Representation by A36/A350 Corridor Alliance (A36/A350 Corridor Alliance)
- Date submitted
- 11 January 2019
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Founded in 1993 the A36/A350 Corridor Alliance (ACA) is an umbrella group of organisations campaigning against damaging road schemes on a broad corridor of roughly NW alignment from the South Coast (Southampton-Poole) to the M4 (Bristol and south Wales to Chippenham). It has so far campaigned successfully against several elements of the A36 corridor which seemed to form part of a purpose of establishing a superhighway route from West Wellow in Hampshire, through various schemes at Salisbury and along the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire and as far as Tormarton on the A4 north of Bath. When the superhighway emphasis switched to the A350 corridor we have campaigned, unsuccessfully at Semington in west Wiltshire, but persuading the Inquiry into the eastern bypass at Westbury to recommend against the scheme. Now all the lessons of the 1990s and the SACTRA report seem to be forgotten and UK commitment to action on climate change is something apparently to be ignored, there is a new enthusiasm for massive road expansion. There are new pressures to resurrect old schemes for strategic highways from the M4 to the south coast, principally aligned along the A350 corridor, though new (old) road schemes along the A36 are also back in fashion. The A303 crosses our corridor near Warminster. ACA was involved in the Inquiry into the previous Stonehenge tunnel scheme for the obvious reason that its traffic-generating effects would spill into our corridor. That is still very much the case. We object to the scheme on this basis, but also on the basis of it being a waste of public money. It relies on highly suspect economic analysis, even in the already nonsensical terms of transport appraisal methodology. We also object on the basis that it contributes significantly to increased carbon emission at a time when the UK should be taking urgent measures in the opposite direction.