Noise Reduction (M54)

Mike Penning Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) will be pleased to know that roads are part of my portfolio, so I should be able to handle the debate slightly better than the previous one. I congratulate him on securing the debate and giving me the first opportunity to congratulate him on his work in getting Jaguar Land Rover to invest in his constituency. It is the sort of investment we desperately need.

With investment comes infrastructure issues, particularly in my Department. I am sure that all my hon. Friend’s constituents welcome the investment and the new jobs, but, interestingly, with that often comes enhancement—we could call that 106s, “planning bribes” or whatever we call them these days. As he knows better than me, there will be a lot of work on junction 2, which I will come on to in a moment. We have already moved in the debate from the whole length of the M6 to the Chilterns, so it is a shame that we have only another 15 minutes or so.

I assure my hon. Friends that investment in High Speed 2 has no effect on the money secured from the Treasury for road improvement and infrastructure. I had about £1.4 billion to spend on capital road infrastructure over the three years of the spending round and was then given just over £1 billion in the autumn statement, which is about £2.5 billion, give or take, over three years. We would not have dreamed of such investment when we entered coalition Government and inherited the financial mess 18 months ago, but the money has been found for good reasons—the biggest of which is that without infrastructure, we cannot have growth, and without growth we cannot get out of the financial mess we inherited.

My hon. Friend has done his homework correctly. There have been fads in construction over the years, and I say “fads”, because one minute something is the greatest piece of design technology we have ever seen and needs to be protected, and the next minute it is out of fashion and out of the way. There are two sides to concrete road construction. The upside is that such roads last for a very long time and do not wear out like flexible coverings—that is a technical term for tarmac. The bad news is that the concrete part of the M54 is unlikely to need resurfacing for 10 years. We will keep a close eye on it and ensure that, if it starts to deteriorate more quickly than that, we will address it immediately.

The downside to concrete is noise, and I freely admit that. It often depends on the type of tyre used on the vehicle. We have so far—touch wood—not had the worst winter, and my stockpiles of salt are doing remarkably well at the moment, but this time last year we had had a severe winter already. People—lorry drivers and hauliers—are starting to think about switching to the tyres that they use at other times of the year. That has a massive effect on noise. If people address the type of tyre they need for the environment they are working in, we will have fewer breakdowns and blockages, so it is a positive step. There have been fantastic developments in the tyre industry. In the old days, there would be a town tyre and a town and country tyre. There are much better developments now, but noise is an issue. No matter where I go in this great country of ours, road noise is an issue in every constituency, including mine.

[Gavin Williamson]

I would like clarification of the Minister’s remarks about when concrete-topped surfaces need repair. Will he confirm that when the road needs repair, it will not be repaired with more concrete but with a low-noise surface?

[Mike Penning]

There is a difference between repair and replacement. I cannot guarantee that that will be the case when the road is repaired—in other words, when potholes and so on are fixed—but what is needed to repair it will be done. I will come on to replacement in a moment.

We do not have a huge amount of concrete road, but a lot of local authority roads are concrete, and for maintenance, the longevity of the investment is an issue. My hon. Friend is right about the rest of the tarmac on the M54; low-noise surfacing, which reduces noise by about 50%, is not on that part of the motorway. I have never heard it called “whisper” tarmac, but developing that would be fantastic for everybody. The i54 development, with which he was involved, will lead to significant changes to junction 2 and the slip road, which I know the local authority has planned carefully. We will work with it to ensure that the project works for the local community and Jaguar Land Rover. I can categorically say that all the new parts of it will be low-noise.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was told by the European Commission—not many good things have come out of the Commission over the past few years, but this is one good thing—that it should do a noise survey of the whole country, including the road network. I am sorry to say to my hon. Friend that this particular part of the M54 does not fit the criteria for being excessively noisy. That offers no comfort or solace to residents in his constituency, but think about how bad the problem is on the road network in other parts of the country. Interestingly, the A449 going north from junction 2 meets the criteria and will be resurfaced imminently with low-noise tarmac. It already needs replacing, but it is deemed to have a significant problem with noise.

That is nearly all the bad news. The tarmac on the M54 where the concrete stops is also in good condition. We do not predict that we will need to replace the tarmac on the M54 for approximately four years. Although there will be new tarmac on the new roads—new, low-noise tarmac on the A449—it will be a considerable time before the M54 concrete-tarmac is resurfaced. However, I assure my hon. Friend that, when that is done, low-noise tarmac will be used on the concrete as well as on the existing tarmac.

The solution might seem simple—as I have asked my officials, surely we can lay the tarmac on the concrete, because it provides a strong sub-base—but that is not the case. It will have to be broken up and created as a sub-base, and the tarmac will then have to be re-laid in great depth on top, because the product is flexible, not rigid. Wear can cause so many problems.

