Representation by Christopher Gillham
- Date submitted
- 5 January 2019
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Need: I realise and deplore that big construction projects, conceived politically, are put forward without any publicly apparent process of evaluation, with the result that the Planning Inspectorate is immediately bound by an assumption of need. Nevertheless Government policy is not coincident with need and no kind of inquiry can escape the illogic of one government policy trumping another. In this case the undemonstrated ‘need’ for this scheme runs counter to a whole host of other policy.
Climate Change: The government is signed up to all the international accords on reducing carbon emissions. It is very difficult to see any way in which it will meet those commitments, especially since it is currently embarking on many policy directions (again without any publicly perceptible analysis) that will increase such emissions – fracking for more fossil fuel ; airport expansion; reduced support for alternative energy generation; housing development without efficient transport planning; and capacity expansion and massive subsidy of road use. This scheme will increase carbon emissions and, in its continual denial of SACTRA’s conclusion that roadbuilding increases traffic everywhere, by much more than it acknowledges.
Archaeology and Heritage: We have policies and international commitments to preservation of heritage and archaeology. I do not have expertise in these matters, but I have a profound sense of outrage at the sheer Philistine insolence of this proposal. By what right and for what purpose do we presume to carve up a landscape of such antiquity? If it were for the exigencies of necessary warfare and the imperatives of a nation’s survival it would be hard enough to justify such spoliation, but for such a mean and ultimately purposeless end, the offence is monumental. How does the 120 years or so (and surely very little more) of the age of the motor car assume precedence over the 10 millennia of this human landscape? If we can think of no more civilised way of undoing the harm of traffic across Salisbury Plain then we should ‘Do Nothing’ and wait for more enlightened times and lasting ways of living.
Pollution and Health: We have policies to reduce air pollution, but government has consistently failed to take action. Traffic growth, which this scheme deliberately encourages (Webtag criteria for economic appraisal are identical to those conditions necessary to increase traffic), brings more vehicles and pollution to urban and rural communities. The obesity and diabetes crises are in large part due to the lifestyle of a car-based economy. Active mobility choices are reduced or prevented by the occupation of street-space in towns and the danger and intimidation of vehicular activity. The health externality of the car economy alone massively outweighs the tax burden on the activity.
Traffic: The Road Traffic Reduction Act 1998 is still in statute. This and the rest of the new road programme clearly work in the opposite direction.
Biodiversity: With the neutering of the protection agencies such as Natural England, the Habitats Directive is already failing in its task. There are specific concerns for this area that others will highlight, but the effects of any scheme of this size will be felt far away – e.g. its traffic generation will involve induced movements on the A350 in west Wiltshire, where other road-building and road-based development ambitions are already threatening extinction of one of the most important rare bat populations in the country.
Economy: The economic appraisal process for road building is simply fraudulent. The DfT bases it on false premises and asserts values that it has never demonstrated or even bothered to research. Such evidence as there is shows that major road-building disbenefits the overall economy. The supposed ‘economic appraisal’ of this scheme adds even more illusionary assertion than usual.