Fact-finding tour to see relief road route
Tuesday 22nd September 2009, 9:33AM BST.
The group is shown the route of the proposed Shrewsbury North West Relief Road
A high-powered team of councillors and officers walked through farmers fields during a fact-finding mission to assess the merits of a planned £100 million relief road in Shropshire.
They vowed to listen to people’s views and said that if plans for the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road go ahead, they would do everything in their power to protect the environment from unnecessary damage.
Council leader Keith Barrow and roads boss Councillor Martin Taylor-Smith were joined by senior council officers and experts from consultant Mouchel during yesterday’s three-hour mission.
They visited 10 key sites that could feature on the route, starting at Calcott Lane before stopping off at Shepherd’s Lane, Little Oxon Lane, Clayton Way, Holyhead Road, The Mount, Berwick Road, Hencott Farm, Hencott Pool and Battlefield roundabout.
Councillors Barrow and Taylor-Smith said they understood there was considerable public interest in the plans, which may not reach fruition until 2017.
And they vowed to listen to what locals and experts had to say before making any final decisions.
Councillor Barrow said: “There will be extensive public consultation and people can be rest assured that the council will consider all of the issues. No decisions will be taken until all parties concerned have had their say.”
Councillor Taylor-Smith added: “We are looking at all of the options and assessing the likely impact of the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road. We are very concerned about the environmental impact and have been looking at key sites, like Hencott Pool, which people will naturally have concerns for.
“We want to ensure that we conserve the environment and our approach to this project will be entirely responsible.”
The road is planned because too much traffic from the north and west of Shrewsbury, including heavy vehicles, has to use residential roads around the town centre.
Officials say it leads to problems with congestion, delays and problems of noise, poor air quality and reduced accessibility for residents and visitors.
The objectives of the new route are to provide a road between the A5/A458 trunk road at Churncote, west of Shrewsbury and the A528/A5127 junction (Battlefield Link Road) in the north, including a new crossing of the River Severn.
Experts believe the plans will reduce congestion with typical end to end journey times being reduced from over 17 minutes to less than six minutes.
By Andy Richardson
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£100,000,000 for this road. Why not scrub that and, with this money, save A&E services at both of our county’s major hospitals?
This country is totally puddled.
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H. St. John Peasbody, that is the best idea i’ve heard in a long time. Me and my family would benefit greatly from the new road, it will take away the busy traffic that goes passed us everyday, but i think it would make much more sense to keep our hospital services. We can do without this road, but the people of Telford really can’t do without an A&E.
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Surely you do this fact finding at the beginning of the project, rather than after a couple of years and several million pounds. I don’t see how they could justify what they have already spent if it doesn’t go ahead. Surely this is just ticking the boxes of what is already a done deal?
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One of the reasons given above for this road is congestion.
However, congestion is only bad at rush-hour (when passing traffic outside Shrewsbury could be encouraged go the long way around).
According to the council’s own figures in its Local Transport Plan ( http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/traveltransport.nsf/viewAttachments/LROE-7RHKQB/$file/ltp-2008-progress-report-final.pdf page 21 ) non-road policies for reducing congestion seem to be working and town centre traffic is FALLING quite dramatically.
Could someone who is for the road please deal with this point?
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just a pr stunt
i hope they noticed hencott pool is a SSSI on their route, its of international significant for newts and plants and such and they want to tar mac it – outragrous
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green wash
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why is a councillor from oswestry and a councillor from ludlow deciding which fields in Shrewsbury will be bull dozed, this is an afront to local democracy, on par with the west lothian situation, they should butt out of a Shrewsbury issue
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Yeah build the road I need a job
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Investing in our public transport infrastructure will create more jobs than road-building, monkey.
Could anyone, who is for the road, address the point about falling congestion levels in the town centre (#4)?
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I bet all you people who are against this road WILL use it!!!
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Monkey, do you accept that government investment -if it is significant enough- will ensure whether people will use something?
If jobs are the main criteria for you (#8), then would you also accept that a big shift in government spending away from expensive, new, environmentally destructive road-building and into public transport will create MORE JOBS and will ensure that public transport is cheap, safe and reliable enough to ensure that people WILL use it?
Could someone deal with the point about falling traffic in the town centre now?
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Huw on his soap box again.
Give it a rest, we are all bored to tears of your one track mind. Green this, co2 that, get a life.
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huw makes a reasonable point, traffic is in decline big time, without a road, would you as a tax payer prefer to spend a £100 million or would your rather every household in Shrewsbury got a check for £3,000 ????? Well that’s what it costs, as as Huw’s figures show, its just not neccessay, needed or worth while, spend the money on the poor instead i say, give it to marie curie or something, the road is a white elephant, a waste of tax payers money
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Thanks for your kind words, Andy.
Maybe YOU can answer.
I’ll step down from the soap box first and you can wipe away your tears of boredom before putting me right.
Over to you.
One reason given for the road is to ‘reduce congestion’.
Congestion could be and IS ALREADY being reduced (see #4) through cheaper, less environmentally destructive non-road policies.
Here are a few examples.
Walk-to-work policies, walk-to-school policies, cycle-to-work schemes, promotion of cycling, subsidies for public transport and Park and Ride (to make it cleaner, safer, more reliable and more affordable), public education about sustainability issues, better signage, publicity about car-sharing schemes ( see https://www.liftshare.com/uk/ ) and promotion of car clubs etc
If congestion can be tackled by cheaper alternatives, which could potentially create more sustainable jobs, do we really need an expensive road?
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If traffic levels in the town centre are falling, as claimed by the council (and I suspect that the figures may be disingenuous and lacking in perspicuity), then said traffic must be elsewhere? Maybe on the DC roads encircling Shrewsbury?
