President Barack Obama Contributes to A303 Road Chaos

As I write, it seems that President Barack Obama is gracing Wiltshire with his presence.  Unfortunately, the President of the US and leader of the free world as he may well be, has been contributing to traffic chaos on the A303 for most of the afternoon.

Having flown in to Boscombe Down earlier, his motorcade went north across the blocked A303, up to Larkhill and then approached the Stonehenge visitor's centre from the Bustard crossroads.  So, he's officially a rat runner and (with tongue firmly in cheek) I expect that STAG will be making representations to the White House about such bad behaviour.

We wonder if he had pre-booked his visit to Stonehenge, as he's certainly not a local resident and whether he paid the usual extortionate entrance charge.  We think perhaps not. 

Of course, the serious point is that the A303 isn't fit for your average motorist, let alone for President Obama.

UPDATE

Although he wasn't allowed to drive along the A303,  President Obama appears to have flown alongside it as he left Boscombe Down this evening, with what appeared to be Marine One flying directly over Winterbourne Stoke and the rest of his entourage flying slightly to the south of the village.

 Most notable were the lead group of 3 Bell-Boeing V22 Osprey's (aka "The Widowmaker").  These were possibly from the 7th Special Operations Squadron, 352d Special Operations Group from RAF Mildenhall.  So from causing jams on the A303, the president managed to trump that by causing a veritable traffic jam above it.  Click to enlarge and see just how many helicopters were involved!

Pedestrian Critical After Being Hit By Car Near Stonehenge

 We've been fairly quiet over the summer, monitoring the now near daily chaos on the A303.  We now return, but in the saddest way possible, to report a serious road traffic accident.

 We don't yet know all the circumstances, but at around 8:45pm of Friday evening, a 37 year old man from the Gwent area of Wales was struck by a west-bound Mercedes 300 driven by a 28 year old London man on the stretch of the A303 between Stonehenge and here in Winterbourne Stoke.  The road was closed until after midnight.

The pedestrian is reported this lunchtime as being in critical condition with serious head injuries.

Anyone who saw the accident is asked to call Wiltshire Police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

UPDATE:

Sadly, the individual concerned, Patrick Sturtivant, did not survive.  Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family.

The more we hear about this incident, the more predictable it all was.  In fact, all the recent changes to the road system around Stonehenge, and access to the proximity of the stones, made it all but inevitable.

In the past, westbound traffic, wanting to spend a few minutes getting a "trophy" shot of Stonehenge, possibly the most photographed man-made object in the world, used to pull off onto the A344, a route where the majority of the traffic used the road regularly and where the drivers where used to tourists spilling into the road, thumbs up bums, brains in neutral, thoughts fixed only on taking a happy snap.  As a consequence, and quite unwittingly,  road safety was policed by local drivers.  Of course, the closure of the A344 put paid to that.

The second factor that might have contributed to this accident, again fairly predictably, was the "no right turn" signage on the A303 - attempting to prevent traffic turning on to Byway 12.  This was done on the spurious pretext of road safety.  Why spurious?  Well, unlike many of the small turnings off the A303 to the west of Amesbury, the entrance to Byway 12 is visible from a good half mile in either direction.  We suspect the real reason behind the signage is twofold.  First, a legitimate attempt to stop the traffic on the A303 slowing and causing congestion and second, a sop to English Heritage's long-held desire to close Byway 12, completely, to force all visitors to enter the World Heritage Site at Airman's Cross.  Of course, trying to improve traffic flow by banning right turns off the A303 was completely counter productive.  The travelling public did the blindingly obvious - slow, or even stop on the A303 to take that all important photo.

On this occasion, it seems that Mr Sturtivant, travelling west at dusk last Friday, pulled off the A303 at Byway 11, to the east of Byway 12.  Not much local traffic here, just long distance travellers, frustrated by earlier delays, simply wanting to get to the West Country for the weekend.   No doubt there was a glimpse to the right for a quick look at the stones by the Mercedes driver and then he was at Byway 12...

Four Thousand Holes in Blackburn Lancashire, Four Hundred Cameras Around Shrewton, Wiltshire

I do have to apologise to the memory of the late and great John Lennon for abusing the lyrics of "A Day in the Life" but I simply couldn't resist drawing the analogy.

Yesterday, the Salisbury Journal published a very interesting article on the A303 entitled simply: "A303 traffic survey to be carried out"

Basically, the story explains that Atkins, the traffic management consultancy will be placing number plate recognition cameras along the A303 and on surrounding roads as part of a scheme to track vehicle movements on the traffic-choked highway.The Journal article claims that there will be hundreds of these cameras on the surrounding roads, but we suspect that this might be something of an exaggeration and that perhaps 10-20 NPR cameras might be closer to the mark.

