HC Deb 27 July 1971 vol 822 cc535-44

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. More.]

9.3 a.m.

Sir John Langford-Holt (Shrewsbury)

It is not the most exhilarating of exercises to make the same speech on the same subject in this House, even when it is made two Parliaments later to two different Ministers in two different Governments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), who I am glad to see present, could probably discuss this subject with much greater authority than I, were he not bound by the Whip's vow of silence.

Perhaps the best way in which I can start the debate is by repeating my opening remarks in the debate on 9th March, 1966, when I last raised this matter. On that occasion, I said: The matter that I want to discuss, and about which I have been in correspondence with the Minister, is the events surrounding the traffic problem of a village called Dorrington, about 6½ miles outside Shrewsbury and in the centre of my constituency. It has a population of about 300, and it is on the main Shrewsbury-Hereford route. The village is at present in the process of dying It has been condemned to death by the traffic on the roads today. It is traffic, and nothing else, that is doing this."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March. 1966; Vol. 725, c. 2353.] I lived in this village for a period. I left because I had two children and, in my view, it was a miracle that serious accidents had not occurred. The traffic was bad in 1965 and 1966, but it is infinitely worse today.

When I last raised this matter in the House, the late Mr. Stephen Swingler, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said that the Government intended that the road should be widened to 24 ft. and that the speed limit, which was openly being ignored, should be enforced.

It is worth looking at what has happened. The road has certainly been widened. On the speed limit I have recently been told—I am not altogether sure that I understand what it means—that the 85 percentile speed of cars is now up to 38 miles per hour. I take that to mean that the average speed of 85 per cent. of the cars using this road is 38 miles per hour. I am not talking here about a few Minis passing through the village at 38 miles per hour; I am talking about enormous lorries which pass through the village day and night. I do not want to exaggerate, but "thundering" is the only way I can describe how they go through the village.

As to the road widening, Mr. Swingler said that, in many ways this would be counter-productive to what I was trying to achieve. My information from local people is that the situation now is a great deal worse as a result of the road widening. One resident has told me that what he calls three "bumps" a day take place in the village. There are skid marks all over the road, and there is one on the pavement. Incidents, if one can use that word, are occurring constantly.

I have not visited the village for about two weeks, but my latest information is that on 3rd July there was an incident involving a child. Statistics are often quoted which suggests that the accident rate is so-and-so, but many of these "accidents" are not reported. I doubt whether that particular incident, to which I have a witness, would ever reach my hon. Friend's Department.

Other matters include a bridge on the south side of the village. The walls of that bridge are regularly knocked down and have to be replaced. Hedges in and near the village are frequently mown down.

I now turn to Mr. Swingler's second point, which concerned the 85 percentile speed of 38 miles per hour. This figure was arrived at from inquiries instituted in a recent review. The result of the review was that traffic passing through the village was ignoring the speed limit and travelling at 38 miles per hour.

What do the Government do? They do not enforce the speed limit, which is what Mr. Swingler undertook would be done. They turn over in their minds whether they will raise the speed limit to 40 m.p.h., the implication being that if people ignore the speed limit at 30 m.p.h., by raising it to 40 m.p.h. they will then be two miles per hour within it. It is a strange doctrine and is based on a fallacy, because everybody knows that the only result of raising the limit to 40 miles per hour would be that everybody would go through the village at between 45 and 48 m.p.h.

The village is suffering terribly from this traffic problem. It is cut in two because of the increase in traffic, much worse than was the case in 1966. Most of the children live on the opposite side of the road from the school which they must attend. That is an extraordinary indictment of planners.

I should like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to promise four things. First, I want him to tell me that any idea of raising the speed limit to 40 m.p.h. will be scrapped. Second, it would help if the word "slow" were to be written on the road at the approaches to the village. Third, I want an undertaking that the speed limit will now be enforced. Fourth, I want him to give me a date for a bypass. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow will support me in saying that there has been talk of a bypass for the best part of a quarter of a century. Nothing has been done, although much money has been spent on alterations. I was about to describe them as "minor" alterations, but they are more than that. All the alterations have achieved exactly the opposite of what is necessary to preserve the life of the village.

In an age in which society is increasingly conscious of the value of preserving amenity and of the dangers of environmental pollution, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has an opportunity to show that he means business. I hope that he will give me the four undertakings for which I have asked.

It has taken me 26 years in the House to get the Adjournment at the end of the Consolidated Fund Bill.

