Meeting to Present the "Alternatives to the A418 Improvements" Report
Tuesday 15th January 2008, 19.30 at Wing Village Hall
(For an independent account of the meeting, visit the Aylesbury-Milton Keynes Link Road website.)
In spite of pouring rain, villagers from Wing, Bierton, Rowsham, Stewkley, Wingrave, Mentmore and Ledburn - as well as visitors from Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard - packed Wing Village Hall (standing room only) to receive the results of the project jointly commissioned by Buckinghamshire County Council and Friends of the Earth.
Martin Shrubsole of Wing Parish Council opened the meeting, and short introductions to the report's background were presented by Val Letheren (Bucks CC) and Victoria Harvey (FOE). A common theme was that a prime objective of the report was to address the traffic problems of the area and provide relief for villagers suffering intolerably from high volumes of traffic.
Bucks CC's additional perspective was that funding for major road schemes was becoming more difficult, with no certainty of funding for a Wing Bypass for at least the next eight years, and that additional factors now had to be considered when appraising road schemes - in particular climate change/carbon footprint issues. In that context, they had wished to better understand what improvements could be made in the area, instead of or before the A418 Improvements, a project which they were still pursuing - indeed, a renewed bid for funding was to be made in March this year. However, a decision on the preferred route for the A418 Improvements had been deferred pending the outcome and analysis of the Alternatives Report and to allow time properly to consider all the factors involved.
Friends of the Earth had joined the project because they saw that real benefits could be gained for everybody in the corridor, whether or not the A418 Improvements were pursued, from rigorously investigating all the alternatives and pressuring Bucks CC to provide those that would help. Friends of the Earth wanted to provide relief from traffic problems, better village environments and improved ability to travel easily between settlements for everybody, including those without cars.
Paul Smith of Stewkley Parish Council, the only Parish Council other than Wing to financially support the report, spoke of why his village had opposed the A418 Improvements and supported the Alternatives Report.
Tom Cohen then introduced his report, with a summary of the main points (the full report is available here).
The report investigated three packages of "alternatives" (minimum, modest, maximum), a "do nothing" option, the proposed A418 Improvements and an attenuated A418 Improvements (basically, a single carriageway version of the full proposal).
Each of the six options was evaluated against the objectives, a prime one being the alleviation of traffic nuisance, and it was found that the modest and maximum alternatives packages outperformed the A418 Improvements. Sensitivity analysis - a technique which investigates how sensitive the outcomes are to changes in assumptions - revealed the modelling to be robust, in that the alternatives outperformed the road-building options even with significant changes in the priorities given to different objectives.
During all the presentations there was a large amount of heckling, from people who had clearly arrived at the meeting determined to attack Bucks CC for doing nothing to alleviate the traffic problems, which everybody acknowledged had become much worse since the opening of the Stoke Hammond and Linslade Bypass. The hecklers, although a minority of the audience, were demanding a Wing and Rowsham bypass, and were not inclined seriously to consider the arguments put forward by Tom Cohen.
A majority of the whole audience also thought a bypass was the best option, and there was some robust questioning of Tom Cohen. However, the pro-bypass hecklers were so persistent in their attacks on Bucks CC, and FOE and the whole alternatives process, that there was little opportunity to investigate how and why the alternatives packages might work.
As the time passed ten o'clock people were drifting off, with many questions unasked and with much time wasted on arguments about a bypass Bucks CC says it wishes to build, but is dependant on Government funding for. A meeting to receive the Alternatives to the A418 Improvements Report and question its author had been hijacked and turned into an exciting event but a wasted opportunity.
(For an independent account of the meeting, visit the Aylesbury-Milton Keynes Link Road website.)