Winterbourne Stoke resident, Chairman of the parish council and Wiltshire councillor Ian West observed: "Residents of Shrewton believe the speed and volume of traffic in Shrewton has been made worse by the closure of the A344.

One of the main concerns expressed by local residents is the speed and volume of traffic, it is quoted as one of the main safety factors which people see as a barrier to travelling around their communities on foot or by bicycle or to letting children travel independently. This has very much affected the quality of life in Shrewton.

We very much look forward to the results of the Atkins survey because the increase in traffic is becoming unbearable in Shrewton and the surrounding villages both sides of the A303.” 

Of course, it isn't just Shrewton or indeed the residents here in Winterbourne Stoke who are suffering as a result of the A344 closure.  We (WiSBAng) and the Stonhenge Traffic Action Group (STAG), regularly hear of problems being caused as far afield as Berwick St James, Larkhill, Durrington, Bulford and Amesbury.

Although we wholeheartedly welcome this new initiative and data-gathering exercise, we feel duty-bound to point out something that some might think verges on negligence on the part of Wiltshire Council.  Over the last two decades and more, every bit of traffic modelling undertaken on the A303 corridor, some of it commissioned by Wiltshire Council, predicted that there would be traffic chaos in the surrounding villages if the A344 were to be closed BEFORE the A303 was upgraded.  For years, Wiltshire Council resisted the closure of the A344 on those grounds, then in 2010/2011 they did an about face and sided with English Heritage in pushing for the closure.

Surprise, surprise.  The A344 was closed and all the traffic models were proved correct. 

Now any competent authority would have undertaken a survey such as that being carried out by Atkins between Monday, August 4th and Sunday, August 10th prior to closing the A344, then do the same again after the closure to ensure the changes had had no adverse effects and to be able to quantify the changes with hard data.  That would have been far too sensible and of course it might have run the risk of exposing, in irrefutable terms, that a mistake had been made in closing the A344 prematurely.  That would never do, would it?

As it is, when Atkins report their findings we will know how bad the situation on all these local roads is, but in the absence of knowing what they were like in quantitative terms before the A344 closure, it is impossible to say how much worse they have become.  We can make some estimates based on earlier surveys, but on fewer roads, using somewhat different methodologies; that's far from ideal.

Was That the TDF Peloton Arriving in Winterbourne Stoke?

Since the summer solstice there has been precious little to report on the A303.  Stories of any substance have been hard to find and we had resorted to searching the internet for anything interesting.  We wondered just how many stories on the A303 had been initiated by Wiltshire Council since the start of the year, sitting in all their pontificatorial splendour in Trowbridge?  Given that the A303 is the major east-west trunk road in the south of the county, given its importance to the local economy and especially given the fact HMG are currently looking at the feasibility of improving the A303 through the county, you might expect some fairly regular stories to emerge.  Stories saying just how important this work was and how the county council was 100% behind it.  You might expect such stories but you would be gravely disappointed, there's not been a single one, nada, nothing, bugger-all.  Either Wiltshire Council, as some claim, are overly focussed on the north of the county, or they are determined to kowtow to central government when it comes to the A303.  There was a time when Wiltshire Council and Wiltshire councillors had a bit of backbone.  For whatever reason, they seem to be becoming invertebrates.

On Monday evening, the Winterbourne Stoke Parish Council held its regular meeting.  Lots of things on the agenda and several of them related to the A303 and surrounding roads.  As ever, the meeting was good humoured and purposeful and at the end of it, all the Parish Councillors were going wander down through the village to look at the playpark.

As we came to cross the A303, back into the village we saw a sight that made our blood run cold.  There was a convoy of around 30 to 40 cyclists riding down the A303 from the direction of Longbarrow Roundabout and Stonehenge, all in high-visibility jackets and most riding line astern. It looked like the Tour de France peloton had taken a wrong turn and finished up in Wiltshire. Way too many yellow jerseys to work out which one was Vincenzo Nibali winning yet another mountain stage!  As they got closer, there was a collective holding of breath as several vans passed them.  Regular users of the A303 are only to well aware that the road is barely wide enough to allow vehicles to pass in opposite directions.  It's way too narrow to allow overtaking.  Thankfully, at 9:15pm on a Monday evening, traffic is light and the riders survived long-enough for some of them to pull off the road at the end of Church Street.

We crossed the road to see if we could help them as it was clear that they were lost.  We couldn't work out their nationality, Japanese perhaps, but one of their number explained they were heading for the Stonehenge Campsite, about a mile away.  Clearly, the A303 had not quite been the road they had been expecting and a few of them looked a wee bit shaken.  We never did find out where they had cycled from.

