§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lennox-Boyd.]
11.27 pm§ Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central)I am extremely grateful for this opportunity of debating the subject of the A140 trunk road in Suffolk. When I made my maiden speech in 1983, I said that I thought that one of the biggest problems facing my new constituency would be the effect on its roads, villages and towns of the rapidly increasing volume of traffic. Little did I realise just how true my forecast would turn out to be.
After moving into my constituency and making our family home there since 1983, my family has had personal and daily experience of the problems facing some of the roads in general and the A140 in particular. The continuing success and expansion of our east coast ports and the growth of business generally in East Anglia have greatly increased the numbers of vehicles on our roads, and these numbers, particularly the high number of heavy goods vehicles among them, have caused problems that could not have been envisaged a few years ago.
The subject of the debate, the A140, is the only trunk road running north-south through the centre of Suffolk. My particular concern is with that part of it that runs through my constituency from its junction with the A45 in the south to the northern border of Scole.
I am able to speak from personal experience. I live in the north of my constituency, in the village of Mellis, and therefore have to travel regularly down the A140 to Ipswich, a quarter of which town is in my constituency. Moreover, for the past two years my daughter has been at school in Ipswich and my wife has regularly travelled that section of road four times a day.
The A140 is extremely deceptive. It looks as if it should be possible to travel on it in safety at high speeds, and along some sections that is the case. Unfortunately, other sections and hazards may be encountered which make it far more dangerous than it looks. The most recent accident figures sadly prove that beyond any shadow of doubt.
In 1983 the number of accidents involving personal injury on this stretch of road was 27, in 1984 it was 30 and in 1985 the figure rose to 40—a 33 per cent. increase on the previous year. I have personal knowledge of two of those accidents which occurred at exactly the same spot within the past 12 months, only a short distance from my home near the village of Yaxley. In both cases the drivers had been deluded by the character of the road's northern end into thinking that they could drive faster than they could and without the fear of any obstruction.
In the first instance, a coach, carrying a youth orchestra from Germany, did not realise that the vehicle in front, delivering newspapers, was stationary. At the last moment the coach driver swerved into the path of an on-coming lorry and collided with it. Fortunately, and mainly due to the quick reflexes of the lorry driver, no one was killed, although there were serious injuries. The outcome could easily have been much more horrific.
I visited the scene of that crash soon after it happened, and among the people already helping the injured was a constituent, Professor John Buxton, outside whose house the crash occurred. Some months later he was being driven home in the direction in which the coach had been travelling. The driver stopped before turning right into 421 Professor Buxton's home to allow oncoming traffic to pass. In precisely the same way as before, another vehicle travelling in the same direction, southwards, failed to realise that the car was stationary and shunted him forwards and sideways across the path of an oncoming lorry. Professor Buxton, lucky to be alive, was taken to Ipswich hospital with multiple injuries and is only now recovering.
I am aware that it can be argued that such accidents are due to a lack of care on the part of drivers and that it is difficult to prevent them from happening, but this type of accident is much more likely to happen on some roads than on others. The A140 is a trunk road and several sections of it are long and straight and give the impression that it can be driven along at speed. Unfortunately, for many reasons that is not so.
Other hazards make the road even more dangerous. The sheer volume of traffic is increasing rapidly year by year. The national road traffic forecast published in December 1984 gives a range of national average growth rates between 1980 and 1985 from about 11 per cent. to about 16 per cent. Of the five sites along this stretch of the A140 where measurements are regularly taken, one falls below 11 per cent., three are between 11 per cent. and 16 per cent., and at one point the growth rate is in excess of 17 per cent. Clearly, traffic is increasing on this road at or above the national average, but, more important, there appears to be an extremely high percentage in those totals of heavy goods vehicles. As a major through route it carries a large number of heavy commercial vehicles which amount to one fifth of the daily total flow.
