A34 Safety

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered safety on the A34.

I am grateful for the opportunity to hold this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. This is an important opportunity for me and my colleagues to describe the importance of improvements to the A34, which is a major arterial trunk road that runs from the south coast up through Hampshire, west Berkshire and Oxfordshire to the midlands. It is a vital economic route that is also used by many thousands of commuters—in fact, some 79,000 vehicles a day use the road.

May I put on record my gratitude to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), who as a Back Bencher campaigned vigorously on this issue and secured £50 million towards road improvements in the previous Parliament? She cannot be at the debate today, and as a Minister she would not be able to speak in it, but I know she will continue to work and lobby on this issue of importance to her constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who also unfortunately cannot be with us today, has been extremely active in campaigning for improvements. Many of my hon. Friends and colleagues in the Chamber will no doubt wish to intervene or make remarks in the course of this short debate.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It will be useful for my right hon. Friend to note that the A34 runs through a bit of the north of my constituency, near the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). My right hon. Friend can rely on me to help campaign for the changes he wants to see on the road, which I am sure he will come on to shortly.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am grateful. My heart always lifts a little when I am on the section of road that runs through my hon. Friend’s constituency. Given his track record in working for his constituents I know that he, too, will play an important part in a campaign that, although I expect it to be long-running, we hope will lead to some significant improvements.

The central point of my remarks, and no doubt that of colleagues, is that the A34 is no longer fit for purpose. It is a dangerous road, and the delays and accidents that happen regularly on it are having a significant economic impact on one of the most economically productive areas of the country.

The road is dangerous: there were almost 2,000 accidents on the A34 between 2010 and 2014. On the stretch of road that runs between the M4 and the M40 through Oxfordshire and west Berkshire, 32 people have unfortunately been killed. In the past four months, there have been two fatal accidents and numerous injuries both serious and less serious. I am sad to say that one recent fatal accident claimed the lives of four people, including three children, and the most recent accident resulted in the tragic death of a three-year-old child. Action is therefore long overdue. The urgent need to improve road safety alone would justify a significant investment of money and time from the Department for Transport and Highways England.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate in what seems to be a sauna this morning. Will he acknowledge that while the statistics he outlined are alarming, they are even more alarming if we add in the accidents that take place at intersections with other roads? For instance, I am concerned about the junction of the A303 and the A34 at Bullington Cross, which by about 100 yards is not in my constituency but which is used nevertheless by my constituents. A significant number of accidents there are reported as A303 accidents but relate to the junction between the two roads and could be attributed to either road.

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. I focused solely on the accidents on the small section of the A34 that concerns me as the constituency MP, but he is quite right that if one takes the statistics along the whole of the A34 and for accidents attributed to other roads in close proximity, I am afraid the toll is higher. That again leads to the central point about the need for a clear strategic plan for the whole of the A34, to improve road safety.

Having started with the most important issue of keeping people safe on the A34, it is also important to highlight the economic impact that the delays and accidents are having on my constituency, and no doubt the whole of the region. For example, I am privileged to represent Harwell Campus, which is the one of the world’s leading scientific research centres. Its director, Angus Horner, wrote to me recently and said:

“I often witness dangerous conditions on A34…Immediate term safety improvements will be strongly supported by thousands of us at Harwell Campus…The A34 is operating far beyond its designed capacity and major infrastructure investment should be allocated right now to substantially improve its capacity.”

He continued:

“In a broader context, it is essential that the UK maximises the potential of its world leading knowledge economy…UK hotspots must be properly connected….Better vehicle flow along A34 would have a substantial positive impact at Harwell by facilitating even more collaboration with our neighbours at University of Oxford, plus tens of thousands of other regular research visitors and hundreds of companies who use A34 to access Harwell’s ideas and £2 billion of international labs.”

I also have the pleasure of representing Milton Park. On that business park there are 250 companies employing 9,500 people. The park is located right next to the A34, and its productivity is being severely affected by delays on the road. Its director, Philip Campbell, wrote to me and said that

“the A34 is central to maximising future success of this unique and vibrant area. A safe, free-flowing A34 is critical, for our area’s future growth and prosperity and for the resilience, health and wellbeing of residents.”

He signs off with a flourish:

“The A34 needs an A1 plan!”

Our local enterprise partnerships are closely involved in campaigning for improvements. Oxlep, the Oxfordshire LEP, and the Thames Valley Berkshire LEP have written a joint letter to me and my hon. Friends in which they say:

“As a key transport artery through our respective areas we believe it critically important to address the capacity issues of the A34 now; to help mitigate the serious and all too often tragic incidents that have taken place over the last five years and to support economic growth.”