My hon. Friend has alluded to the debate that is taking place, rightly, in all our constituencies throughout the country. I hold up my hand—it is happening in my constituency, where I have had exactly the same discussions. I have to look at the money available for maintenance and for capital projects that will keep the country going, and I must spend that as wisely as possible. I do not have the bottomless pit of money to which my hon. Friend has alluded, and in many ways I am pleased that I do not, because it gives me the opportunity to study carefully where our money is being spent. That makes me popular in certain parts of the country. I am pleased that the M6 widening project will be popular. It will give us capacity, and road safety will be significantly enhanced.

As an ex-fireman, I was very sceptical about managed motorways, because they were taking away the hard shoulders. Then I thought back to my time in service. Where did I see the major, serious fatalities on a motorway? It was on the hard shoulder. One of the first incidents that I ever went to involved an ice cream van parked on the hard shoulder. It is not the most robust of vehicles, because of the chassis, engine and fibreglass on top. It had broken down, pulled over to the hard shoulder and been hit by a lorry. The driver thought he was safe. Fortunately, he had left the vehicle to walk to an SOS phone. The vehicle resembled a skateboard—we would never have known that it was an ice cream van. It had been completely wiped out. If people’s vehicles break down on the motorway, they should pull over to the hard shoulder and then get out and on to the other side of the barriers, which is where they will be safest. Modern technology on the motorways means that assistance should get to them quickly. SOS phones are available and mobile phones have enhanced safety enormously on our roads.

Managed motorways have rescue areas and sanctuaries that allow us to sweat the existing assets. We do not have to go through planning all over again, because the motorway has already been built and the hard shoulder is up to road standard. It is interesting that, while hard shoulders were built to road standard all those years ago, we are only starting to use them now. The M42 pilot project showed that it works and road safety on such roads has been enhanced. We can get more vehicles on and it is much easier to control the flow of congestion. If we look at the M42, we see that there are far fewer traffic jams and stationary traffic. I would much rather see traffic running at 40 or 50 mph than it being stationary before rushing off at 70 mph and having to stop again later.

I cannot promise to put up sound barriers all along the motorway. I have made a note—and my officials are present—to look specifically at junctions 13 and 14, as my hon. Friend has asked me to do, and I will write to him about that.

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for being so generous in giving way again. I welcome his reassurance that low-noise, low-impact tar will be used across the whole stretch of the M54 when it is resurfaced. He has pointed out that the road between the M6 and junction 2 already has a tarmacadam, or flexible, surface. Can he give my constituents and me an idea of when the resurfacing will realistically happen? Will it happen in my lifetime or in my daughter’s lifetime? My top priority as a constituency Member of Parliament—I am being selfish; there are no Members from Shropshire present—would be from junction 2 to Telford and on to junction 3. When could that happen?

[Mike Penning]

It will be during my hon. Friend’s time as a constituency MP for his area—he is going to be there for a long time, because he is such a hard-working constituency MP. The time scale for the expected replacement of the tarmacadam part is four years from now. It may wear out slightly earlier than that, or—I am crossing my fingers—it may last a little longer. The longer it lasts, the more money we will have in the pot. I fully understand that that would be good news for my hon. Friend, and it would be good news for me regarding the budget. The faster it is replaced, the faster the low-noise tarmac will come in.

Sound screens will also be used and some are already up. They help, but they are not, under any circumstances, the answer to the problem. Mounding or bunding is another option—I know that that has been done in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Trees help, but they have to be placed at such depth. They have to be at about 10-plus metres before they can provide any tangible benefits. They look pretty, but if people stand on the other side of them—as I have done on many an occasion—they will see that they do not really help. We will put in sound-proofing, particularly wood-panel sound-proofing, where we can, but it is not feasible to do so across the motorway network and the A-road network.

We are looking at specific areas. On areas where we are doing new works in particular—this is why I touched on the M6—it is built into the project that we look at the issue. I am sure that that has happened with junctions 13 and 14, but please do not think that that is not also true of the A15, A16 and A17—we probably have done it. It is a massive advantage that, if we can sweat the assets, it leaves us some money elsewhere to do the sort of advanced projects to which my hon. Friend has alluded.

On the concept itself, the i54 project is so important not just to my hon. Friend’s constituency—I fully understand that—but to the country as a whole. It sends a message that this country is open for trading and investment. I was lucky to be on the Thames estuary when DP World announced a £1.5 billion investment in the newest port—it is huge—in the United Kingdom, just at the time when people were saying how difficult the situation was. Yes, the situation is difficult, but there are people who are willing to invest, and that will lock straight into the M25 and give us an opportunity.

Even though I have not said that this issue will be resolved imminently, works will be done soon in relation not only to the local authority and the i54 development, but to the A449. When the roads wear out, we will resurface them with low-noise tarmac. The estimated time is four years for the tarmac and 10 years for the concrete. I stress that the concrete is a major job and not something that can be done overnight, because the expense will be huge.

Question put and agreed to.