The road that has slowed us all down

Mar 28 2007 By Ross Smith, The Journal

A report this week examined changes in policy needed in the wake of the Go For Jobs campaign. Ross Smith analyses its implications.

Go For Jobs campaign leaders have long said transport and planning policy must change in the North-East if the region's outstanding recent economic success is to continue.

This week's report by consultants Colin Buchanan and Partners is a welcome confirmation of that fact - yet big issues still remain.

Given that the report was commissioned by a group which included the Highways Agency and Government Office North East, it came as close as could be expected to saying that Go For Jobs has succeeded.

"Respondents had noticed a change in the attitude of the HA recently towards being more supportive of development and being more directly involved in the planning application process," it said in a clear signal the campaign had paid off.

There were a series of helpful recommendations. The Highways Agency must continue to improve its communications with developers and increase its presence in the North-East - possibly by opening a new office here.

A new system should also be included in the planning process to judge if economic benefits of development outweigh the cost of congestion problems.

Developers and businesses are, in turn, asked to make a bigger commitment to travel planning. This is already starting to happen - not least through the Work Wise North East initiative, which crucially is championed by the key players in the Go For Jobs campaign, among others.

Buchanan's proposal for "corridor action plans", which will identify what measures need to be put in place to allow development to take place along particular routes, ought to give businesses the degree of certainty that has been lacking in this process.

However, they will not be able to bind ministers to spending money - most notably if and when a trigger point is reached that requires a multi-million pound upgrade of the A1. Indeed, few would argue that has not been reached already - which is the chief reason why no one can yet point to the encouraging Buchanan report and say: "Problem solved."

Buchanan states that the Gateshead Western Bypass has more than twice the national average accident rate for similar roads. And while the A1 between Scotch Corner and Seaton Burn is the 13th most congested route in the country, it would be considerably higher up that league if the measurement began just south of the Tyneside conurbation, rather than 40 miles away from the North-East's chief congestion hotspot in rural North Yorkshire.

This level of congestion is at a time when the regional economic strategy, produced by ONE, has set targets of 61,000 new jobs and 18,500 new businesses by 2016.

Those have to go somewhere. And given that new housing within a couple of miles of Newcastle city centre is also deemed unacceptable by the Highways Agency, finding the places away from major roads where those jobs can be squeezed in will be something of a challenge.

Rents on commercial property are disproportionately high in the North-East because of under-supply, which has been restricted by constraints on development, and the employment sites identified by regional planners all run the risk of future Article 14s, Buchanan notes.

Nevertheless, the report merely recommends a "debate" on whether new infrastructure is needed in the North-East.

Such a debate could perhaps begin and end with a measurement of the length of motorway in the region.

It can surely be rendered unnecessary when a Government-sponsored report as far back as 2002 said the Western Bypass needed upgrading. This was re-stated in the Northern Way's transport priorities this month. And it appears to have been already concluded in Government, given that roads minister Stephen Ladyman said last July: "There will need to be new capacity in the North-East - I've no doubt about that."

Yet there seemed to be a distinct lack of urgency among public bodies on the Buchanan report steering group to even produce a proposal for the A1. That has been put back until a transport innovation fund-backed study on congestion in Tyne and Wear reports next year - despite the man leading that research declaring that to be unnecessary and problematic.

Alternative solutions are of course needed. But ministers are hardly in a position to complain that people are not getting out of their cars when a report this week revealed commuter trains in the North-East are among the most over-crowded in the country - and directly blamed the Government for setting franchises which do not allow for growth.

Attempts to reinstate further commuter railways to Tyneside are progressing painfully slowly.

And while the £600m bid for reinvigorating the existing Metro system is hardly small potatoes, several members of the passenger transport authority which put the case forward did so with a grumble that tight funding left them unable to extend the system to cover other vital commuter routes in the way they wanted.

As North East Chamber of Commerce chief executive James Ramsbotham stated, securing the necessary funding for transport in the North-East remains the "major unanswered question".