PUBLIC consultation on the dualling of a Heads of the Valleys road ended at midnight on Thursday.

Members of the public attended several meetings this month to discuss the details of the dualling of the road between Gilwern and Brynmawr. Details of how many people attended those meetings are as yet unclear, according to the Welsh Government.

The government has published plans for the A465, which will see the road widened as it passes through Clydach Gorge, alongside the River Clydach and a number of communities either side.

Once the road between Brynmawr and Tredegar is dualled, it will be a continuous dual carriageway from Abergavenny to Merthyr.

Exhibitions were held at Brynmawr Foundation School on November 13, Clydach Village Hall on November 14 and Old School Community Hall in Gilwern on November 15 and 16.

The existing A465 was built in the 1960s as a single three-lane carriageway generally with two lanes in the uphill direction and one in the downhill direction. In 1990, a regional traffic study identified the need for improvement of the A465.

The A465 Heads of the Valleys dualling programme has since been split into six sections with the road from Gilwern to Brynmawr being section two.

During the exhibitions on the A465 section two scheme, a “drive through” feature was displayed, which gave those in attendance the opportunity to see the proposed routes in a video.

Last month, the Welsh Government announced a further £40 million to be spent in 2015/16 to accelerate the scheme.

According to draft orders from the Welsh Government, the 8.1 kilometre (five mile) road will have a reduced “design standard” when compared to the rest of the dualled route due to the “extreme sensitivity of the local environment”, and have a 50mph speed limit.