Showing Solidarity With Somerset And Making A Difference

From the outset, WISBAng has tried not to be overly parochial when it comes to the need to dual the A303 - we want to create the legacy of a viable southern route to the West Country - all the way, to the very tip of Cornwall.  So while we do report on those issues closest to home in Wiltshire and around Stonehenge, we keep a weather eye open for other campaigning activities along the A303/A358/A30 corridor between the Hampshire border and Penzance.

We've also stressed, several times, the need to engage with other campaigns to improve the A303.  We are not alone - and neither are the other campaigners.  So when we heard that, as part of National

Newspaper week, the Somerset-based Western Gazette had been short-listed for the prestigious Making a Difference award.

Making a Difference aims to highlight the power of local newspapers to campaign for positive change in the communities they serve and judges have selected 30 of the strongest editorial campaigns across the UK.

So, why not help raise the profile of the A303 campaigns across the south west of England by voting for the Western Gazette and helping them to win!

Click here to register your vote.

Local Newspaper Week, which starts today, Making a Difference aims to highlight the power of local newspapers to campaign for positive change in the communities they serve. Judges have selected 30 of the strongest editorial campaigns across the UK.
Read more at http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/A303-campaign-Making-Difference-Western-Gazette/story-21085853-detail/story.html#XxpIFzsE5vG1z65w.99

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!

A303 - The Highway to Hell

It is Monday 30th December 2013.  It is raining heavily, 10mm already this morning, and it is blowing a gale; though not as bad as it was a week ago in the run-up to Christmas.  The great New Year exodus will begin today, with folks travelling east and west along the A303.  Of course, minds will be a little more focused than they were last week, particularly in relation to the flooding of the A303 between the Podimore and Cartgate Roundabouts in Somerset.

At the moment, Cartgate looks like this:

and Podimore looks like this:

The weather does look to be clearing a bit from the West, so there is some hope the rain will stop - at least for a while.


But if the traffic gets bad and you get stuck on the A303, what can you do to pass the time?  Well, how about a bit of karaoke?  What better track to sing along to than AC/DC's Highway to Hell.  It sort of sums up the A303 experience at the moment.  Enjoy:

SH2 - Imitation Being the Sincerest Form of Flattery

My apologies for not posting anything for a couple of weeks, I've been away - enjoying roads that were designed to carry traffic between point A and point B with the minimum of fuss and in the shortest time possible.  Unlike the A303.

Well, I suppose a bit of catch-up is in order and one of the news events further west, caught the eye of one of our correspondents.

It seems that the idea of using money saved from the ill-conceived HS2 project to dual the A303 is gaining a bit of traction.   Howard Gosling, a self-employed dangerous goods advisor for the Department for Transport believes money allocated to build the controversial high speed rail link between London and the north could be better spent and has been speaking to the Western Gazette:

Read more here: http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/HS2-Government-s-vanity-project-millions-pounds/story-20119263-detail/story.html

But anyone expecting a quick fix would be disappointed by the statement of the blindingly obvious from Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin,  reported in the Western Morning News on 27th November.  Read more here: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/A303-needs-upgrade-time-says-Minister/story-20225523-detail/story.html

The Fiction of the Traffic Census - According to the Highways Agency

In an earlier post, we explained how the Department for Transport has a methodology for working out what they call the annual average daily flow (AADF).  They seem to rely on a manual traffic census conducted every 2, 4, 6 or 8 years and supplement this with data from Automatic Traffic Counters.

You should read that original article, because it explains why, even if the methodology is used, it is inappropriate for a road like the A303. Anyway, onwards.

We thought it might be helpful, in understanding the traffic flows on the A303, to have an idea of how often manual censuses actually take place, as that says quite a lot about how up-to-date the data being used in the forthcoming reviews might be.  So, we fired off an FOIA to the Department for Transport and back came an answer from my new chums at the Highways Agency - charged with managing England's motorways and strategic A-roads on behalf of the DfT - or should that be mismanaging them?

We asked for the details of any traffic censuses on the stretch of the A303 through Winterbourne Stoke since January 2000; very unambiguous and straightforward.

 The reply we got, as with previous FOIA responses from the Highways Agency, took as by surprise.  It was the one answer we were definitely not anticipating: "We are unaware of any traffic censuses for the A303"

Wow, not just no traffic censuses on our little bit of the A303 since 2000, but none on any of its 90 mile length during that time period.  So, decisions on dualling (or not!) the A303, the closure of the A344, the drawing up of Somerset Council's study on the A303, A358 and A30 have all been based on figures that were not based on manual census data which lies at the heart of the DfT  Road Traffic Estimates Methodology.  At least that is what DfT claim to do - but seemingly not when it comes to the A303.

