Exeter’s annual Great West Run returned today, with thousands of runners expected to take on the half marathon course and the 10k route as races started at 9am. Road closures and diversions began from 7am across the city, shaping the morning for drivers, residents and anyone trying to reach the centre.
Inrix said delays were expected because of the Great West Run, with closures from 7am until around 1pm on roads between the arena, along Pinhoe Road to the football ground, through the city centre past Central Station and out of town along the A396 as far as Stoke Woods. Pinhoe Road between Hill Barton Road and Summer Lane was shut from 7am to 10am, while diversion routes from Tiverton ran along Stoke Hill, Church Hill, Harrington Lane, Beacon Heath, Beacon Lane, Prince Charles Road and Mount Pleasant Road. Drivers coming from Crediton were directed along Cowley Hill, St Andrew's Hill and Okehampton Road.
The Great West Run is Exeter’s annual half marathon event and includes a 10k route, making it one of the city’s biggest sporting mornings of the year. Stagecoach also ran shuttle buses between Exeter city centre and the Event Village before and after the event, with departures from Exeter City Centre Bus Station between 07:00 AM and 08:00 AM and services running at regular intervals through the morning.
The pattern was familiar, but the scale mattered. Thousands of runners can be absorbed into a city centre only when the road network is managed tightly, and today’s closures tied together the arena, Pinhoe Road, the city centre and the A396 in a way that left little room for normal traffic. By around 1pm, the disruption was expected to ease, but until then Exeter was running on a race timetable, not a commuter one.
For the runners, that was the point. For everyone else, the day turned on whether the closures, diversions and shuttle buses did what they were meant to do: keep the city moving while the Great West Run took over its streets.