9.12 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) has indeed done his duty by his constituents in bringing this matter frequently before the attention of the House and to the attention of successive Governments. He, very properly on behalf of his constituents, wants to see progress.

I have carefully noted the points my hon. Friend has made. I will particularly bear in mind and look carefully into what he has said about skid marks, about the number of bumps which it is alleged occur, and about the incidents, one of them involving a child.

On strictly transport grounds I cannot hold out very much hope for my hon. Friend. Only on environmental grounds can I at best open a slight but still only a very slight, chink of light, and even that on the far horizon. I say this at the beginning so that there shall be no misunderstanding about the main tenor of my remarks.

I have had the opportunity of reading my hon. Friend's previous remarks, some of which he referred to. I have also seen the correspondence he has been having with my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development.

I will briefly recapitulate the position. The main road through Dorrington village is a trunk road. Therefore, my Department is the responsible highway authority. Both sides of the road are developed for approximately one-third of a mile, and in consequence there is a very wide mixture of traffic—local and through vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Improvements to the road were undertaken some years ago following the undertaking given to the House, when a 24-ft. carriageway with a 6-ft. wide footpath was put in through almost all of the village. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend knows, at the southern end of Dorrington it proved impossible to widen the footway or the carriageway without knocking down a lot of property. I know he rightly opposed that but it meant that at this point there was a pinch in the road because it was not practicable to extend the 24-ft. carriageway all the way.

Traffic passing through the village is now subject to a 30 m.p.h. limit which it is the statutory duty of the West Mercia police authority to enforce. Following a request by my Department in accordance with our general national policy on these matters, a review has been undertaken of speed limits throughout the county. It is being concentrated where road improvements have been carried out in order to relate the speed limit to the condition of the road. The review stems from the experience that motorists are less inclined to comply with unrealistically low speed limits than they are to comply with limits which seem to them to be reasonable and realistic.

Retention of unrealistically low limits puts the whole system into disrepute. All of us here have a split personality on this. When we are behind the wheel we go at a prudent, realistic speed. We are disinclined to take notice of speed limits which seem unrealistically low. But when we are pedestrians, particularly in our own villages or constituencies, we take a much more restrictive view of speeds and wish to see the motor car slowed down to an extent that, if we were behind the wheel, we would consider unreasonable in the circumstances.

There have to be some national criteria therefore. As a result of the review Salop County Council has recommended that the speed limit in Dorrington should be raised from 30 m.p.h. to 40 m.p.h. It and my Department consider this is in accord with the criteria laid down in spite of the "pinch point" at the southern approach to the village.

The West Mercia police authority supports the county council in this conclusion. It believes that the 40 m.p.h. limit would be much more enforceable than the old limit and that an enforceable limit is of a greater safety factor than one which is unenforceable. It is only fair to say that the proposal is opposed by the Condover Parish Council and the Atcham Rural District Council. In his last letter my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State indicated that he would reach a conclusion on this proposed increase as soon as possible. We have therefore been giving most careful consideration to the proposal and to the opposition to it.

I will explain the criteria that we have applied in order to frame a judgment. We have considered the type of road involved. It does not on any national comparison justify a speed limit lower than 40 m.p.h. Indeed, it might justify a higher limit than that. The pinch point is a special factor, but on the highway considerations there is no case for speed limits below 40 m.p.h.

The second criterion that we applied, again in accordance with our national policy, concerns the speed at which the majority of vehicles now travel along this stretch of road. The standard that we set, on the basis of great experience, is the 85 per centile points rule—the speed below which 85 per cent. of motorists travel. This concept is a rough and ready guide to what is reasonable and realistic and shows the level at which the police will be able to enforce a speed restriction on the 15 per cent. who are travelling dangerously fast.

This concept has been built up by wide experience. Indeed, raising many unrealistic and ill-observed limits from 30 miles an hour to 40, far from resulting in an appreciable increase in speed, often leads to a reduction in accidents. It is supremely important from the point of view of public respect for speed limits that they should be realistic and sensible. Only then will they continue to command, and indeed deserve, respect from the motoring public. All our measurements in Dorrington show that the 85 percentile point speed is well over 30 miles an hour. My hon. Friend himself mentioned 38 miles an hour. These grounds justify the raising of the limit.