Perhaps more importantly, with accidents very much in mind, it needs to be said that along this length of road there are good and bad stretches. For example, there is a short piece of dual carriageway at the southern end of the A140 just before it joins the A45 near the village of Coddenham. The only problem is that while the good bits are not too bad, the bad bits are appalling.
Travelling northwards from the junction with the A45 there is a section of road known as Creeting Bottoms, which I can only describe as being more like the big dipper at Blackpool than a trunk road. My hon. Friend the Minister really would have to see it for himself to believe just how the road at that point dips and bends in the most alarming way. I shall return later to the question of my hon. Friend seeing it for himself.
A little further north, where the A140 is crossed by the A1120 in the village of Little Stonham, there are again extremely difficult bends to negotiate at the bottom of steep hills as well as at the intersection with the A1120 before that trunk road continues straight through the heart of the village.
Further north again, in the village of Brockford, there are no fewer than three minor road junctions off what is known as Brockford street. At that point, as long ago as 1978, 6,500 vehicles a day were recorded through the village, and 20 per cent. of those were heavy goods vehicles. The village takes a constant pounding from that volume of traffic, and turning into or out of minor roads, houses or shops is an extremely hazardous operation.
Bypasses to both Little Stonham and Brockford were approved as long ago as 1968 by the former East Suffolk county council when it had responsibility for the road, 422 after considerable public consultation and taking account of views expressed by all local authorities and other consultees. Since then, nothing has happened, despite the mounting volume of traffic.
Again in 1968, when the county council had responsibility for the A140, it was proposed to make it dual carriageway. The idea was that the bypasses of Little Stonham and Brockford would he incorporated into the dual carriageway construction. However, since then the criteria which are used to decide those matters, such as traffic flow, and so on, have been changed. Although up to 1975 some improvements were carried out, which could ultimately have been incorporated into a dual carriageway, since 1979 no significant improvements have been made. I repeat, that is all despite the increase in traffic volume and the recognised black spots on the roads.
An additional, although in many ways separate, problem that occurs more frequently on the A140 than on other roads is that caused by slow-moving agricultural vehicles having to travel along stretches of the trunk road in order to get to and from the fields in the course of their daily work. Large numbers of vehicles travelling at relatively high speeds suddenly coming up behind such vehicles are frequently the cause of, at best, fierce braking, and, at worst, more accidents.
Clearly, the farmer cannot be blamed because he is only going about his normal work and has to get from one field to another with his machinery. However, the problem is being exacerbated by the fact that many farmers are now using the bodies from old heavy goods vehicles, modified as trailers, to tow behind their tractors. The result is that another motorist, when approaching that kind of vehicle from the rear, sees what he assumes to be a heavy goods vehicle which again he assumes will be doing a reasonable speed. Unfortunately, when he realises that it is only travelling at perhaps 5 or 10 mph it is often too late.
I have taken up that matter with the Department of Transport in the past and locally with the National Farmers Union and the county council. Apparently, it is permissible to use amber flashing lights on any vehicle which is incapable of travelling at more than 25 mph. There is a great deal of evidence to show that if such warning lights are used, other motorists spot those slow-moving vehicles well in advance and the last-minute braking and problems resulting from it can be avoided.
Unfortunately, although all those with whom I discussed this were in favour of some action, nothing as yet has happened. I ask the Minister to look into this again to see what steps may be taken, perhaps with the possibility of introducing legislation if that proves to be necessary.
I have discussed the problems of the A140 in some depth with Suffolk county council, and I know that the county surveyor believes that, in the matter of the trunk roads in the county, the improvement of the A140 from the A45 to Scole should now receive the highest possible priority.
Whether the road is made into a dual carriageway or whether improvements are carried out at the worst places along its length with a view to making the whole length a dual carriageway in time, I am not sure. However, I am sure that something must be done urgently. Whatever is decided will take some time to programme, and, for the reasons I have already given, I do not believe that time is on our side.
