After successful launches in Lewes and Chichester, Arundel will be launching A New Transport Vision for the Sussex Coast on Thursday, 17 May, 7:30pm at Arundel Town Hall. Bridget Fox from Campaign for Better Transport will be the keynote speaker. Refreshments will be available.
The event is free but numbers are limited so make sure you book your ticket early. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.
Well the day we all feared is upon us: the day that Highways England reveals its options for the A27 around Arundel.
Not unexpectedly, the South Downs National Park takes a huge hit whichever option is chosen, although option 1 is marginally better in that development within the National Park is along the existing alignment of the A27. Ancient woodland is also for the chop, as though this and other important features matter little.
It would seem that there is no room for compromise when it comes to attempting to move more and more people by car and little consideration of the consequences of pursuing such a policy. World Heritage Sites (Stonehenge), National Parks, AONBs, ancient woodland, important wildlife sites – none of them matter more than the requirement to shave a few seconds of someone’s journey.
It perhaps wouldn’t be so bad if there was real evidence of the benefits of such an approach, but there aren’t. In fact all it is likely to lead to is more traffic, leading to congestion just moving somewhere else on the network. Indeed as the A27 is expanded along its length, more long distance traffic will start using it, further clogging it up again.
The insanity of our current transport policies are clear to be seen by the solutions being proffered here. If we have a valuable asset such as the National Park, why, if the road is so important, is it not being built in a tunnel for at least part of its length? The reason being that the benefits of the road are not that great and with the warped logic applied by the Department for Transport that means that it is not cost effective to build a tunnel.
So were the road of massive economic importance we would get a tunnel, but because it isn’t we have to suffer the destruction of a swathe of ancient woodland and huge damage to the National Park. It’s utter madness! If we were in The Netherlands, while they like their roads they also build them much more sympathetically. The A4 north of Rotterdam towards Delft has been placed in a tunnel in the urban area and then sunk below ground level through a wet landscape important for its recreational opportunities, significantly reducing its impact on the surrounding area. Whereas we have to be grateful for a noise barrier and some tree planting.
We would urge people to reject all three options and support a low impact variant of option 1 as put forward by local people: the new ‘single purple’ route. This bypasses the key bottlenecks but does so without the harm caused by option 1. Make sure you have your say and vote for a solution that not only works for today but also for future generations.
CPRE Sussex is supporting local residents in their fight to get a sane transport solution for Arundel and the surrounding communities. It highlights recent research by CPRE nationally which shows that new roads often don’t bring the traffic, congestion and economic benefits claimed. In fact in the longer term, they can actually make things worse.
CPRE Sussex is encouraging local people to have their say when the consultation on the A27 at Arundel begins sometime this summer, although with the General Election having been called, this may have slipped to the Autumn. It produced this insert for its last newsletter – the picture on the front showing the view that potentially could be damaged by the type of road Highways England has indicated it wants to build.
Anyone wanting to find out more is encouraged to come on the guided walk along the lone of the old ‘pink-blue’ route on Sunday, 18 June. Meet 10:30am at Dalloway Road, Arundel or contact arundelscate@gmail.com for more information.
The shock announcement by Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, abandoning the A27 upgrade at Chichester shows the A27 isn’t nationally important. If it was, the Government would have gone ahead anyway, regardless of local opinion. However, it also highlights an even bigger issue: while people want a bigger road, in the belief that it will make it easier to get around, they aren’t always prepared to accept the huge social and environmental costs that often come with new roads.
That is why improvements mooted at Worthing do not include a bypass through or under the South Downs National Park as such a road would cause massive damage and huge opposition. Yet like at Chichester, Worthing residents don’t necessarily want the traffic to stay where it is, let alone want more of it.
So where does that leave Arundel? In between Chichester and Worthing, it nestles on the banks of the River Arun at the foot of the South Downs. Hardly anyone disagrees that some form of road improvement is required here, but at what cost?
Highways England’s favoured solution of a dual carriageway bypass would rip up ancient woodland on Tortington Common and scar the National Park. It would increase noise pollution and sever Arundel from Binsted Woods. The tranquillity of the Arun Valley would be lost forever.
If Highways England pursues this option there will be a lot of opposition. Instead they need to work with local people who want to improve the A27, but not at the expense of destroying what they value most about the area.
Locals have identified a wide single carriageway solution that bypasses the station and the other bottlenecks. It doesn’t cause the severance or damage that a high speed dual carriageway would and is receiving widespread backing. Highways England needs to seriously consider this option or it could find itself with a revolt at Arundel, as it did at Chichester.
Ultimately though, until the Department of Transport start pursuing transport solutions based on evidence, rather than ideology, we are going to continue to be stuck in traffic on the Sussex Coast with few alternatives. Even an expanded A27 will only bring short-term relief before it rapidly fills up again, clogging our towns and villages up with even more traffic.
There is a reason why the A27 hasn’t been expanded previously and that is because of the problems in doing so. All that has happened is that we’ve wasted the last 15-20 years while local authorities and MPs have largely ignored safer, cleaner, less damaging and often cheaper solutions, while pressing for a bigger A27.
Do we want to waste the next 20 years arguing over the A27 or is it time for a different, less damaging approach?