Some of the Daftest Things Heard at the A303 Consultation Presentations

Most folk who have been along to the A303 Stonehenge Scheme Public Consultations went to find out more, to learn of the proposals and to ask questions of Highways England.  So, I guess you would have hoped, expected really, that the people fronted up by Highways England would be fully up to speed with the documentation and underpinning information.  You would also have hoped they would be familiar with the current situation on the A303 and know why some of the jams occur, even though the overall flow of traffic would suggest it shouldn't be happening.

What got us thinking about this in the first place was overhearing one of the presenters/hosts telling a visitor, who was not from the immediate area, and telling them quite authoritatively, that the speed limit on the A303 past Stonehenge was 50 mph!  That's right, 50 mph!   Certainly news to us locals who have been driving it for decades.

Another example was a local who was interested in the phosphatic chalk issue.  This is the reportedly 15 metre thick band of an unusual (for the UK and Europe) form of chalk that underlies Stonehenge.  It was reported back in 2014 and Highways England are, as this is being written, taking samples to establish how far it extends and how much of a problem it is actually going to present.  You see, it's consistency is not at all rock-like and it seems that it gives off what have been described as high levels of radon gas - just like the granite rocks in Cornwall.   It's a bit of a problem when it comes to disposal of the spoil from the tunnel as you don't really want the phosphatic chalk leaching into the water table, nor do you want the decay products of the radon, known as radon daughters, or,  in these politically correct times radon progeny, which are the decay products of radon-222.

"Don't worry!" said the nice man from Highways England, the problem will only last for 3 days.  Oh really!  The decay of radon looks like this:

So, another error of fact.  The half-life of radon is 3.8 days, but that doesn't mean its all gone after this time, just that half the radioactivity has decayed.  He also forgot to mention that radon is produced by the decay of elements in the thorium and uranium series - and these have a half-life measured in billions of years.   Oh, he forgot to mention the nastiness of the radon progeny.  Unlike radon, which is a gas, the progeny - Lead-210, Bismuth-210 and Polonium-210 can be deposited on dust particles that blow around in the wind or get deposited in soil and water and then taken up plants, animals and people.   Of course, this is only a hypothetical issue at the moment and the levels of radon and radon progeny might turn out to be insignificant in the greater scheme of things, but that doesn't excuse misleading people.

One of the daftest things we have heard, and heard in this context is perfectly accurate, was the "sound booth".  Just about everyone we've spoken to thought this was something of a joke.  Listen to the recorded sound of the A303 taken a couple of meters from the edge of the carriageway and then walk 5 paces to the door of Manor Barn and listen to the sound of the real A303 about 25 times further away.  Guess what, the real A303 sounded much, much louder, even when the real sound level should have been between 9dB(A) and 12dB(A) lower by virtue of distance.  We would have thought it not too difficult to have had the volume on the earphones turned up to a level that recreated reality - but would that have made the bypass options, and the new Countess Roundabout flyover in Amesbury,  sound unpleasantly, but maybe realistically loud?

By far the daftest, yet most worrying thing heard, goes to the Highways England oft-repeated mantra that "you can't expect the level of detail you are asking for at this stage of the project when there are two alternative bypass routes".  Really?  Bear in mind the whole A303 Stonehenge Scheme has been lauded as one of the most expensive road schemes ever undertaken in the UK, it may come as a surprise to some to take a look at the Highways England website Pre-Consultation documents for the Lower Thames Crossing at Dartford  a scheme that even at the pre-consultation stage, had all the detail and information we have been asking for with respect to the A303 - but there it was done for 4 routes.  No doubt Highways England will come out with some fatuous comment to the effect that the Thames Crossing was atypical, somehow different, anomalous.  Baloney!

What the Lower Thames Crossing was, even if it wasn't perfect, was "best practise" and that is something everyone needs to reflect upon.

On Ignoring The Obvious and Pulling The Wool Over People's Eyes

The last couple of weeks have been rather surreal,  ever since Highways England launched their plans for a tunnel under Stonehenge and a bypass for our beleaguered village of Winterbourne Stoke - and added a sting in the tail by offering a southern bypass route as an option.   Although Highways England claim not to have a preference for either route, it is clear from their presentation material, from general reactions and to be honest, from verbal comments made by their own staff at several of the consultation events that there is a degree of bias towards the southern route.

