HC Deb 03 December 1965 vol 721 cc1909-20

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lawson.]

1.39 p.m.

Mr. David Ennals (Dover)

I greatly welcome the opportunity that this debate gives for me to present a series of problems which are of great concern to the people of East Kent and especially to the constituency of Dover which I represent.

Dover is, has been and will continue to be the largest passenger port in the world. It is proud of that and it is anxious to be worthy of it. Dover is the gateway of England. Very often visitors from the Continent reach Dover first, and it seems a shame that having reached the historic white cliffs of Dover and having come through our magnificent harbour, they should often land themselves in a typical British traffic jam. It is time that the Ministry of Transport faced the problems which are the result of the tremendous growth of traffic in and out of the port of Dover.

By the end of August this year, 6,728,784 people had come in and out of the harbour. In the same period, there were 471,850 accompanied vehicles—cars commercial vehicles, caravans, coaches, people on business and people on holiday. Over that period there was a 10 per cent. increase on the previous year.

The rate of growth of traffic passing in and out of the harbour over the years has been quite fantastic. In 1962 there were 440,000 vehicles in and out. By the end of the present year the figure will probably be 620,000. It is estimated that in 1967 it will have reached 800,000 and that probably by 1970 we will have had a figure of at least 1 million.

If we translate those figures into daily peak figures we find that in 1962 the daily peak period figure was 6,382. The estimated 1965 figure is 8,327, the estimated 1967 figure is 14,000 and by 1970 it will probably be in the region of 17,000.

The projected increase, which can only be an estimate, is based on additional ships and the new berth that is now being constructed, as well as the tremendous demand by people in this country to travel abroad and by people on the Continent of Europe to come to Britain. As far as ship sailings are concerned, in the peak period this year we have had 31 sailings a day. Next year it will probably be 42 a day and by 1967 it will probably be of the order of 48 sailings a day. The figures and estimates that I have given ignore the Hovercraft service which will operate from Dover and which undoubtedly will attract much additional traffic.

On top of that, too, we have the anticipated increase in heavy commercial vehicles with the introduction this autumn at the port of Dover of roll-on, roll-off commercial traffic to the Continent. That is going to be of growing importance to our port, which is not just a passenger port but which has tremendous possibilities for expansion as a commercial port carrying cargoes to and from the Continent.

How does traffic get to and from Dover? It comes in by two main roads. There is the A.2 from Canterbury, by which approximately 15,200 vehicles per day enter and leave at weekends. The second major road is the A.20 from Folkestone, which carries about 12,300 vehicles a day at weekends. The total number of vehicles per day at weekends, therefore, is 27,500.

If we put that total in terms of peak hourly rates, it means that on the A.2 the peak hourly rate is 1,270 vehicles and on the A.20 910. By 1967 and again by 1970 those figures will have been greatly increased, not only due to the increased traffic in the port but the increasing activity in Dover itself, the prosperity of the people, the increasing number of local people who now have cars and the flood of cars that come on holidays up and down the coast.

That tremendous increase in traffic spells near chaos in the narrow streets of Dover during the holiday months. The Dover Borough Council is at its wits end to solve the problem. It has decided this very week to experiment with a one-way traffic system that may or may not bring relief. For 11 years there have been negotiations between the Dover Borough Council and the Ministry of Transport for a new road, the York Street trunk road, to take the bulk of traffic coming from the port away from the main shopping streets and straight on to the A.20. That would be a tremendous relief, because not only would it mean that traffic could move more speedily in and out of the harbour, but it would bring relief to those who live and shop in the town.

As the Parliamentary Secretary well knows, part of the new road has already been built, and a fine road it is. But it comes to a halt, and the rest of the route waits for a decision by the Minister. Properties on the projected route stand empty and derelict. There is uncertainty among property owners as to what the future holds. The town watches and waits for a decision from the Ministry, and I submit with great urgency that it is time that a decision was reached.

What of the main approach route, the A.2? The opening of the M.2 motorway has funnelled a tremendous increase in traffic on to the A.2. In some ways it has relieved the pressure on the A.20, but has greatly increased the pressure on the A.2.

The question of a widening and general improvement of the A.2, as the Parliamentary Secretary well knows, has been under discussion for many years. The road is sub-standard. It is narrow and the overtaking of vehicles on it is hazardous. In holiday times and in rush hours there is a long slow movement of traffic, causing frustration to all who use it, especially to the Member of Parliament who uses it twice or four times a week.