We have also examined the other basic criterion, the accident rate. I appreciate that hon. Members may complain that the accident rate is a difficult measure to go by, because in a sense one must wait for something awful to happen before the statistics rise to the level at which it would be justified, but there must be national criteria, which must apply in Dorrington as well as anywhere else.

In Dorrington, I am glad to say, the accident rate is very low. It works out at 1.3 per million vehicle miles, which compares very well with the national criterion that we normally apply for 30 m.p.h. limits—namely, four accidents per million vehicle miles. On these grounds, one could not justify a limit of only 30 miles an hour.

So on all the grounds I have mentioned the evidence seems to us to be conclusive. We have therefore decided that the proposal—I emphasise that it is a proposal—to raise the limit to 40 m.p.h. should be advertised within the next four weeks. This does not mean that the limit will be raised tomorrow or in the next four weeks. It means that the proposal will be advertised and that any objections received will be considered very carefully before a decision is made. My hon. Friend's views this morning will certainly be considered with the greatest care.

I have considered the position of the pinch point at the southern end of the village, because this is something that occurs in different parts of the country. I will ask the divisional road engineer to examine this point and see whether, whatever is done about the speed limit, some indication might be given of a point of potential danger. I do not want to give an absolutely firm undertaking on this, but in view of what my hon. Friend has said, and in view of what I know of that pinch, we will carefully examine this possibility.

Sir J. Langford-Holt

This means, I take it, that there is no question of knocking down the house on one side or the shop on the other in order to make the road wider and increase the speed.

Mr. Griffiths

This is the dilemma, of course. The answer to my hon. Friend's question is that there is no intention of doing that, but, obviously, if there is a constriction at one point, and if the speed limit were to be raised, it may be that some indication of possible danger at that point ought to be given. But I am giving no undertaking here. I am saying only that we shall look at it.

I come now to the long-term possibilities and the question of a bypass. Following the issue of the 1970 White Paper, "Roads for the Future", a White Paper of the previous Administration, a study was put in hand of the Hereford—Shrewsbury length of the A49 to see what required to be done to bring this route up to ultimate dual two-lane standards, the results have turned out to be rather disappointing from my hon. Friend's point of view. They show that a dual carriageway for this stretch between Hereford and Shrewsbury would yield an extremely low rate of economic return on the investment. This is a national measure, and it works out here at something between 8 and 9 per cent., which is much lower than the economic return which we normally expect when agreeing to go to dual carriageway standards. On this basis, I must tell my hon. Friend that any claim for improvement of this road to dual carriageway standards, when seen in the context of other priorities and the limited funds available, must be regarded as, at best, a very long-term possibility.

I can, however, offer one small chink of light in the gloom, though it is a very small chink. This arises from the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last month of a major expansion of the roads programme, which, I am glad to say, includes funds for a special study not simply of the Hereford-Shrewsbury route but, quite rightly, I believe, of the whole length of the A49 between Ross-on-Wye and Whit-church, including the smaller stretch in the middle.

This study will for the first time allow consideration to be given not only to the economic return, as was the case before, but to environmental improvements, a point which my right hon. Friend has rightly stressed in his policy. The environmental improvements would be measured by the gain to the quality of life through the diversion of long-distance traffic, and heavy goods vehicles in particular, away from towns and villages. This is a new way of looking at this type of problem.

Another helpful aspect of my right hon. Friend's new arrangements is that improvements need not be put off till the dual-carriageway standard is justified. In the past, it has been necessary to find justification for dual carriageway before any work of this sort was put in hand. Henceforward, it will be enough if relief can be obtained by providing high-standard single carriageways initially, with by-passes and lengths of dual carriageway to come in as and when necessary. So it will be sufficient to meet a somewhat lower criterion if the environmental gain is substantial.

I must not raise my hon. Friend's hopes too high. It is too soon to say precisely what decisions will be taken about the route of the A49 through Dorrington, but I assure him that there will be no undue delay in putting this study announced by my right hon. Friend in hand and acting on any recommendations made in regard to the environment and on the single carriageway question.

I realise that my hon. Friend will find my reply disappointing. He may well think that progress is too slow. But I ask him to bear in mind that, with the many calls on our limited resources, the selection of improvement schemes must be based on priorities which take account of national requirements. It is, therefore, for this study, newly put in hand, to prove Dorrington's case. The case which my hon. Friend put this morning has been powerfully argued. I undertake that we shall consider most carefully the objections to the raising of the speed limit before any final decision is made.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Nine o'clock a.m.