
   
   In 2002, revised plans for a bored tunnel of 1.3 miles (2.1 km) were proposed as part of a wider scheme to upgrade the A303 to dual carriageway status 
   
   Following a public inquiry, the tunnel scheme was withdrawn in 2005 by the Labour government, partly due to rising costs of construction, which had doubled to £470m. It was shelved for good in 2007. 
   
   The idea resurfaced in 2014 when the Conservative MP for Salisbury, John Glen, said any attempt to make the A303 in to a dual carriageway must include protection for the World Heritage site. 
   
   In December of that year the coalition government gave its support to the plan for a 1.8-mile tunnel near the monument. 
   
   Congestion on the A303 £1.4bn Proposed cost of Stonehenge tunnel 1.8 miles is the length of the proposed tunnel (2.9km) 
   
   9.6 sq m around Stonehenge is a World Heritage site (25 sq km) 
   
   33% of the route is single carriageway 
   
   84 years since the A-road opened PA 
   
   Stonehenge is one of the Europe's most recognisable prehistoric monuments. 
   
   The history of the Wiltshire site dates back 4,500 years and it is the only surviving lintelled stone circle in the world.
target: – It could finally be tunnel time at Stonehenge. NBC News reports that the 1.3 million annual visitors to the famous landmark have been dealing with increasing traffic on a nearby highway for years. Officials first proposed a tunnel to cut down on noisy and unsightly traffic yards away on the A303 nearly 30 years ago, but it never materialized. Now the British government has finalized plans to build that tunnel, according to the BBC. The 1.8-mile tunnel would include four lanes and cost an estimated $1.7 billion. The secretary of England's Department of Transport says the tunnel will reduce traffic and travel times near Stonehenge. But the tunnel remains controversial, with Stonehenge fans weighing in on both sides. One supporter says tourists will "once again be able to hear the sounds of skylarks" instead of traffic. And UNESCO, which lists Stonehenge as a World Heritage Site, is in favor of the tunnel. But the Council for British Archaeology is against it, the Guardian reports. The council's president says the area around Stonehenge is the "world's most significant and best-preserved stone-age landscape." That's why the Stonehenge Alliance also opposes the current tunnel plan. The group wants the tunnel length increased to at least 2.7 miles to reduce disruption to the immediate area. Officials are accepting public comment on the tunnel through the beginning of March.