The real danger spots are along the route at the villages of Broughton, Bridge, Lydden and Temple Ewell. With their narrow streets, those villages suffer from the constantly increasing flow of heavy traffic through them. It is a source of danger and worry to the residents, particularly to those who have small children and elderly relatives. It is a worry, too, to their parish councils who represent their interests and to the rural district councils on the route.

We have been informed that the Ministry has plans to widen the A.2. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary replies he will say something about it, because I warmly welcome it. He and his Ministry must bear in mind that plans to widen the A.2 may bring increasing hazards to the villages themselves. If we increase the speed of traffic outside the villages, we increase the speed at which traffic will enter the villages, and therefore it is essential that something should be done to improve the situation in the villages themselves.

Something can be done to widen and improve the footpaths, and I hope that we may hear something about that. Better lighting would certainly assist in solving the problem in Bridge and Temple Ewell. But the urgent need is to bypass those villages, and I must tell the Parliamentary Secretary that feeling is running very high among the residents, among those who use the road and those who represent them.

Only today I have received a letter concerning plans for a joint approach to the Minister by the Dover Borough Council, the Canterbury City Council, the Bridge-Blean Rural District Council, the Swale Rural District Council and the Dover Rural District Council. I sincerely hope that in the approach that they make to him he will be prepared to receive them, to listen to their case and to hear it with sympathy.

From a long-term point of view it is, of course, essential that the M.2, which has already so greatly improved the speed of travel from London to Dover, should be continued to Dover, which is its logical terminus. The Minister may say that this must wait a decision on the proposed Channel Tunnel. This debate does not provide an opportunity for going into the details of the Channel Tunnel, and I shall make only three brief comments on it. First, I hope that the decision will be taken soon, and that the uncertainty which hangs over Dover and other places will be removed. Secondly, it is far more important, and of far higher priority, that we should use our capital, human, and building resources to build new houses, new schools, new hospitals, and new roads before we contemplate the building of a tunnel. Thirdly it would be madness, and I repeat madness, to build a tunnel, with the effect that it would have in funnelling a mass of traffic into South-East Kent, without a recasting of the whole roadway system in the South-East.

Before my hon. Friend replies, I should like to draw his attention to one other matter which causes equal concern to those who have to go through the town either for work, or for pleasure, and those who live there. The ancient Cinque Port of Sandwich, with its old houses and narrow streets, has become a frightful traffic bottleneck, which gets worse every year. This adds to the frustrations and irritations of those who live there, and those who pass through it.

There are, of course, new and rapidly expanding industries on the new industrial estate at Richborough which attract a great deal of business traffic, and will go on doing so as these industries expand. There is also a considerable build up of coastal holiday traffic, and when the Hovercraft service comes in from Ramsgate this will be increased.

The neck of the bottle is the single lane toll bridge over the River Stour, and many is the time that I have waited ten minutes and more during the rush hour to pass this one-way toll bridge. It seems an anachronism that, in 1965, traffic in this part of Britain should be held up by a toll bridge. In my view it is a blockage which should no longer be tolerated.

A second lane to the bridge would, of course, help. A new bridge would help, but Sandwich urgently needs a bypass so that this fine old town will not continue to suffer as it is suffering today. Plans for a bypass have been on the drawing board for many years, but no progress has been made.

The latest proposal that has been made as a temporary step to speed up the operation is that a start should be made with one lane of what will eventually be a two-lane bypass. This would immediately bring relief, and I hope that when my hon. Friend replies he will say something about this. It is quite unfair that this fine old-world town should be slowly strangled by the mounting weight of traffic.

I have raised a number of matters which are no doubt but a few of the huge problems which face the Ministry and my hon. Friend, but I hope that in his reply he will give us some hope and some encouragement, and that he will agree to consider not only the representations that I have made, but the representations which the councils to which I have referred will seek to make in the near future.