Now we here at WiSBANG prefer the northern route for a couple of very simple reasons:  lower levels of noise and pollution.  Figure 1 below shows exactly why this is.  The prevailing wind, as is easily confirmed by recourse to the UK Met Office is from the south west, at lower levels, within the village there are 5 years-worth of readings that show the wind at ground level comes from the south-south-east - there is a wind-rose in the bottom right hand corner of Fig 1 that shows this clearly.

Consequently, noise and pollution would be blown from the southern route into the heart of the village.  Now, leaving aside those members of the community whose business interests would be best served by not having the northern route, you have to ask who in their right mind would opt for the southern route?

So, putting the bypass to the south of Winterbourne Stoke is quite simply, on environmental grounds alone, a crass idea for Winterbourne Stoke.  The genius who had this brainstorm doubled the environmental impact by stuffing the route midway between Winterbourne Stoke and Berwick St James to the south; doubling the numbers of folk affected by additional road noise at a stroke.

In the case of the northern route, the noise and pollution is helped on its way by the prevailing wind, up into the Salisbury Plain Training Area where it might annoy the odd rabbit that isn't already stone deaf from listening to the Army AS-90s and whose sense of smell has been dulled by screening smokes.

Oddly, Highways England reckon, in the turgid depths of their Technical Appraisal Review that there is little to choose between these two routes on environmental grounds.  Really?  How can this be so?

Let's be charitable and call it "pulling the wool over people's eyes."  This is how it seems to work.  Rather than considering the impact of each route just from the A360 to Berwick Down and the people directly affected by it - say 80 or so households in Winterbourne Stoke and 70 or so in Berwick St James, why not consider the whole route from Amesbury to Berwick Down and aggregate all those affected in Amesbury as well (about a 1000) with the numbers from Winterbourne Stoke  or Winterbourne Stoke + Berwick St James.  Then apply a crude level of granularity, by considering only blocks of 100 houses in your evaluations.

So if you consider the first case and look at each route and those households directly affected within 1km of it, then the northern route affects around 80 households.  On the other hand, the southern route affects 80 + 70 = 150 households.  So again, no right thinking person would ever opt for the southern route - it affects nearly twice the number of households as does the northern route.

However, if you live in the brave new world of Highways England, the equation is like this:  the northern route affects 1000 + 100 (because 80 is nearly 100) = 1100 households.  On the other hand, the southern route affects 1000 + 100 (because 80 +70 = 150 which isn't near enough to 200 to be counted as 200) = 1100.    QED!

Both routes have the same environmental impact?  Well I'm blowed.  Highways England have just proved black is white.    Whoever came up with this way of 'selling' the bypass should hang their head(s) in shame. 

Highways England would clearly like us to take their assessments as articles of faith.   Getting any real information out of them is hideously painful and is following an all to predictable course.  The rules of the game are simple, the more you already know, the more you will get.  You first get a flat denial that information exists.  When you apply a little pressure you are told that they wouldn't normally collect that sort of data at this stage .   Some may falter now, but don't.  Grab them by their metaphorical testicles and squeeze - please do not do so for real, no matter how tempting things get!

The third stage is confession and confession they say is good for the soul - it isn't quite as good for our blood pressure though.  They admit to having got the data, but suggest that "you probably wouldn't understand it" and when you point out that "yes you would." the pantomime descends into its final stage of obfuscation.  "The data is available, but you have to go through official channels to get it!"   But this isn't a game! It is our future!

Well, the channels have been gone through and the silence from Highways England is positively deafening!

Call us cynical, but you get the feeling that the prime driver for route selection, at least as far as Highways England is concerned, is to pick the route that helps them get rid of all the spoil dug out from under Stonehenge for the tunnel and that happens to be the southern route  That's the elephant in the room, the spoil.  That might go some way to explain why Highways England are reluctant to share information with the public - they might spot the 2 million ton elephant.

Now don't get me wrong, we need a bypass, badly.  But not a bypass at any price, not a bypass route that isn't the best option for the most households, not a bypass route that we have to accept as an article of faith.   We want to be able to make our preference known on the basis of evidence and not the smoke and mirrors that sems to be the mainstay of the Highways England approach.