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GREEN GROUPS JOIN FORCES TO FIGHT NEW ROADS IN SW

11 Nov 2002

Don't turn the south west into a drive-through cream tea shop

Directors and representatives of Britain's leading green groups will today tuck into a cream tea in the middle of a roundabout on the A303 near Yeovil [1] to highlight the threat to the south west's countryside from road building. If current proposals go ahead tourist attractions in the south west will be blighted by traffic. The organisations are calling for better public transport to deal with the region's traffic needs, not the political fudge of building more roads. Traffic levels on the A303 at the location of the action are forecast to more than double within 15 years.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling will decide within weeks whether to approve recommendations to build and widen roads through some of the most beautiful areas of the south west, including designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty such as the Blackdown Hills and Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs . The recommendations were made by the South West Regional Assembly (SWRA) following the London - South West Multi-Modal Study (known as SWARMMS) [2].

The groups - including the Council for the Protection of Rural England ( CPRE); CTC, the national cyclists' organisation; Friends of the Earth; the Ramblers' Association; Transport 2000; the Wildlife Trusts and the Woodland Trust - believe that road-building on the scale proposed cannot be justified, and is not the answer to the region's transport problems [3]. They point out that the A303 / A30 corridor only suffers from congestion during peak holiday times. The threat to the Blackdown Hills in Somerset is of particular concern. The SWRA recommends dualling the A303/A30 through the area, against the advice of the study's consultants who considered this to be too environmentally damaging.

The organisations believe there are clear alternatives to the road-building, including:
making the Salisbury - Exeter rail line two track for all its length;
local transport measures, including improved public transport, particularly in rural areas and around Swindon, Taunton, Bristol and Exeter to reduce congestion by taking local traffic off the M4 / M5.

Friends of the Earth's Executive Director Charles Secrett said:
"Tourism in the south west is built on its beautiful landscape. So driving new roads through some of the south west's finest areas would be economic and environmental madness. The region does have a transport problem, but this should be tackled by investing in public transport. Mr Darling must not allow the cream of the region's countryside to become clotted with traffic."

CPRE Director Kate Parminter said:
"The beauty of the countryside is a key economic asset for the region. The Government risks damaging the goose which lay the golden egg if it bows to bogus arguments for building a second strategic road corridor to the south west. Somerset would become a drive through while Cornwall's tiny villages would suffer even more congestion - and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty would be damaged irrevocably in the process."

Transport 2000 Executive Director Stephen Joseph said:
"Dualling these roads is heading in the wrong direction. If there are jams on these roads then clearly public transport is not good enough. A first priority must be to develop the Salisbury to Exeter rail line, which incredibly in the 21st century, is still single track. This is the only dualling that should go ahead."

Roger Geffen of CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, said:
"More money spent on new roads will just mean more jams and a lorry load of environmental damage. Spending a fraction of the money on small-scale cycling projects would encourage more people to cycle the short journeys they currently make by car, and would attract more cycle tourists to one of the UK's travel honey pots."

Nick Milton, Director of Communications at the Ramblers' Association said:
"The RA is concerned that increasing road capacity through the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty will lead to more traffic and the destruction of the very thing that walkers go to this beautiful landscape to enjoy. We believe more traffic will mean less tranquillity and less beautiful countryside resulting in fewer visitors to the Blackdown Hills. This in turn will affect the income of local shops and B&Bs. The Government must give more consideration to the sustainable transport opportunities available in the area that will help to preserve the countryside and the rural economy that depends upon it."

Graham Bradley of the Woodland Trust said:
"Yet again, we are faced with road-building plans that could damage rare, irreplaceable ancient woods. It takes at least four hundred years for these natural wonders to evolve, but they can so quickly be destroyed."

David Westbrook, Conservation Officer with the Somerset Wildlife Trust, said
"The SWARMMS study made many recommendations aimed at encouraging transport alternatives. In our view the emphasis should be on implementing measures such as these rather than assailing our wildlife and countryside with yet more concrete and cars. A new A30/303 dual carriageway through the Blackdown Hills could threaten some very important wildlife sites which are home to already declining species, such as dormice and green-winged orchids."

Notes

[1] The action will take place at 12 noon at the Cartgate Roundabout at the junction of the A303 and A3088, approximately 5 miles NW of Yeovil (grid reference ST482189)

[2]SWARMMS is one of a series of multi-modal studies, commissioned by the Government following the 1998 Roads White Paper. The two-year study concluded in May 2002. The final report recommended widening the A303 through the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but rejected dualling the A303 / A30 through the Blackdown Hills in Somerset as too environmentally damaging. An alternative - upgrading the A358 between Ilminster and Taunton was recommended as less damaging. However, in its recommendations on SWARMMS, the South West Regional Assembly has opted to back both schemes.

[3]The concerns of the groups were detailed in a recent letter to Alistair Darling (copies available on request). They include:

• The lack of evidence supporting the recommendations - the SWRA's recommendations are not supported by the consultants' conclusions nor those of its own scrutiny panel.
• The weak economic case for increasing road capacity - the SWRA believes that a second strategic route to the south west is needed, in addition to the existing M4/M5. The economic appraisal of the SWARMMS strategy did not substantiate this. There is little to suggest that the peripherality of the far south west will be reduced by the road-building, still less that it would result in a net economic benefit for the region.
• Environmental damage - the new roads would result in significant damage to nationally designated areas such as the Blackdown Hills, and West Wiltshire Downs & Cranborne Chase Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) and would potentially affect the Stockton Wood, Freshmoor and Longlye Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) - among the country's top wildlife sites
  The need for a change of direction in investment priorities - the priority in funding and delivery should be for local transport solutions: "soft" measures, enhanced local and express bus and public transport interchange, local safety schemes and public transport priority measures.
• Future road building ambitions - this will not be the end of significant road-building in the south west. Regional bodies seem to still believe the now discredited idea that we can build our way out of transport problems with new roads.

A full media briefing is available from Friends of the Earth.

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