1.55 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler)

It is an unusual pleasure for me to rise at such an early hour to answer a debate. I suppose I am pleased to note that I shall be doing so on the next two Fridays as well, such is the luck of the draw, but I have no doubt that in the meantime hon. Members will continue assiduously to pursue my right hon. Friend and myself at whatever hour of the day or night they consider necessary according to the transport problems that arise.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Ennals) has certainly been exceedingly assiduous in pressing on my right hon Friend and myself the problems which he has now raised in the House in his clear and cogent speech this afternoon, and I am therefore glad to have this opportunity to record what is being done, and what we intend to do to alleviate these difficult problems, although of course I know right from the start that my answer will not be entirely satisfactory to my hon. Friend.

The setting against which we at the Ministry have to view all schemes for road construction and improvements—naturally I get tired of saying this, but I must do so again and again—is one of limited funds available to cover the numerous schemes which are constantly being urged on us, and many of which, as my hon. Friend rightly said, have been on the stocks for a considerable time. We have, therefore, in accordance with the economic and financial state of things, to work to a very strict system of priorities in drawing up programmes for the trunk and classified road systems, priorities which are determined largely by the traffic volumes on the various stretches of road to be replaced or improved. We must, and we should concentrate on those schemes which are going to offer the biggest return for the capital investment represented by the not inconsiderable road construction and improvement programme, and these schemes, according to my right hon. Friend's assessment, must go to the top of the list. I do not think that any intelligent citizen can seriously quarrel with that system.

My hon. Friend may quarrel with the priorities which have been applied in the past. We are endeavouring to improve the application of these priorities, but the fact is that the resources available, by comparison with the amount of work needed to be done on the country's roads, means that we have to work in terms of degrees of urgency. My hon. Friend has mentioned a number of needs in the south-eastedn part of the country. I assure him that the only reason why they have not been met is that we have had to spend the money on more urgent schemes elsewhere, according to the criteria that I have mentioned.

Let me now say how, at the moment, we see the future prospects for each of these problems. First, let me consider the situation in the historic town of Dover itself. As I think my hon. Friend pointed out, the problem here is really the serious one of summer peak traffic to and from the docks. That is not in any way to belittle the magnitude of the problem. Indeed, the figures given by my hon. Friend show how very serious this is for the town of Dover and for those who govern it at the moment. By 1967 traffic is expected to be double what it was in 1962, a situation brought about largely by the new car ferry berths now under construction, which will enormously increase the volume of traffic.

As my hon. Friend said, the practical answer is the York Street diversion scheme, and we agree that this is very desirable. Orders establishing the line of this road were made in 1959, but the scheme, which will cost more than £500,000, did not find a place when the trunk road programme was last extended in August 1964. This means that the very earliest a scheme of this kind can be started is now 1969 because all the funds in the road programme are committed up to that date, and even that assumes that it will be possible to include it in the next roll forward which my right hon. Friend will shortly be deciding. I cannot, therefore, give a definite answer this afternoon to my hon. Friend, but I have indicated to him in terms of priorities that we certainly regard this scheme as highly desirable and urgent for Dover. It will, therefore, receive the fullest consideration.

That means that measures of traffic management in Dover will be urgently needed during the next few years. I was very interested to learn that the Dover Council, as recently as Tuesday of this week, resolved to introduce a one-way traffic scheme at the southern end of the town. This will be of considerable benefit. Our divisional road engineer, in association with the borough council, is looking into a possible improvement at the junction of Duoro Place and Marine Parade. It is not an ambitious proposal, but it would improve visibility to the East there, and ease the turn for traffic.

Another management measure which should help next summer's traffic is an experimental Waiting Restriction Order on the approach roads to the docks. This is expected to be published in the very near future. Imaginative use of traffic management techniques of this kind will be more and more important generally in our towns in the next few years, when demands for road space will far outstrip the supply, because of the limitation on our resources.

The returns, in terms of better traffic flows and more pleasant conditions generally, can often be startling when set against the modest sums of money required to carry out these schemes. My Ministry was very glad to see that Dover is well to the fore in employing this comparatively new science of traffic management. We hope that its example will encourage other towns and cities seriously to consider what contribution they can make towards solving their own traffic problems in this way, while awaiting the time when their resources are sufficient to meet the programmes that we know are urgently necessary and desirable.

We at the Ministry of Transport, as a result of the responsibility the Ministry used to have for London traffic, have a considerable fund of experience and knowledge in the application of traffic engineering techniques, and are prepared to advise local authorities at any time in their attempts to apply them to their own problems.

