A14 Cambridge-Huntingdon Upgrade

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate about the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon upgrade. He is a genial although troublingly probing inquisitor on the Transport Committee, and it is always a great pleasure to discuss these issues with him. I look forward to this being the first half of a little two-step, with the second half at our meeting next week. In an Adjournment debate last summer, he diligently raised his constituents’ concerns, particularly about the impact of road diversions through Cambridgeshire as a result of the A14 scheme. He need not repeat his speech—I am glad he did not—because I have read it with care and attention. I was not able to attend that debate, but I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who responded in my stead.

I wish to use this opportunity to outline what Highways England has done, and is continuing to do, to reduce the impact of the scheme’s road diversions on local residents. Inevitably, much of that will revisit issues already discussed in the previous debate. It is important to be clear that this is a genuinely difficult issue for reasons I will come to, and we do not need conspiracy theories or worries about overlapping or underlapping jurisdictions to recognise the genuine difficulty of this situation.

I will come on to discuss the road diversions in some detail, but let me remind the hon. Gentleman of some of the strategic reasons for the scheme and provide an update on Highways England’s progress in delivering it. As he and any local resident or traveller in that part of the world will know, The Cambridge to Huntingdon section is one of the busiest parts of the strategic road network between the midlands and East Anglia and the port of Felixstowe. It is vital to connecting businesses, communities and families across Cambridgeshire and beyond, and a crucial corridor for international freight. It is also a long-standing congestion hotspot and an area of concern for the communities around it.

In delivering upgrades to the A14, Highways England and my Department acknowledged that the demand placed on it was taking an increasing toll on drivers and local residents. Commutes between Huntingdon and Cambridge were severely congested, and small villages on either side of the road suffered from increased traffic caused by drivers rat-running to avoid traffic delays on the A14. The scheme was drawn up in recognition of those concerns and in an attempt to alleviate them. That is why the A14 improvement works were included as a major project in the Department’s five-year road investment strategy, which was published in December 2014. In a measure of how important the scheme was locally, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships committed £100 million towards the total £1.5 billion cost. That contribution will help to deliver a scheme that meets the needs of the strategic road network and local people.

The benefits to local road users and communities include 21 miles of new three-lane dual carriageway road—that was mentioned in the debate last year—a new 750-metre viaduct; the removal of the existing unsightly viaduct in Huntingdon town centre; two new footbridges at Swavesey junction and Bar Hill; and—this is the bit I really like—more than 18 miles of routes that are suitable for walking, cycling and horse-riding. The goal, which we believe the scheme will achieve, is to create a positive legacy that ties communities together, unlocks regional and local economic growth, combats congestion and improves road safety. Relieving congestion will make travel, particularly commuting, easier, safer and more reliable. We hope the scheme, along with better design, will improve road safety.

The scheme separates strategic and local traffic, which will help to reduce congestion. It has been designed to accommodate the expected significant growth in the area over the next 15 years or so. This will be vital if the scheme’s benefits are to continue. I understand we are looking at a 26% growth in traffic. Cambridgeshire’s employment alone is forecast to grow by 16% between 2012 and 2031. We hope there will also be improvements to air quality and a reduction in traffic noise. Highways England never undertakes any scheme without paying careful attention to the environment and local wildlife. The scheme will deliver nearly 700 hectares of new habitat for wildlife and 18 new wildlife habitat creation areas, and hundreds bat boxes and a variety of bird boxes will be installed. All of that adds up to a highly attractive and important scheme that creates a positive legacy for the residents and businesses of Cambridgeshire.

The scheme has also created jobs through the new Highways College in west Anglia, which was opened to give up to 200 local people the skills needed to get the road built. Highways England is making good progress on the scheme. It is within budget and on target to meet an open-for-traffic date in 2020, as outlined in the road investment strategy, although it would be nice to think that it will be possible to take some of the diversions off before the end of that period. That is certainly the aspiration, but the open-for-traffic date at the end of 2020 is the stipulated date.