If that is the case, then the current DC relief roads may require another extension to relieve the engineered congestion generated by the needless installation of traffic light controls at major islands?
Just an opening gambit that.
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If the traffic is falling in the centre, why does that mean it has gone somewhere else? A massive proportion of traffic at morning rush hour is school related. Schools have been having a big push lately on discouraging parents from driving their kids to school. Perhaps a contributing factor to less traffic, not just relocated traffic?
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Good point, julian.
What do you think, winja?
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Fair point, Julian.
Encouraging kids to walk to school can only be a good thing, and never did me any harm (both primary and secondary schools I went to were never less than 40 minutes walk – and that’s only 20-odd years ago).
Although how this has a negative impact on the proposed relief road escapes me somewhat.
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I’m don’t have enough knowledge to comment on whether a recent reduction in town centre traffic now negates the need for a relief road. It isn’t due to open until 2016 so I have no idea what traffic levels are predicted to be by then.
The council’s business case will not be submitted until Aug 2010, by which time we may have a new government. It depends whether they have the same road building ambitions as the current government.
Shropshire Council are already showing in documents on their website that there is a risk they could spend £8.34 million before the road is rejected and never built. That’s a heck of a risk!
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If you read the final line of the article above, winja, it states that ‘experts believe the (NWRR) plans will reduce congestion’.
Experts said very much the same thing about the highly controversial Newbury bypass.
Yet, as anyone who has studied what happened in Newbury knows, the reductions in congestion were short-lived and town centre congestion there is just as bad now.
Councillor Taylor-Smith said “We want to ensure that we conserve the environment and our approach to this project will be entirely responsible.”
This is encouraging to me if it means that responsible policies for reducing congestion which conserve the environment (as outlined in #14 paragraph 8) are prioritised over an expensive, environmentally-damaging road.
Julian pointed out that a massive proportion of congestion at morning rush hour is school related.
One stated aim of the road is to ‘reduce town centre congestion’.
As this is already falling because of the successful implementation of responsible, environment-conserving transport policies, why does julian’s point about walk-to-school policies reducing congestion escape you?
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You could say Huw that women are to blame for the need for all these new roads.
When I was young the few women drivers that were around we were abused and laughed at. By men of course!
Women stayed at home, walked their kiddies to school and you would never ever seen a man at the school gate.
Now women today drive too, cluttering up the roads with their cars, driving their kids to school, more often than not on their own way to work.
Seems obvious to me, ban all women from driving!
Another aiternative would be to not allow anyone to drive after the age of 75 yrs.
That would be a popular vote winner! :)
BTW the biggest increase in road building was the Thatcher era.
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i agree that this is not a decision for the County Councillors from all over Shropshire to take, this is a local decision for local people, the town council should be the planning authority for Shrewsbruy
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The road will be needed for all the bin wagons taking rubbish, commercial waste from near & far to the new incinerator.
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huw is right, its cheap as chips to paint white lines down the side of the pavement and give out a few free bikes and educate kids to cycle to school etc, £100 m is just to high a price relative to the relatively little congestion experienced in the town
spend £10 m on “soft” measures instead and use the savings to keep council tax levels down
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this is green wash – how can you ensure a by pass through open countryside, minimises environmental destruction ????
only answer = dont build it in the first place
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the incinerator will definately increase traffic, because its over sized for Shrewsbury so it will need to important rubbish from Telford, Wrexham, Chester, Powys and the rest of Shropshire
This is also another classic example of a planning application that ought to be decided by local SHREWSBURY councillors not the people who are elected to represent oswestry, ludlow, bridgnorth etc, of course they want it in Shrewsbury, its not in their back yard, its not their kids who have to breath the smoke
This is an afront to local democracy on par with the Scottish MPs voting on English laws
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If “one” of the stated aims of the relief road, Huw, is to reduce town centre congestion, then that automatically suggests that there are other aims also, yes?
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OK, winja, other aims are reducing ‘congestion, delays and problems of noise, poor air quality and reduced accessibility for residents and visitors’ and cutting journey times.
Do you not agree that the non-road policies outlined in #14 will tackle these, winja?
And do you not agree that they are cheaper and will therefore be more popular with taxpayers?
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eva land, do you think it is sensible to build this road to reduce congestion and cut journey times if journey times are already being cut and congestion is already being reduced by responsible, non-road methods, which conserve the environment?
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No, Huw, I actually do not think that cycle-to-work or walk-to-work schemes will have any impact on the other problem areas you identify.
OK, such schemes MAY work for, and benefit, those Shrewsbury commuters who live in the Shrewsbury suburbs. But how will they work, or benefit, those commuters who work in Shrewsbury but live in – say – Hadnall, or Wenlock, or Rushbury, or Bourton, or Leebotwood, or Telford (to name some random examples)?
And think how much town centre traffic will fall even further when transient movements from West (Shelton) to East (Battlefield) are diverted away from it. At speeds that are more fuel efficient.
Anyway, more roads will be needed in the future to cope with in increase in personal transport. I believe this after a recent visit to the Frankfurt Motor Show, where all the major manufacturers demonstrated their initiatives for the forthcoming decade. Initiatives and technologies that fully embrace alternative power sources and fuels, and where EV’s (Electric Vehicles) will not only generate zero emissions at source, but also – for the most part – will still be fun to drive and more accelerative than current (ahem) daily hacks.
And, the non-road policies may be cheaper to implement but I will tell you now that any saving will not generate a positive in my monthly salary as the money will be spent elsewhere. More baby incubators for example. Which would irk both myself and mrs winja as neither of us wish to produce offspring.
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