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case for the A34, and its economic impacts in particular. Does he agree that another impact— I am interested in whether he experiences this as well—is that when there is the slightest delay on the A34, the alternative routes, which are more rural in nature, become completely jammed with lorries trying to avoid the traffic? In my constituency those routes include the A343, which runs down from Highclere through Hurstbourne Tarrant to Andover.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is an excellent point. All too often I have witnessed the A34 at a complete standstill. Sometimes I am lucky and I am witnessing that from a distance when I am not actually on the road. As my hon. Friend points out, one then witnesses the traffic overspill that naturally results from that, with large lorries and a lot of commuter traffic using rural roads that are clearly unfit for purpose and go through villages and small towns.

The Oxford local transport plan, which is part of the county council’s initiative to look at improving transport in the area, notes:

“The A34 is particularly congested and adversely affecting journey time reliability. This is particularly due to its high proportion of HGV movements, which account for above 20% of daily trips.”

The Road Haulage Association has written to say that it is

“constantly hearing complaints from members of deliveries failing booking times and the cost of delays with drivers running out of their legal driving and duty hours, due to delays on the A34.”

It cited the case of a small company whose 15 vehicles get stuck in traffic for 30 minutes every morning and evening. It loses about 4,000 man hours a year, which it has calculated costs about £150,000. With that comes an environmental cost, which is the third element that should enter our thinking when looking at improvements to the A34.

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

My interest in today’s debate is that I use the A34 a lot, and have done over the past five years, because I have an interest on the south coast. From my constituency in Coventry, it is one of the main routes via the M40 down to the south coast, especially Bournemouth and the surrounding areas. I have witnessed a lot of accidents and been in a lot of traffic jams on the A34. In the right hon. Gentleman’s opinion, is over-capacity the only reason why there are so many accidents?

[Mr Vaizey]

Over-capacity is the reason why there are so many accidents. In this case, over-capacity means that the road itself—being a dual carriageway and not a motorway—does not have any capacity to deal with accidents. We have not so far had what we need, which is what the Government are now considering: a strategic plan for the road network for the whole area, particularly the links between Oxford and Cambridge, which will have a knock-on effect of improving the A34. If that strategic study goes ahead, it will have an impact.

It is important that I mention the work of the A34 Action Group, which is a group of my own and my hon. Friends’ concerned constituents, including those who have lost loved ones and people who regularly use the route to commute. It put forward a manifesto that encapsulates some of the small, immediate improvements that can be made, specifically focusing on safety. They include a full risk assessment of the road; evidence-based—that is important to emphasise—traffic-calming measures, such as average speed cameras or chevrons in the right places; and improved flow mechanisms, such as a crawler lane or, in particular parts of the A34, no-overtaking areas. We are not saying that there should be a blanket ban on lorries overtaking, but there are certain parts of the A34, in particular on steep inclines, where no-overtaking areas would be suitable. The suggested improvements also include refuge and rest areas and a hard shoulder. That goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), because when there is an accident on the A34 there is nowhere for anyone to go. If there were a hard shoulder where people could pull over or HGV drivers could rest, that would have a massive impact.

Improved junctions, which I know are of concern to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse)—we were discussing it earlier today—are also important. There has been a fantastic improvement at the junction with the M4, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon secured £50 million to help improve junctions at places such as Pear Tree, Hinksey and Botley, as well as East Ilsley in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. What is needed is, for example, longer slip roads for easier access to and from the M4. The Botley and Pear Tree junctions have already been redesigned as a result of that funding. A driver information system to alert commuters to problems ahead, a number of CCTV cameras and other technology improvements, such as detection loops, are also being introduced with that funding.

Measures are under way, and we now have the Oxford-Cambridge expressway strategic study, which was published this summer. It calls for a “strong case” for “strategic transport interventions” and identifies the A34 as a key part of the jigsaw in improving east-west links between Oxford and Cambridge. It notes, as so many have done, that the problem is not going to go away and is simply going to get worse. There are 100,000 new homes planned for Oxfordshire in the next 15 years and a prediction of 85,000 jobs being created there over the next 10 or 20 years, so the strain on roads and infrastructure is simply going to increase.

I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister no doubt has a desk full of the many proposals to improve strategic road networks. Only today, I saw that a group of my colleagues from Kent had been to the Chancellor to seek improvements on the A2. I know that money is limited, but I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to look at the case of the A34. In post-Brexit Britain, where we are looking for infrastructure investment and it is a matter of national debate, we need strategic infrastructure investment that has an immediate impact on our economic prospects. We could not find a better area in which to make improvements than the south-east around Oxfordshire, west Berkshire, and Hampshire, where we have such a concentration of innovative, future-looking companies that need that investment in order to keep growing.

I know that the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) wants to make some short remarks, so I will conclude. I look forward to his remarks and to hearing from the Minister. May I also put on record how grateful I am that he has agreed to meet me and colleagues at the end of November? I am also going to meet Highways England with colleagues in November to discuss this issue.