Devon County Council Thinking on the A303/A30 Stuck in the Devonian Age

Devon County Council currently have a survey running on the SurveyMonkey website.  You can find it here.

The sad thing is, when you read the questions it seems that Devon County Council are thinking along very narrow lines.  Statements like:

"Recognising that much of this stretch is through the Blackdown Hills which is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, any solution must be sensitive to the environment. Given the economic climate, it is also likely that any improvements will take place over a long period of time, so they must be planned and work in harmony together as the scheme evolves. Dualling is not likely to occur, but please outline your thoughts on how the problems detailed above might be solved", are terribly negative, and yet positively Devonian (in the geological sense!).  This attitude to the A303 is depressingly common. 

If you ever use the A303 over the Blackdown Hills, I strongly urge you to take the survey and let Devon County Council know what you think about the problems that need to be addressed and the opportunities that exist to solve them.

Like the Stonehenge A303 section, the Blackdown Hills are going to be a hotbed of contention and rightly so, it's another beautiful area of the country and part of the reason many are heading west in the first place.  Just like the Stonehenge section, there are lots of vested interests and pet solutions that cloud the issue, get folks hot under the collar and divert them from productive thinking.  So, as with Stonehenge, the Blackdown Hills need special attention.

What is it we are actually trying to achieve along the A303/A30 corridor and what are the compromises that no-one wants to make?  I'd argue the following, and given the recent problems with the Exeter-Penzance rail line, I'd argue even more strenuously than previously:

- we want a fast, reliable and sustainable route running from the Hampshire border to the tip of Cornwall;
- we want to maximise the number of routes (rail, A303 M4/M5) as far westwards as possible for maximum resilience;
- it must have minimal impact on local communities;
- it must have minimal impact on areas of outstanding natural beauty, SSI and the like;
- it has to be affordable

The route options seem to be along the current route of the A303 - it's always going to be hilly and have twists and turns and be vulnerable to adverse weather, but it does have the advantage of being short and impacting on a very small population.

Second is diverting off the current A303 at Ilminster, along the A358 towards Taunton and then joining the M5.  Attractive to some as it avoids the Blackdown Hills, but is the least resilient route option available as it merges all the east-west traffic well to the east of Exeter.

Third is the southern option, cutting south west from Ilminster and then following the path of the A35, between the Blackdown Hills AONB and the East Devon AONB.  The attraction of this route is that it avoids cutting through the centre of the Blackdown Hills AONB and keeps two trunk roads running to the west until Exeter.  On the downside, it is the route that would affect the greatest number of communities and two AONB.

But again, perhaps innovation is needed here.  Who says that both carriageways of the A303 have to run along the same route?  A  fourth option would be to take westbound traffic along the current route of the A303 and A30 from Ilminster to Exeter.  Eastbound traffic could be routed along the M5 to Taunton and back to the current route at Ilminster.  Of course, this might prove an absolute embuggerance for the small communities along the current route of the A303, but it's a question that needs to be asked.   There are possibly other innovative solutions  - westbound via the A35 and eastbound via the M5, etc - but all need to be identified and put on the table!

The Fragile Routes to the West of England - Wessex Sub Aqueanus

Over the last month, we have seen the fragility of the transport infrastructure through Wessex.  First we had the closure of the A303 in Somerset A303 between the Podimore and Cartgate Roundabouts on Christmas Eve when the River Yeo burst its banks.

Then we had a second closure of the A303, at the Deptford Junction with the A36, caused by rising groundwater levels on the western edge of Salisbury Plain.  Even after the initial flood subsided a wee bit, we still had a contraflow working for some time as it took some time for all carriageways and the slip roads to clear.  Even this week, the A303 westbound has been closed at night to allow the damage caused by the flooding to be repaired.

The rain has continued at a lower intensity for the last couple of weeks, and the A303 seems to be safe for the moment.  That said, groundwater levels haven't dropped at all on Salisbury Plain, even though the levels in the River Till, through Winterbourne Stoke have dropped around 5-10 cm.  Today, the Tilshead borehole levels look like this:

Of course, yesterday, we had yet more rain and storm surges throughout the Wessex region.  We had 14.7mm here in Winterbourne Stoke, but that was trivial compared to levels further West.  The Somerset Levels,  already suffering for over a month from the floods, exacerbated by the abject failure of the Environment Agency to effectively dredge blocked water channels, has water levels rising yet again.  King Canute couldn't hold back the water and sadly, it seems, neither can Prince Charles - but at least he took the time to go, showed REAL understanding of the issues and concerned for those he met.

The rain and the spring tides and high winds wrought damage further west in Dawlish, tearing out the ballast under the main line from Exeter to Penzance, ripping out the adjacent road and threatening houses and businesses.

This morning on  TV,  a Network Rail spokesman was suggesting that it might take 6 weeks and tens of millions of pounds, if not one to two hundred million pounds,  to put right the damage caused in an hour of nature at its most furious.  And still more rain and high winds are predicted in the coming days - with rain levels on high ground predicted to be up to 20-40mm per day - higher than anything we have seen this winter by a good margin.