Frankly, I think that is pretty disgraceful.  I'm sure the HA will protest that they can get all the information they need from the automatic traffic counters (ATC's), but DfTmake it quite clear that the ACTs c.an only collect some of the data recorded in manual censuses that are used to classify vehicle types.  The types of traffic are important when considering the A303 and the ACTs.  When a manual count is carried out, 6 different classifications of HGV are recognised (3 rigid and 3 articulated).  ACTs only recognise HGVs as being rigid or articulated - so they couldn't tell, for instance, the difference between a rigid HGV with two axles and a rigid HGV with four axles.

Which, if DfT/HA are to be believed, makes me wonder how they have come up with traffic statistics like these (click to see enlarged view):

Clearly, these are the manual census categories - yet no manual censuses have been carried out according to HA.  Interpolation by witchcraft perhaps?  Once again, it seems that the Highways Agency:

A. Couldn't tell their arses from the their elbows - even with the benefit of a map.

B. Are inefficient, ineffectual and can't find their own data.

C. Are being disingenuous.

We have asked for clarification.

We also think the Department for Transport should do a bit of re-branding of the Highways Agency with respect to the A303 - we think this would be a tad more honest:

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!

Good Information is Essential to Make Our Case

One of the difficulties in pressing forward the argument for a bypass for Winterbourne Stoke and Stonehenge is that we need good information to inform our position and to rebut the arguments of the opposition.  Often, the information we need is deeply buried and seemingly inaccessible and is often under the control of the very people and organisations who are proving a stumbling block.

Part of the mission of this blog is to wheedle out that information, provide easy links to it so that you can read it for yourselves, but also to consider whether the data that is being used is valid.  Just because information comes from an official source doesn't mean it is credible, doesn't mean it makes the case that is claimed and sometimes it has been  (let's be charitable here) mis-interpreted by the opposition.  It is for you to make up your own minds whether that misinterpretation is accidental or wilful.

Links to this information will appear both in the text of related blog posts, but also under the "Favourite A303 Links" section to the right of the blog posts.   Although the blog has an easy search facility, we wanted all the useful stuff in one place to save time.

Of course, not all of the information from official sources is readily available.  However, we can make use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to try and get at much of that.  It is very easy to do and essentially means you just write to the official body you think controls the information and ask them for it.  In simple terms, if the information you have asked for is not exempt from the FOIA (eg it's a national security issue), it isn't going to cost too much and take too long to answer it (disproportionate cost to the public interest value) and isn't covered by any other statutory "get out" clauses, then the information owner is legally obliged to provide the answer within a very short space of time.  If they don't, the whole issue can be escalated to the Information Commissioner for review.  The good news is that much of the information these days is held in searchable, electronic databases (and more historical data is digitised daily), so rejecting an FOIA on the grounds of cost is becoming increasingly indefensible.  The best FOIA questions are those where you may already know, or strongly suspect, what the answer is, but want original documents or hard facts and figures to reference in making your case. 

The whole FOIA process is made so much easier if you use the What Do They Know? website.   This is a smashing resource that gives you advice on how best to formulate an FOIA request, sends it off to the appropriate authority on your behalf, tracks progress and warns you if the recipient is failing to respond in time.  It provides an easy way of commenting on a response and then asking supplementary questions.  However, the biggest advantage is that the whole process is public.  If you make an FOIA request on your own, only you get the answer, it isn't public, isn't searchable and so isn't as useful to others.

In a campaign like this one, getting the information into the public domain is vital; so if you are tempted to make an FOIA request, please use What Do They Know.

So, what information is there already.  Well, there are already links to the Trunk Road Act (1936) and the later amendment to it, the Trunk Road Act (1946).   All good historical scene setting on trunk roads.  If you like the minutiae of Acts of Parliament, they may be of interest to you.

There are two excellent recent documents that everyone involved in this campaign should read and refer to.  The first is "The Eddington Transport Study" of December 2006 - written for the British Government by the Australian former CEO of BA, Sir Rod Eddington

The Eddington Transport Study set out the case for action to improve road and rail networks, as a "crucial enabler of sustained productivity and competitiveness". The report's main conclusions were that Britain has transport networks that provide the right connections, in the right places, to support the journeys that matter to economic performance. But roads in particular were in serious danger of becoming so congested, the economy would suffer.  Something most of us would agree with.