It does raise another point about the A303 in this part of the West Country; it is a tourist area and people want to mover around the landscape on foot, on bikes and on horseback, as well as in and on motorised vehicles.  We hope that the government have sufficient foresight to construct a byway for this type of user.  One that runs alongside a dualled A303, but separated from it by barriers.  It should run from Amesbury (and ideally well east of Amesbury in time) all the way to Devon and Cornwall.  Such a facility would be welcomed by the many tourists, local, national and international, who flock to this area and put so much into the local economy.

It's interesting that such foresight was missing from the Wiltshire Council Local Transport Plan Cycling Strategy 2011-2026.

Another example of a missed opportunity by Wiltshire Council, where everyone matters, but where everything moves with slug-like velocity.

STOP PRESS: Abnormal Loads On The A303

Wiltshire Police are warning motorists to be aware of several abnormal loads that will be passing through the county this week, eastbound along a section of the A303.  Thank goodness they didn't try this on Monday with the chaos caused by a crash at Stonehenge and the crowds heading home after the Glastonbury Festival.

At approximately 11.00am on Wednesday 2nd July, three specialist load transporters carrying dump trucks will be escorted by Wiltshire Police from Whatley Quarry, Frome to the Parkhouse roundabout off the A303. The transporter will then continue its planned route (outside of the Wiltshire border) on the A303 and A34 before later joining the M4 where it will re-enter the county.  We think it is probably these little beauties making a return journey:

The same transporters carrying similar loads will then make an identical trip 24 hours later on Thursday 3rd July, also starting at approximately 11.00am.  You do have to question the common sense of whoever agreed to this happening on a Thursday, at a time when eastbound traffic is likely to be building up in the new A303 special - the advanced Friday rush hour.

The transporters and their loads will measure 5.75 metres (18ft 10ins) wide, 4.98m (16ft 4ins) high with an overall length of 23m (76ft) and gross weight of 117 tonnes.

Routes that are likely to be affected by the transportation are the eastbound stretches of the A361, A36, A350 and A303. The transporter will also be travelling on the A34 and M4 later in the afternoon.

Due to the size of the transporters, they will be slow moving and will have the potential to create congestion. Wherever possible, disruption will be kept to a minimum but hauliers and motorists are asked to please be patient if they come across this load. Anyone travelling over this period should allow sufficient additional time.

Regular updates and travel information in respect of the abnormal loads will be passed from our control room at Devizes when appropriate to help motorists plan their journey.

Police escorting resources are being provided by volunteer police officers on rest days, paid for by the haulier at no cost to the public.

Now how much easier would all this be if the A303 were dualled along its entire length?  Watch out for problems in Winterbourne Stoke if either of these convoys meet an HGV travelling westwards. 

So Nearly a Tragedy

Early yesterday afternoon we so nearly had a tragedy here in the heart of Winterbourne Stoke on the A303.  I heard the sirens heading along the Berwick road, and more coming up the Devizes road, as I walked on the ridge above the village and it was clear that there had been yet another accident.  The only question was, how bad?

While we are often afflicted with traffic jams, we also suffer from speeding when the road is a little clearer.  Frequently, the culprits are HGV's, racing down the hills on each side of the village, westbound and eastbound though eastbound is worst, to keep up their momentum to let them climb the hill back out of the village.  I don't mean a few miles per hour over the 40 mph speed limit, these HGV's are often travelling at well over 60 and even 70mph, if the Highways Agency's roadside speed monitors are to be believed.

In between times, if the traffic isn't stationary or trying to break the land-speed record, it is merely fast and inconsiderate.  So in every traffic state, trying to turn right onto the A303, out of the one and only access road to the village, can be fraught with danger, or simply incredibly frustrating and time consuming.  When the traffic is stationary, or very slow moving, drivers block the entrance to the village and refuse to let villagers out.  When the traffic is travelling very fast, you can pull out onto a clear road only to have an HGV screaming into view in your rear-view mirror; brakes smoking and horn blaring.  In between these two extremes you get a bit of both.  You can wait for a long, long time for a gap to appear in both lanes of traffic and west-bound drivers, even though they will have had clear site of you waiting patiently for over half a mile, still refuse to let you pull out.  This state of the traffic can be the worst of all and passengers have been known to get out of the car, run down to the crossing in an attempt to create a gap in the traffic.

Then sometimes, just sometimes, you get a nice person who tries to be helpful and let you out of the village onto the A303.  That's what happened yesterday and as a result, an act of kindness so nearly ended in tragedy.

Basically, what happened was this.  A young nanny was trying to leave the village, with two of her young charges in the car.  There was virtually no westbound traffic but a constant stream eastbound.  After waiting some while, a kind eastbound driver in a blue car stopped and beckoned her to pull out.  She made one last check of the road, especially the westbound A303 and when she looked back in preparation to pull out, there was a loud bang and the blue car seemed to have tuned into a silver one and then a big, white HGV, spewing red liquid..  Confused, she hesitated.  Had she pulled out without first checking, things could have ended so differently.  Fortunately, her car was untouched and she was able to reverse back, safely, into the village.