This all raises a number of very important questions for the Wessex transport infrastucture.  We have lost the major rail line for a number of weeks - assuming there is no further damage.  Passengers and freight are going to have to transfer to the roads - the A303 and the M4/M5 further north.  With the additional predicted rain, there seems to be a possibility that further flooding of the A303 might occur this weekend or early next week - pushing all that traffic on to the northern route.  

Engineers talk of a "single point of failure" (SPOF!), which is the part of a system, that if it fails, will cause the rest of the system to fail.  With multiple means of transport through Wessex, there was no SPOF, but it is possible that within hours or days, there will only be one point in the transport infrastructure left and only one to fail - the M4/M5 corridor.  A single minor incident on the motorway could stop traffic in any numbers getting through Wiltshire/Avon and in to Devon and Cornwall. Diversionary routes south through the Somerset levels are simply not viable.

I hope politicians locally and nationally are looking at this and thinking of the consequences.  In our campaign to improve the A303 west from the Hampshire border, we are often told that it will be the economic case that decides whether the A303 is improved,  rather than providing yet more roads/extra carriageways  in urban areas.  Somerset Council are pretty much on the ball and have made an excellent financial case for improving the A303/A358/A30 corridor.  Wiltshire Council seem to be riding very much on their coat tails - or worse.  Their level of engagement and activity has been described to me in very graphic terms:  "Thumbs up bums - brains in neutral!"  Certainly, trying to get a response from those with a transport brief on the Council is nigh on impossible - Wiltshire Council - where people mutter.

Perhaps Mother Nature has done us a major service by pointing out the real economic issues involved here.  From Stonehenge westwards along the whole of the A303/A358/A30 corridor, tourism is the major industry - and to take advantage of tourism, there is one over-riding priority - to get the tourists to the places they want to visit.  No means of the tourist getting there, no tourism.  No tourism, no jobs.  No jobs - no economy.

To support the tourism, goods need to be shipped in.  No rail and no road, no goods shipped in.  No goods, no tourists, no employment, no economy.  And, of course, everything that goes in has to get out again - along the same. limited routes.

For the Wessex region, it really is that simple - the transport infrastructure is its life blood - and with so few alternatives, it really is a unique situation that must be addressed as such.  Perhaps even Wiltshire Council can be encouraged to de-digitate and get on with it!

The High Points and Low Points of the A303

A few miles west of Andover, travellers along the A303 cross from Hampshire into Wiltshire and shortly thereafter encounter Beacon Hill; with Boscome Down and Porton Down visible to the south and Bulford over the crest of the hill to the north.

At the summit of Beacon Hill, at a height of around 560ft above sea level, is perhaps one of the most important points on the entire length of the A303.  Obviously, it's a high point because it is at the highest point of Beacon Hill. But the reason it's a low point is much less obvious.

Can you think what it might be?  Why do we regard it as a low point?  Need a clue?

OK, take a look here then:

Can you see it now?  Look in the foreground to the left of the carriageway.  Can you see how the strip of tarmac immediately to the left of the continuous white line all but disappears?   The similar strip on the right hand side of the carriageway continues for a few metres further, to roughly a point level with the back of the car transporter ahead of the Google Earth camera car.

So what?  We would argue that this point is where the A303 changes from being a high quality trunk road with carriageways wide enough to take modern traffic, to the narrow roads that lead beyond, past Stonehenge, to Winterbourne Stoke.

Apart from a few (but, not all) of the more modern dual carriageway sections and the 3-lane "death trap" sections, that little strip of tarmac never re-appears between the top of Beacon Hill and Penzance.  It never ever appears on an un-dualled section of the A303.   It represents the effective loss of 1.2 metres off the overall width of a single carriageway road, or 2.4 metres off the width of a dual carriageway.  That little strip of land, that inocuous-seeming piece of tarmac at the edge of each lane might represent the difference between life and death for a pedestrian, a cyclist or a motor-cyclist.  That's how important it is!  Life and death important.

According to the Department for Transport in its Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (2005), the specifications for rural dual and single carriageway roads are as shown below (click on the picture to get a larger view).

So East of Beacon Hill, by and large, the A303 complies with this, but West of Beacon Hill, all the way south west through Somerset and into Devon, down to the junction with the A30, it largely doesn't.  The consequences of this are fairly damning - west of Beacon Hill, the A303 is largely not fit for purpose, it certainly isn't fit to be a trunk road.  It isn't really fit to be an un-trunked A-road.  All this assumes that the lanes of the A303 (the bit between the centreline of the carriageway and the outermost edge of the edge line are 3.65 metres in width.   We should never take anything for granted and the width of these lanes is something we will return to later.

I'm sure that someone somewhere will take delight in pointing out that these are modern standards and that you can't expect an old road to match such a standard.   To an extent a fair argument, particularly for a road that had followed its current course for a century or more.  But as we saw in earlier posts, that doesn't really apply to the A303 and the stretch between Amesbury and Mere, through Winterbourne Stoke, in particular.  The A303 only came into being in 1958 - fairly recently in the great scheme of things.

Perhaps the most embarrassing point is that shown in the first photograph.  Someone, somewhere decided to make the A303 metalled surface 2.4 metres narrower to the west of Beacon Hill summit than it was to the east.   Now just which half-wit, or half-wits, were responsible for that piece of forward thinking?  Perhaps it is time to de-trunk the A303!