Representation by Jackie Doyle-Price MP
- Date submitted
- 9 January 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Whilst I support the need for additional crossings across the Thames this proposal is deficient. This has been approached as a strategic road with insufficient attention paid to the impact on local roads. It will add considerable congestion to the road network in Thurrock. My constituents are hugely disadvantaged by the presence of the Dartford crossing. When there are traffic incidents it can lead to gridlock lasting many hours. It was against this background that I was very clear that any new crossing must alleviate congestion at Dartford and must not create any additional congestion on Thurrock’s local road network. I am sad to say that this is not the case. Indeed as currently designed there is every prospect that the traffic congestion will become worse. This route is a missed opportunity to design a road which would have helped to deliver wider economic objectives. For example the A127 is in need of widening and without it Essex is constrained in how it delivers its housing numbers. For that reason I supported a route which would have connected there and connected with the M25 at junction 29. Instead what we have is one that loops through Thurrock and joins the M25 between Junction 29 and junction 30. It is an M25 bypass for Dover Port traffic. Whilst tackling traffic congestion caused by Dover made sense at the time the crossing was conceived, we have since then had Brexit. This as had the effect of changing the economics of port activity. Today, the fastest growing ports are here in Thurrock. Yet the port traffic from Thurrock’s busy ports cannot access this new piece of road infrastructure Such an approach is fundamentally flawed. Thurrock is the logistics capital of the UK. With the three busy Ports, the fastest growing port centre in the UK and the highest intensity of logistics employment we depend massively on appropriate road and rail infrastructure. It is therefore utterly wrong that we should be expected to host a brand new motorway with all the attendant environmental costs that go with it without being able to draw benefit from it ourselves. Furthermore Thurrock Borough Council has ambitions to deliver significant numbers of new homes. Yet we are blighted from doing so by the land envelope currently set aside by Lower Thames crossing and National Highways objects to any housing development which exceeds 200 homes on the basis that it would add to traffic congestion at junction 30 of the M25. We are absolutely stuck until issues surrounding the Lower Thames crossing are resolved but this has snow been going on for fifteen years. In the fifteen years since this route was first proposed the world has changed significantly and it is now past its sell by date. National Highways needs to go back to the drawing board. A quick win to add capacity at the Dartford crossing could be achieved by the construction of East-facing slips at Lakeside. This would take considerable traffic away from Junction 30.