Transport Infrastructure: North-east England

Baroness Maddock Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I thought that someone would ask me a devolution question. There are very good road connections from the highly developed conurbation on Tyneside—Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead—but that is via the M6 corridor up through Carlisle. The journey time by car is shorter via Carlisle than it is via Berwick-upon-Tweed.

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, given that Northumberland is a more dangerous place to drive in than London according to figures released by the BBC on 19 January—32 deaths per 10 million hours of driving, compared with 23 in London—will the Government prioritise the value of road safety in transport appraisal calculations? Also, given that single-carriageway A roads like the A1 in Northumberland have the most serious accidents, does that not strengthen the case for dualling particularly dangerous parts of the A1 such as the Mousen bends, especially as that scheme is ready to go?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, first of all, the schemes on the A1 north of Morpeth are not ready to go, because they have been abandoned since 2006. However, my noble friend is absolutely right when she describes the dangers of a single carriageway, and I asked my officials precisely those questions. Interestingly, though, the accident rate for this section of the A1 was 154 per billion vehicle miles. This compares with 306 accidents per billion vehicle miles on all rural A-class roads within England. The rate for the A1, therefore, is approximately half that for rural A-class roads nationally.