Exposed: The Hidden Costs Of The Newbury Bypass

25 September 2006

Far from saving lives, the Newbury bypass – among the most controversial road schemes ever built in Britain – has killed more people and witnessed a sharp increase in serious accidents, according to a Government-commissioned report.[1]

When the £105 million road [2] was being planned, the Department for Transport predicted there would be a 47 per cent long term cut in road deaths along the route through the West Berkshire town. But instead there was a 67 per cent increase in fatalities in the five years following the opening of the bypass in November 1998.

Deaths on the ‘A34 corridor’ running north to south through Newbury [3] rose from six in the five years before the road opened to 10 in the half-decade afterwards. Eight of these deaths were on the new road and two on the old, bypassed road. The total number of serious or fatal accidents - which either killed or badly injured people – rose from 30 in 1994-1998 to 45 in 1999-2003.

And whilst there were no deaths in 2004 or 2005, there were six serious accidents – including one in which six people were severely injured.

So, looking at the entire period since the bypass opened, the number of serious or fatal accidents averaged six per year in the A34 corridor from 1994 to 1998 and 7.3 per year in the years 1999 to 2005, an increase of more than 20 per cent.[4]

CPRE [5] Chief Executive Shaun Spiers said: ‘This is very heavy price to pay for saving between four and 11 minutes in journey times.

‘We strongly opposed the bypass because we knew it would generate extra traffic and cause increased sprawl. This belatedly published official evaluation shows it has done both of those, but it has also proved more dangerous.’

The post-opening evaluation of the eight-mile long, dual carriageway bypass, published by the Government’s Highways Agency, exposes serious problems not only for the road itself and Government transport policy but also in the way Government decides whether major schemes should be built. This evaluation has been analysed by transport consultant Ian Taylor for CPRE.[6]

Traffic flow statistics reveal a massive surge in traffic along the route post-opening, far in excess of what had been predicted. The Highways Agency had predicted that between 30,000 and 36,000 vehicles per day would use the bypass by 2010. Those figures had already been exceeded in 2004, six years early, when 43,800 vehicles used the bypass every day (and rose to 45,900 in 2005).

Meanwhile, morning peak hour traffic on the old road is reaching the same level as it was before the bypass opened. Reducing rush-hour congestion was a key justification for the road given at the Public Inquiry – but for anyone driving to work in Newbury the experience is now as bad as it was before the bypass opened.

Traffic continues to rise across the nation, but the evaluation shows it has grown much faster in the Newbury A34 corridor – which consists of the bypass plus the old route – since the former opened. Road traffic here has grown 44 per cent faster than across Berkshire as a whole, whilst traffic on the bypass alone has grown twice as quickly.

This is largely because the opening of the bypass has led to additional journeys by cars and lorries. This is the well-established phenomenon of ‘traffic induction’ which lies at the heart of the environmentalist critique of road building as a ‘road to nowhere’ policy.

The Highways Agency’s evaluation accepts that the bypass has generated some extra journeys, but claims much of the growth comes from traffic diverting off minor local roads and other major roads – some of them as much as 35 miles away.

CPRE and our expert advisers dispute this. Our analysis sets out our detailed reasons for dismissing the Highways Agency’s conclusion that the ‘extra’ growth is mostly due to traffic diverting from other roads. Indeed, one nearby A road – the A339 to Basingstoke – has experienced a surge in traffic following the opening of the bypass, because the new road made it a more convenient route for many drivers.

The Highways Agency’s evaluation says new developments built in the area after the new road opened have contributed to the surge in traffic in the A34 corridor and town centre. It says there were 14 substantial developments in the five years since 1998.

CPRE and others have long argued that new roads through the countryside lead to development on greenfield sites, spreading car-dependent sprawl and increasing traffic. The Newbury bypass has become yet another example of this.

Other serious flaws which emerge in the Highways Agency’s evaluation of the bypass are:

Two important documents about planning the new bypass have been lost – the scheme noise report and the visual impact study report. Both were prepared as part of the appraisal process to justify the building of the bypass.

No attempt has been made to assess the increase in climate-changing carbon dioxide gas caused by the surge in road traffic brought about by the bypass. Exhaust emissions from road vehicles are among the key contributors to climate change.

The evaluation is very late. The bypass opened in 1998, so a five-years-after study ought to have been published by the end of 2004. But it has only just appeared on the Highways Agency website.
The way that the evaluation treats traffic growth and accident statistics gives particular cause for concern. The consultants hired by the Highways Agency have emphasised favourable figures and neglected damaging ones in order to portray the new road in the best possible light. Evaluations need to be more objective and more independent.

Consultant Ian Taylor said: ‘I was surprised to find that during our investigation the Highways Agency staff were unable to supply to us documents as fundamental as the Inspector's Report of Inquiry or the damning assessments of the route by the Landscape Advisory Committee.

‘Fortunately the local people who had campaigned against the road proved to have a better archiving system – a box in the corner of the attic.’

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. A34 Newbury Bypass ‘Five Years After’ Evaluation (1998-2003), written by consultants Atkins and published by the Highways Agency (see http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/documents/Newbury_Bypass_Five_Years_After_1.pdf)

2. The road cost 40 per cent more than had been predicted, mainly because of £36 million unexpected extras incurred as a result of mass protest action. However, the evaluation report claims the outturn economic benefits of the new road will be much higher than predicted over a 30 year period. This is because of extra savings in journey time, brought about because traffic on the bypass is proving to be much higher than forecast. But accident savings are now put at a much lower level than had been predicted.

3. The corridor, running just over six miles north to south as the crow flies, includes the new bypass, the old bypass and the principal roads linking them. These are the A34 from just south of junction 13 with the M4 to the B4640 Tot Hill services turnoff, all of the B4640, the A339 from the A34 junction north of Newbury to its junction with the B4640, the A343 between the A34 and the A339 and the A4 from its junction with the minor road south of Stockcross to its junction with the B3421.

4. CPRE has obtained more recent accident statistics for the A34 corridor for 2004 and 2005 from West Berkshire District Council and Hampshire County Council. There were six serious accidents in those two years, giving a total of 51 serious or fatal accidents in the seven years 1999 to 2005 compared to 30 in the five years 1994 to 1998. The Highways Agency evaluation points out that the number of slight accidents, and the number of people slightly injured, fell by more than 30% in 1999 to 2003 compared to 1994 to 1998. However, a coach crash on the new bypass in 2004 left 47 people with minor injuries – putting a large dent in the downward trend in minor injuries.

5. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Sir Max Hastings. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

6. An analysis of the ‘Five-Years After’ Post-Opening Project Evaluation from the A34 Newbury Bypass by Ian Taylor, John Elliott, Lynn Sloman and Lilli Matson. The analysis is a supplement to a report by the same authors published by CPRE and the Countryside Agency in 2006, Beyond Transport Infrastructure: Lessons for the future from recent road projects. Both documents are available from CPRE’s website, www.cpre.org.uk and our press office.