Report warns against expanding London-Exeter route

16 January 2008
 
Planning inspectors have warned against increasing capacity of the London-Exeter strategic road network, claiming this would undermine efforts to reduce car trips.

The panel report into the draft regional spatial strategy for South West England, for the period up to 2026, recommended a new, overriding aim of reducing the rate of growth of traffic.

The draft document backed a second strategic route into the region, while supporting the need for a ‘step change’ in public transport provision.

The inspectors’ report is the second blow in as many months to the regional assembly’s ambitions for a ‘second strategic route’ by upgrading the A303 and A358, after the Government ditched the A303 Stonehenge improvement (Surveyor, 13 December 2007). Reporting after last year’s three-month inquiry into the spatial strategy, the panel of inspectors stressed that the biggest delays were in urban areas, not on intra-urban routes.

As such, they urged that highest funding priority be given to public transport schemes, followed by road upgrades which would benefit the operation of public transport, such as those in built-up areas. The inspectors also backed the document’s plans for 28,000 new homes each year, a 40% increase over the current annual house completions.

Catherine le Grice-Mack, the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s Somerset chairman, said: ‘The A358 is used more as a local and sub-regional route, and enlarging its capacity would be contrary to the draft spatial strategy aims of reducing carbon emissions.’

The South West Regional Assembly claimed the panel had ‘accepted the basic approach to transport set out in the strategy’, but proposed extending demand management.

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