Turning to the hon. Gentleman’s specific concerns about noise and disruption for residents on and off the official diversion routes caused by the scheme’s construction, as he knows the Government and Highways England are focused on ensuring that the delivery of the scheme causes the minimum inconvenience to local residents, while recognising that some inconvenience is inevitable in a scheme of this magnitude. Since the issue was raised of HGVs, lorries and other vehicles not following the recommended road diversions, Highways England has been working hard to develop measures that will help to lessen those impacts and encourage more drivers to use the preferred diversion routes. As he noted, it is working closely with Cambridgeshire County Council and partner organisations to minimise the impact where possible.

When closures are in place on the A14 between junction 36 and junction 31, the strategic diversion route directs traffic south of Cambridge on what, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is a substantial detour. The trouble is that alternative routes are required for non-motorway traffic. This is where we get into the genuine complexity of the issue. There is non-motorway traffic and local traffic travelling to local destinations, where the strategic diversion would be considered irrelevant or not acceptable. Those routes take traffic further into and around Cambridge city centre and include, as he mentioned, Kings Hedges Road, Newmarket Road and Milton Road.

Highways England has no powers to prevent road users, including HGVs, taking other routes they have a legal right to use as an alternative to the official strategic diversion. As the hon. Gentleman knows, traffic is like water—it tends to flow down the channels of least resistance. Blocking traffic on some local roads inevitably diverts it on to other local roads, and that creates complexity for the scheme. Highways England is working actively to keep strategic traffic—we are talking about a very small percentage of thousands and thousands of journeys every day—following official diversion routes. This includes giving weekly briefings to regional media, parish councils and local organisations, and posts on social media. There are also over 40 roadside signs, some including instructions not to follow sat-nav systems, up to 13 mobile variable messaging signs, and the use of overhead signs further afield on the strategic road network. Works have also been resequenced to resolve technical challenges involving utilities and drainage. The A14 project team are working with the Road Haulage Association and Freight Transport Association so that diversion information can be shared with their members too.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am concerned about a possible mismatch between the data reported by Highways England and the on-the-ground data and experience of his constituents. Following the previous debate, Highways England was asked to take a look at this. As he knows, it is working with Cambridgeshire County Council to implement speed signs and HGV counters and, as he recognised, it has offered to pay some of the enforcement costs, but it has also taken the trouble to check the calibration of the counters. If there is still a mismatch and the calibration shows a much smaller number—say 20 to 30 vehicles during some hours of the night on some roads, rather than the large build-ups that his constituents are recording—we will have to get to the bottom that. We will be happy to share the data—next week, I hope—and look through that in more detail.

I need hardly say that Cambridgeshire police are also aware of the issues raised and have agreed to check for non-compliance with speed or weight restrictions at key sensitive locations. That is important. Such measures are not necessarily resource intensive, if they are focused and if the effect is to create a sense of uncertainty or concern, which can have a powerful deterrent effect on regular abusers of the traffic system. That said, for operational reasons, this is not always possible, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

The overall commitment to deliver the A14 upgrade on time and within budget remains, but the scheme has been created to ensure that wherever possible local stakeholders’ concerns are at the forefront of the work. The trouble is that in many cases for a period some of the distress felt historically in the villages has been transmuted to the centre of the city, which is unfortunate, but the A14 will in due course serve a wider goal. As I have said, the diversion routes may be required until the open-for-traffic date, programmed for 2020, but the hope is that they will not be.

The traffic data collected by Highways England and residents is a fraction of the many thousands of the HGVs that use the A14 every day, and Highways England is working with Cambridge City Council to improve the weight limit signage, which is also an important part of this. It has assured me that the matter of traffic on diversion routes for subsequent schemes, such as the A428, will be considered in the early stages of the planning process. If that is one tangible result of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, it will have been a valuable one. I thank him for raising this issue.

Question put and agreed to.