Header graphics: Save Stonehenge!

You are here: Home > Information > Other views > Friends of the Earth Stonehenge briefing
FoE logo

THE A303, STONEHENGE AND WINTERBOURNE STOKE BYPASS

FoE South West Briefing: May 1999.

- re-unite Stonehenge with a restored downland setting

- remove traffic from the vicinity of the monument

- move the visitor centre to a more appropriate location at the edge of the World Heritage Site

- allow free public access to the stones themselves, while restraining visitor numbers through increasing the time and effort required to reach them on foot

- heritage objectives, through increasing the disruption and cost of tunnelling and thereby militating against a bored tunnel option

- transport and environmental objectives, through increasing the volume and speed of traffic and increasing pressure to dual other sections of the A303
 
 

TRANSPORT ISSUES

 

Environmental Appraisal


According to the Government’s White Paper, "A New Deal for Transport, Better for Everyone":

"For all environmentally sensitive areas or sites there will be a strong presumption against new or expanded transport infrastructure which would significantly affect such sites or important species, habitats or landscapes"

and:

"A transport scheme which would significantly affect a sensitive site or important species, habitat or landscape should not go ahead unless it is clear that the net benefits in terms of the other objectives (including other environmental benefits) clearly override the environmental disbenefits, there is no other better option and all reasonable steps have been taken to mitigate the impact." [1]

Although not specifically cited as one of the designations to which the term "sensitive area or site" refers to, there can surely be no doubt that a World Heritage Site and Britain’s best known ancient monument qualifies as such. This appears to be recognised in the description of the A303 scheme as an "Exceptional Environmental Scheme". Yet the "strong presumption against expanded transport infrastructure" does not seem to have been exercised in this case, and it is very far from clear that "the net benefits override the environmental disbenefits", or that "there is no other better option".
 

Road Capacity and Whole Corridor Effects


One obvious other option that could be considered is to retain the A303 as a single carriageway. The decision to dual appears to have been taken in isolation and pre-empts the outcome of the forthcoming tranche one multi-modal study into the London to South West and South Wales corridor. The rationale behind such corridor studies is surely in large part to avoid the very kind of fragmented decision-making about road schemes that is being exhibited here.

Inevitably, an increase in capacity in one part of a corridor will have knock-on effects elsewhere. In the neighbouring County, Somerset, the Highway Authority is already undertaking its own study into the Exeter to Andover/Salisbury Corridor (i.e. including the A303) whose purpose is to:

"develop an integrated transport strategy... The strategy will aim to reduce car traffic, promote cycling, walking and the use of public transport, reduce transport-related social exclusion, and provide a safer and more enjoyable living environment for all members of the community." [2]

Such socially and environmentally progressive aims sit uneasily alongside the statement from the Chairs of both the National Trust and English Heritage that they "welcome the Government’s commitment to dual the A303" at Stonehenge, or these organisations’ blithe assertion that dualling will "deliver a substantial improvement for everyone who uses the A303 and the roads in the area around Stonehenge" [3]

One environmental victim of further dualling of the A303 would be the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Most of the 16 miles proposed for dualling between Ilminster and Honiton lie within this designated landscape. This stretch also passes along the edge of Long Lye Site of Special Scientific Interest and widening it may damage the site’s wildlife value due to interference with springs and watercourses. The Giant’s Grave grassland site on the opposite side of the A303 to Long Lye is also of SSSI quality and would be partly destroyed. [4]
 

Safety


Improved safety might be one rationale for dualling, since dual carriageway roads generally have a better accident record. However this does not mean that the mere fact that a road is single carriageway is what makes it dangerous. It is far more likely to be true that what makes it dangerous are factors such as:

- The road goes through a built-up area or village where people need to cross it or make short journeys along it

- Junctions are not suited to the speed and volume of traffic and people trying to join or cross the road take risks

- Traffic is travelling too fast for the conditions

All of which can be tackled without any need to increase the road from one carriageway to two: for example by installing speed cameras, re-designing junctions, or banning overtaking on dangerous stretches.
 