My hon. Friend mentioned the problem of the A.2 between Brenley Corner and Dover, and especially the difficulties encountered in the villages along this road. Again, we accept right away that the ideal solution is to provide by-passes for Temple Ewell and other places. Some are already shown on Kent's County Development Plan, and we agree that they are desirable. At the same time, I am afraid that bypass schemes are often very expensive. We have done, or plan to do, in the lifetime of the present trunk road programme, all we can, with available funds, to improve the A.2 in those places where the case, in terms of traffic flows and the dangers encountered, is at its very strongest. Other schemes will follow as soon as our resources permit.

But we must face the fact that major improvements of the A.2 south-east of Canterbury, by means of individually expensive schemes, that is, the proposed bypass schemes, could not be achieved for many years. We therefore propose to improve the road comprehensively from the end of the motorway—the M.2—at Brenley Corner to Dover by means of smaller schemes to bring it generally up to a good two-lane standard over the next few years. As my hon. Friend has said, this continues to present certain hazards to the villages on the road. We shall at any time be prepared to discuss with the authorities in those villages what is necessary as the comprehensive improvement of the A.2 goes forward, in order to cater as best we can for the citizens in those places while they are waiting for more expensive schemes to be programmed.

In particular, we shall certainly pay attention to the need to provide adequate footpaths and perhaps to take special measures for the safety of pedestrians in those places where bottlenecks occur. This plan for the continuous improvement of the A.2 will be put into effect progressively, starting early in 1966.

My hon. Friend referred to the Channel Tunnel. It has sometimes been said in the South-East that the possibility of a Channel Tunnel is a reason why more money is not being set aside for the improvement of roads like the A.2. As far as our planning goes at the moment, that is not true—although it is obvious that we have to take into account the possibility of the construction of a Channel Tunnel in planning road improvements generally in South-East Kent. Obviously the effect of a tunnel on the priority of schemes on the A.20—the London-Folkestone road—cannot be overlooked. It will be some time yet before decisions will be announced on the Channel Tunnel. Much work has yet to be done in the assessment of the technical reports and surveys, but in the meantime we shall not permit that in any way to slow down the work we intend to do for the improvement of the A.2.

My hon. Friend also put forward the claims of Sandwich. We are only too well aware of the frustrating traffic congestion there, caused mainly by the borough council's narrow toll bridge over the river Stour, operated by the council in accordance with ancient rights. This bridge, on the classified road A.256, is one for which the Kent County Council is the responsible highway authority and it is for it to initiate any scheme for improvement. We know that it considers that a by-pass of Sandwich should be afforded high priority.

It is another of those undoubtedly desirable schemes for by-passing in Kent and other parts of the country that we shall have to consider in the roll forward of the road programme. As an interim measure it has been suggested that a Bailey bridge should be put across, but on practical grounds alone this is a non-starter. Even if it were practicable it could certainly not give sufficient relief to traffic to be a worth-while scheme. We therefore agree with Kent County Council that the real answer lies in a by-pass.

Such a scheme is not in the present classified road programme. I understand that it would cost not less than £1,800,000. But we shall certainly have to consider it. At this price the chances of being able to programme the scheme early in the future roll forward must be much less bright than if we can get something at a reduced cost.

It was towards this end that our divisional road engineer, in associatoin with the county surveyor of Kent, examined a scheme for a single carriageway to be built initially, with the possibility of converting this into a dual carriageway road later on. At the moment we estimate the cost of this to be a little over half that of the full scheme—about £1 million. This cheaper proposal has not yet been programmed. It must be considered with all the many other classified road schemes in the South-East and the whole country. But I can assure my hon. Friend that it will receive serious consideration.

All I can say at the moment is that these important schemes will be very shortly considered, as new decisions are taken and announced for both the trunk roads and the classified roads programme. I hope that I have succeeded in showing that we are doing all we can, within the severe limits set by our available resources, nevertheless to provide new and improved roads in South-East Kent as quickly as our priorities permit.

Mr. Ennals

Would my hon. Friend specifically say whether he will be prepared to receive a deputation from the local authorities that I have mentioned in order to hear their representations?

Mr. Swingler

Certainly. If my hon. Friend wishes to bring a deputation to us of those concerned with a comprehensive improvement of the A.2 he can rest assured that we shall be quite prepared to listen to what it has to say.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes past Two o'clock.