The second document, and by far and away the single most important information source we have come across, so far, is the "A303, A358, A30: Corridor Improvement Programme - Economic Impact Study" of October 2012.  This most boring sounding report was produced by Parsons Brinckerhoff for Somerset County Council.   What on earth has a report commissioned for Somerset County Council got to do with the little village of Winterbourne Stoke in Wiltshire, rat-running on the roads around and the problems at Stonehenge?

Well you might ask.  Somerset Council are to be congratulated for an inspired piece of work. Parsons Brinckerhoff undertook an appraisal of the economic benefits of dualling the full length of the A303 between Amesbury and Honiton as well as the A358 between Ilminster and Taunton.  The bottom line, for all of us, is that if the A303 and the A3588 were both dualled, then in the context of this plan as a whole, for every pound spent on providing an A303 by-pass for our village of Winterbourne Stoke, the economy would recover £1.80.  For every pound spent putting the A303 in a tunnel the economy would recover £1.80.   The economic advantage is astonishing.  Isn't it a crying shame that Wiltshire Council hadn't either participated fully with Somerset Council and produced a joint document with breakdowns to county level or commissioned a purely Wiltshire-centric study at any point over the last 30 years?

Despite the horrific title, this report is a really good read - and we suggest everyone does at least dip into it. It is full of useful facts and figures that we can make use of in the campaigns to improve our lot.   It is also very well researched and the authors have, in places demonstrated they have seen through the inadequacies of some of the Government's own data processing and interpretation.  Perhaps the best example of this is when it comes to traffic volumes.

Consider the traffic statistics for our village of Winterbourne Stoke.  They look fairly interesting, but one set of numbers got me thinking - those for bicycles.  It seems that four times more bikes go west through our village than go east.  There could be lots of reasons for this, but amongst the most likely reasons is the fact that it may simply be an aretfact of the way data was collected.   Thankfully, the Department of Transport has published its methodology for Road Traffic Estimates.

More turgid stuff, but what it appears to say is that they try to do a manual count on each sampled road length, like the census point 6874 on the A303 at Winterbourne Stoke, as often as they can.  In reality, this means that every 1, 2, 4 or 8 years (depends on the road), they conduct a manual survey for 12 hours.  Of course, they don't work weekends, public holidays or school holidays; nor do they survey between November and February.  They only undertake manual counts on the 110 what they call 'neutral days' each year.  I guess that is DoT speak for saying they only work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when it isn't cold - poor dears!

These infrequent manual counts are supplemented by electronic input from a national network of 180 (yes, you read that correctly 180) of Automatic Traffic Counters that are used to produce what they call "expansion factors" to interpolate the traffic flow 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; something DoT refer to as the annual average daily flow (AADF).  In other words, this is pseudo-science, a wise-arse guess, or more succinctly, in the vernacular, complete and utter bollocks.

Interpolating from data derived in this way has a number of effects.  Regardless of any seasonal road traffic variations, the inbuilt methodological bias will overestimate the AADF on urban roads where traffic flow is predominantly on weekdays and underestimate traffic flow on rural roads.  The methodology will grossly underestimate traffic flow on the A303 and similar rural trunk routes to holiday destinations, where high traffic flows are predominantly over the weekend, bank holiday and school holiday periods when the manual data is simply not collected.

Worse is to come.  Investment in roads inevitably follows the perceived usage 'statistics'.  When the  usage statistics are as flawed or fictitious as the AADF, the money will be used for urban roads and not rural ones.  It's all down to perception management - we have to ensure the debate questions and asks for validation of every bit of data that is presented - regardless of the source.

Parsons Brinckerhoff, in undertaking the "A303, A358, A30: Corridor Improvement Programme - Economic Impact Study" appear to have looked at the DoT methodology and found it wanting.  They seem to have come up with a different, possibly more robust approach to traffic flow (see section 2.2 of the above report), but it is still based on the manual and automated traffic counts.  We'll be doing some more digging to see just how robust this approach really is.

We suspect that the report may still underestimate traffic flows on the A303, but the good news to end this post on, is simply this. Parsons Brinckerhoff may also have have underestimated the financial benefit to cost ratio of dualling the A303 and thus providing a bypass to Winterbourne Stoke.  That is even without considering both the financial and non-financial benefits to Shrewton, Orcheston, Tilshead, Larkhill, Durrington, Berwick St James, Stapleford and all the other local villages currently suffering