Timing and non-road building solutions


Whether or not a bypass is the best solution for the problems of Winterbourne Stoke, it will certainly be a long time coming. Further consultation, design work, statutory procedures and construction itself are likely to take a further ten years. During this decade Winterbourne Stoke will experience no relief whatever, other than perhaps the psychological one of believing that there is an end in sight. There is however much that could be done in the interim, at relatively low cost, to deliver environmental and social benefits. Chief among these must be measures to slow down traffic through the village, and design measures to reduce the risk of accident, particularly to vulnerable road users.

It should be recalled that Winterbourne Stoke is now the exception. The British Road Federation once stated that 600 communities "needed" bypasses to relieve them from the effects of traffic. [5] The other 599 do not have Stonehenge on their doorstep and the great majority are highly unlikely ever to be bypassed. This is not to say that Winterbourne Stoke does not merit the best it can get. But it does mean that a radical new approach to relieving communities of traffic impacts is sorely needed, and Winterbourne Stoke is as good a place as any to start trying them out.

Experience shows that measures other than road building will be needed in any case. At Batheaston, for example, £75 million was spent on a destructive and controversial road (that coincidentally affected another World Heritage Site - the city of Bath). Yet it did not relieve residents of traffic, which decreased in volume but increased in speed after the bypass was opened and left the village "virtually divided in two". [6] At Batheaston, the need for traffic management and pedestrian priorities was ignored and no money was allocated for these. The same must not be allowed to happen to Winterbourne Stoke.

In the long run, local measures to reduce the impacts of traffic will be overwhelmed and defeated if traffic continues to grow. An alternative approach can only succeed in a national context of traffic reduction, and this is another good reason why spending hundreds of millions of pounds increasing the capacity of one small section of trunk road is a bad investment.
 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL ISSUES


FOE does not claim expertise in archaeological matters and would not seek to comment on the detailed and highly technical debate there must be about any interference in this World Heritage Site. We would however need to be satisfied that serious and needless impacts were avoided. We note that there is by no means a consensus among the archaeological community that a 2km cut-and-cover tunnel represents the best option. The Prehistoric Society, for example, has observed that:

"The destruction of 13.5 hectares of the most archaeologically sensitive land surface in Europe, within a World Heritage Site, may be something which future generations will find hard to understand". [7]

It would seem an inescapable conclusion that the problems are that much harder to resolve with a dual carriageway than they would be for a single carriageway road. The scale of engineering works within the World Heritage Site would be much reduced with a single carriageway scheme, and the lower cost per kilometre would shift the balance in favour of a longer tunnel, or a bored tunnel instead of the inevitably destructive cut-and-cover method.

Compared to a long bored tunnel, the dual carriageway, short tunnel option has much greater physical impact within the vicinity of Stonehenge. In fact it will entail two and a half kilometres of above-ground road widening within the World Heritage Site. It will still bring a constant stream of heavy traffic to within a kilometre of the stones, so traffic noise will by no means be banished. The last Government actually rejected the cut-and-cover tunnel and the then Roads Minister Stephen Norris initiated a search for "the best, not the cheapest or the quickest, but the best solution" for Stonehenge. [8] These fine words were not however matched by a commitment from the Treasury actually to fund the best solution; and this remained the case until the new Government committed heritage funds to the task.

There would thus seem to be many good arguments to decide in favour of a long bored tunnel. The National Trust and English Heritage themselves once thought so too. They staunchly supported this option at an international conference, "Stonehenge: the Great Debate" held in London in 1994. [9] What has happened since to persuade them to accept what is, on the face of it, a more destructive and less effective method?
 

THE CONSULTATION PROCESS


The uniquely sensitive issues surrounding the Stonehenge and Winterbourne Stoke schemes led the previous administration to seek a new method of resolving them, through a Planning Conference held in Amesbury in 1995. FOE’s Wiltshire groups were represented throughout this Conference and signed up to its consensual resolutions. These included support for a long bored tunnel.

