Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
connection with future schemes but made clear that this would not affect its current
programme (which, at £20bn, would take 15 years or so to complete!).
The significance to be attached to the wider environmental effects of individual
road schemes was also causing friction between the Government departments of
Environment and Transport. In 1994 the Environment Secretary John Gummer made
a notable decision to accept a planning inspector's rejection of a road proposal at Wing
in Buckinghamshire. This seemingly innocuous scheme for a village bypass was in fact
destined to receive 100% funding from DTp because it formed part of a long-distance
Euro-route between Harwich and Swindon! The proposal had only been considered
in its local context and no assessment of the long-distance route had ever been
undertaken. This was a glaring example of how a major new route might be created by
stealth (through linking successive 'bypasses') and the best possible evidence of why
corridor assessments were needed.
In 1994, in the context of rapidly changing public opinion, the Department of
Transport adopted a noticeably more emollient approach to a subsequent report from
SACTRA (1994). This was a momentous report as its recommendations contradicted
the Department's long-standing practice that road schemes should be assessed on the
basis that they do not add to total traffic - a view which many ordinary members of the
public regarded as flying in the face of common sense. In fact recognition of 'induced
traffic' did not mean that the benefit of a scheme was necessarily less - it could have a
positive or a negative effect depending on local circumstances.
In response the Transport Secretary Brian MacWhinney promised to review all 270
schemes in the national roads programme, including postponement of the controversial
Newbury Bypass, whilst other options were explored. In the event allowance for the
effects of induced traffic was not assessed to reduce the value of any scheme below the
level where it was worth proceeding and MacWhinney himself signed approval for the
Newbury Bypass on the day he left office as Secretary of State for Transport!
7.7 The 'Great Debate'
Individually the revision of PPG13 and the RCEP and SACTRA reports were
remarkable documents. Together their publication had a synergetic effect at a time
when the Department of Transport's 'flagship' programme of trunk road improvements
was being scaled down and public opinion appeared to be shifting quite rapidly. There
seemed to be a need for a clear, overarching statement in response of Government
policy on transport. But whether from political timidity or from scepticism about how
deep support for such policies would run, the Secretary of State for Transport Brian
MacWhinney decided instead to mount what he called a 'Great Debate'. He promoted
this by giving a series of speeches which were published as a Consultation Document
(DTp 1995c).
The document posed a series of questions and invited responses on three main
themes, viz:
• the balance between economic growth, the environment and personal choice
• the measures to be taken if the balance needed to be shifted
• acceptance of the wider consequences if such measures are taken.
Unusually the Government also commissioned attitudinal research on these
themes (3.9).
 
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