5 Reasons why A1 Dualling is not a ‘magic wand’ project:
1. Induced demand: Widened roads almost universally lead to more traffic – local examples of this include the Tyne Tunnel (more traffic passing through the tunnels caused chaos at Silverlink and Testos junctions). Its also surely inferred from the ‘economic growth’ arguments of a widened road.
2. Increased emissions: Building on point 1, more cars/vans/HGV’s mean more emissions not less – even increasing vehicle speeds to 70mph presents an increase in fuel/electrical consumption (fewer mpg or m/kWh for EV).
Northumberland is setting out to be -Net Zero Northumberland’ – why encourage a project that pushes this 1.44m tonnes further away (Government’s own figures for effect of Morpeth-Ellingham scheme over 60 years), with transport the WORST sector for Northumberlands’ emissions.
3. Increased traffic/parking problems: If more people are travelling on the A1 by car, then for them to contribute more to Northumberland economy means more traffic and parking issues within villages, towns, beaches and more – places like Alnwick, Bamburgh, Craster and many other places suffer from current high levels of traffic and parking problems that dualling will only make worse.
4. Road safety: Dualling might mean an ‘improvement’ in safety, but alone doesn’t make roads safe. A more immediate and proven means of improving road safety as shown on the A9 is the installation of devices such as average speed cameras, which reduce the overall number of accidents as well as the severity of those that do happen. Sections of the A1, such as near Felton have been known to be speeding hotspots with speeds in excess of 100mph frequently recorded by police.
Other measures include tackling issues such as mobile phone usage while driving or under influence of drink/drugs.
5. Access to hospitals/emergency care: While a dualled road might offer some improvement in journey times, a better and even perhaps cheaper alternative is to actually build a hospital nearer to the Scottish Border. NSECH in Cramlington cost £95m in 2015, with the 2014 cost of dualling Morpeth – Ellingham at £293m. So for a third of the cost, a new build and fully equipped emergency hospital could be built nearer communities quite distant from emergency care centres of NSECH/RVI and overall offer an increase in NHS facilities.
Solutions
Solution to 1: Induced demand occurs across all modes of transport (private, public and active travel), so improving public transport/active travel access via more services to railway stations large and small on ECML (for example Alnmouth & Chathill) with connecting bus services and safer walking/cycling routes could encourage more people to travel via Public Transport or walking & cycling rather than private car. Investing in the ECML itself to improve track capacity, as well as at stations for parking/bus interchange is a better investment. Creating more railfreight capacity would also allow modal shift of freight from road to rail transport.
Solution to 2: Modal shift as in Solution 1 would lead to real cuts in emissions as people could move to much more viable trips by bus/rail if integration of these modes was encouraged and enabled – many places are currently poorly served by excessively long bus journeys, where a mix of rail and bus would make journeys much more competitive with driving – this may involve also considering new rail routes such as Berwick – Newcastle via Blyth (Northumberland Loop) that could use soon to open Northumberland Line stations to connect highly populated SE Northumberland to North Northumberland which could help provide access to tourism employment for those in SE Northumberland.
Solution to 3: Again better public transport/active travel routes to and from major attractions like the Northumberland Coast, Castles and Gardens would reduce demand for and need for parking tha takes up valuable land from nature or agriculture or even for housing and business use – you get the double win of tourists without the car, all the upsides of supporting businesses and economy with less of the downsides of congestion and parking chaos.
Solution to 4: Average speed cameras and other safety measures can be quickly and cheaply implemented to have a much more immediate safety benefit to all drivers and can be applied ahead of wider road layout improvements which often take considerable time.
Solution to 5: It would be upto NHS to decide if a new hospital could/should be built nearer to Berwick, but having one physically closer should mean much better access to care, especially important for the aging population of the area.
Ryan Hogg 