THE A303, STONEHENGE AND WINTERBOURNE STOKE BYPASS
FoE South West Briefing: May 1999.
- FOE warmly endorses the aims of the English Heritage/National Trust proposals to:
- 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
- FOE also agrees that the present state of the A303 requires action, and endorses the aims of improving safety and environmental conditions in Winterbourne Stoke.
- Tunnelling would appear to offer the best solution for the A303 within the World Heritage Site, and in principle FOE supports this, while reserving our position on what would be the best route or method of construction.
- We are aware of no convincing arguments to suggest that any of the above transport, environmental or heritage aims, all of which we support, require an increase in the capacity of the A303
- On the contrary, dualling runs counter to the achievement of:
- 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:
- 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
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