What seems to have happened is this.  The blue car came to a stop and beckoned our driver out of the village.  Further back down the road, and I will make no comment as to the hows and whys of what happened next here,  a large articulated tanker from the Netherlands failed to stop and hit a silver car in the rear.  It was this car that shot forward and into our nanny's field of vision replacing the blue car after hitting it in the rear and, in-turn, being replaced by the HGV.  This is the scene after the emergency services arrived:

The HGV was pretty well beaten up:

The front of the silver car wasn't very pretty either:

However, it was the rear that took the full force of the HGV:

Now, it doesn't seem to have been a very high speed collision,  but whatever combination of speed and distance from the car in front pertained, the lorry driver was unable to stop in time.  The HGV is only three years old, so a relatively new vehicle - unlike many of those that hurtle through.  It doesn't take take much imagination to picture what might have been had one of the leading cars, or the HGV, hit the side of the nanny's car; T-boning it.  Less imagination still to picture the scene if the HGV had been racing into the village as many do - 10mph, 20mph or even 30mph + over the speed limit.

Half-a-dozen people were very lucky yesterday; fortunately with no-one suffering serious injuries.  Yet again, another accident in Winterbourne Stoke shows the unsuitability of the A303 for its purpose as a major strategic route to the West Country and the dangers that the current road poses for the villages that lie alongside the single-carriageway sections of the entire A303/A30/A358 corridor.

This is just one of the reasons why WiSBAng and STAG are campaigning to ensure that the this important road corridor is dualled along its entire length, and as soon as possible.

Has the Highway Agency Lied To The Public on Twitter?

Back in May, we raised a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Highways Agency on the "What Do They Know" website.  As we've said before, we think this is the best way of raising FOIA requests as it usually acts as a spur to keeping the recipients honest and they usually take a bit more care in answering, as mistakes are in the public domain and they risk being humiliated by a public correction, or having downright lies exposed.  This doesn't seem to work in the case of the Highways Agency.

We asked them to list the times and dates of apparent failures of the traffic camera on the A303 at Solstice Park, Amesbury, as it seemed that the camera was frequently out of service when the traffic levels on the A303 were greatest.  Rather than raise this as an unfounded suspicion, we wanted to have factual information (as it turned out, our suspicions about camera failure were unfounded, but we haven't yet established if the camera is ever deliberately turned off!).

Imagine our surprise when we received the following response:

...I refer to your request under the above legislation for information about failure of traffic cameras on the A303.

I can confirm that we do not hold the information. We believe that, as this is a safety camera operated by Wiltshire Police, the information you require may be held by Wiltshire Police. If you have not already done so, you may wish to contact them...

Now, we knew that this was complete cock-and-bull, but we played the game and re-sent the FOIA request to Wiltshire Police, who responded as we expected, pointing out that the police unit responsible for static cameras closed in 2010.  So, back to the Highways Agency we went and asked for an internal review of their original answer.

This time, we got the following response and somewhat half-hearted apology:

"...I am writing to confirm that I have now completed an internal review of our original response to you, which you requested on 30th May.

It appears that we were mistaken in our first response to you and that the Highways Agency has responsibility for the camera in question. Please accept my sincere apologies for the misinformation and any subsequent inconvenience this has caused..."

This isn't the first time that they have answered our FOIA's incorrectly - the level of incompetence for a Government Agency is simply astounding.

Over the last few days, in the run-up to Summer Solstice 2014, we at STAG have been monitoring traffic levels on the A303 and one of the strands of this is to monitor, when possible, the Solstice Park camera.

From midweek, the camera has been out of service and it was definitely out of service last night, showing the typical failure notice:

Imagine our surprise, when we awoke very early on Solstice morning, to see the following Twitter-feed from the Highways Agency:

Poetic, wonderful, atmospheric, the Amesbury webcam was clearly fixed in time for the Solstice dawn.  We are sure the English Heretics would have been delighted by the plug.

Well, actually, no.  The camera was still unavailable the second the tweet was published.  So, are the Highways Agency lying through their teeth about watching the sunrise through the Amesbury webcam, or, are they are lying through their teeth about the camera being available and deliberately suppressing the feed?

Superficially, and in the greater scheme of things, if the Highways Agency are lying, this might seem a fairly trivial untruth.  However, it is information, being put in the public domain on behalf of the Government.  In effect, if true, it's the Government misleading the people.  If they can't be trusted over something as trivial as a webcam feed, how can they be trusted when it comes to something more important regarding the A303 - the current feasibility study for improving it for instance?

Let's just say we are unhappy, a wee bit vexed.

Agencies like the Highways Agency should be answerable to the people and we hope that our MP, John Glen, will seek answers from the Highways Agency on our behalf.