Regrettably, neither this process nor its conclusions have been respected in the subsequent manoeuvrings. The present proposals emerge from somewhere within the Highways Agency, English Heritage and the National Trust, almost as though they are the last word on the matter. Yet they remain full of gaps and contradictions and fly in the face of the previous consensus, so laboriously achieved between 1994 and 1996.

"Consultation" now involves old-style Highways Agency maps offering a diversity of routes, but lacking crucial detail on costs and impacts (e.g. the redesign of the junction at Longbarrow Crossroads), and with those to be consulted narrowly defined as local residents alone.

The retreat to a cut-and-cover tunnel is justified on grounds of cost. Yet it is assumed without question that the road will be dualled, and nowhere are the relative costs, impacts and benefits of the different options laid out for comparison. If such an assessment has indeed taken place, then parties to the original consensus ought not to have been excluded from it.

The inclusion of a bypass for Winterbourne Stoke in the scheme is something of a mystery. The improvements for Stonehenge itself certainly do not demand it. What has happened in effect is that this one scheme has been allowed to escape assessment under the new rules for integrated transport. It is a throwback to a previous era: when road improvement was automatically presumed to mean enlargement, when "predict and provide" still ruled; and when fragmentary decision-making pit one set of objectives against another, and worse still, the interests of one community against another.
 

What is the Value of Stonehenge?


The assertion that a bored tunnel is too costly raises the wider question of how much the nation should be prepared to pay for a lasting solution. What is Stonehenge worth? Objectors to the cut-and-cover tunnel have pointed out that the reported cost of a bored tunnel, around £300 million, is less than half that of the Millennium Dome.
 
 
 

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS


It is a matter deep regret that a visionary scheme to rescue Stonehenge from the indignities that the 20th century has heaped upon it runs the risk of becoming mired in controversy and confrontation, because of the manner in which it is being pursued, and because it has been hitched to an unnecessary and unjustified road-widening scheme.

The elements of the Stonehenge and Winterbourne Stoke schemes should be separated. Objectives for each should be clearly distinguished, and the different options for achieving them clearly laid out so that they can be assessed on their merits.

No decision to dual any more of the A303 should be taken before the multi-modal study into the London to South West and South Wales corridor is completed.

Solutions for the traffic problems of Winterbourne Stoke should be subject to the new appraisal methodology being developed as part of the Government’s Integrated Transport approach.

The recent approach to resolving these problems leaves much to be desired. Heritage bodies should not be promoting road widening schemes as though these in themselves contributed to heritage objectives. The hard won consensual resolutions of the 1995 Planning Conference should not have been brushed aside.

The new proposals should not be presented as though they were the last ditch, once-and-for-all opportunity to get Stonehenge right. Instead the Government should make clear now that it is irrevocably committed to finding, and paying for, the right solutions both for the World Heritage Site and Winterbourne Stoke. Further costings, impact studies and the multi-modal corridor studies should be undertaken in a transparent manner. Once they are completed the Planning Conference should be re-convened and the options openly debated.
 
  May 1999

[1] "A New Deal for Transport - Better for Everyone" 4.201 & 4.202
[2] Exeter to Andover/Salisbury Corridor Study, "Report on the Brainstorming Meeting", WS Atkins South West
[3] "Stonehenge - the Master Plan", English Heritage and the National Trust
[4] "The Ministers’ Reserves", researched and written for Friends of the Earth by Peter Marren, September 1998
[5] "Britain’s Bypass Progress", British Roads Federation, 1995
[6] Bath Chronicle, Wednesday August 28th 1996, cited in "Better than Bypasses", Friends of the Earth,  1997
[7]  "Past", Newsletter of the Prehistoric Society, No. 31, April 1999, page 4
[8] English Heritage Press Release, 13th July 1994
[9] E.g. Sir Angus Stirling, (then) Director of the National Trust: "The View From the Road - Option One: A Tunnel" in Stonehenge, the Great Debate, Proceedings of A Conference Held in July 1994, London, English Heritage and the National Trust



Friends of the Earth, South West Regional Office, 10-12 Picton Street, Bristol BS6 5QA
Tel. 0117 9420128     Fax 0117 9420164     e-mail mikeb@foe.co.uk