423 Here and now I would like to extend an invitation to my hon. Friend the Minister to come to central Suffolk and drive with me along the length of the road to see for himself the enormous problems that are occurring along its length and what my constituents are having to put up with, whether they are driving along the road or living in the villages affected by it. I am sure that if he will come he will be convinced of the need for urgent action.
We in Suffolk do not want roads for roads sake, nor are we anxious to encourage unnecessary traffic through our countryside. However, the traffic using the road at the moment has been forced on and through Suffolk by the success and activity of our east coast ports and other expanding businesses. In truth, we must not complain because much of it is helping to bring jobs to our towns and villages. However, it is crucial that that increased traffic is dealt with as efficiently and safely as possible. If that does not happen, not only will the quality of life in our villages deteriorate and the efficiency of our businesses be jeopardised, but I am sure that we will sec more serious accidents, more injuries and more loss of life, which cannot be tolerated.
This is a trunk road. Responsibility for it lies with my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department. Having put the case before him on behalf of my constituents, I await his reply with the greatest concern.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Peter Bottomley)My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) has a reputation as a fine and conscientious Member of Parliament. He and his family are well recognised, especially because, as he said, his wife and daughter spend all their time driving up and down to Ipswich. I do not know whether they carry advertisements for him on the side of their car. The days are long gone when a Member of Parliament could represent his constituency by remote control, and my hon. Friend has shown by the detail of his speech and the passionate way in which he has put forward his constituents' interests that they are well served by him.
I went to central Suffolk in the days of his predecessor; in fact in the days of the previous Labour Government. If I had been the Minister responsible for roads and traffic in those days, I would have had no words of comfort at all. The sad truth is that for all the calls for increased infrastructure spending, the real roads programme was cut in half between 1973 and 1979–80. Many historic towns and villages could not have their bypasses; and things got progressively worse. If I may speak confidentially, so much money is being spent in East Anglia now, and so much is proposed to be spent in the future, that if other regions of the country got to know about it they would feel jealous.
§ Mr. Andy Stewart (Sherwood)Hear, hear.
§ Mr. BottomleyI am grateful for that confirmation from my hon. Friend.
I went to open the Ely and Littleport bypass and briefed myself on the various proposals for what we call the eastern region, although it may be a rather wider description of East Anglia than my hon. Friend would accept, and it runs to hundreds of millions of pounds.
I feel a great affinity for my hon. Friend's concerns, because my great-grandfather was rector of Lavenham. I 424 have spent many years driving from Cambridge across to the east coast for one reason or another on the good roads and the bad roads, and for a year I was a salesman in East Anglia having to travel north and south as well as east and west. East Anglia has, as my hon. Friend described, a number of roads which are not as safe as they should be.
The debate provides an opportunity for me to say a word in particular about the A140, which is a relatively young trunk road. It attained trunk road status in 1978 because of increased use of the road for strategic traffic between London and Norfolk. A high proportion is through traffic—about 30 to 40 per cent.—and over 20 per cent. is heavy vehicles.
There are communities that would still like to be added to the bypass programme. I have a paragraph in most of my speeches saying that I feel that I carry a similar responsibility to that of Home Secretaries in the days before capital punishment was abolished. I control where lives are saved. My hon. Friend is rightly asking for the risk of accidents to be reduced on his roads. Other hon. Members rightly put forward the same claim for their own areas. In fact, that is one of the advantages of our single constituency system of parliamentary representation. I somehow doubt that if we went in for multi-Member constituencies there would be the same attention to detail as we now have in issues concerning roads.
If I decided to approve major spending on trunk roads where it had a lesser benefit in terms of safety or economic growth, I would rightly be accused of not having the right priorities. I shall consider all that my hon. Friend said in the debate, and make sure that we have the best chance of getting small improvements or larger improvements on the A140 and go on giving proper consideration to the needs of the communities that he mentioned.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving illustrative examples. I hope that he will pass our best wishes to Professor John Buxton. It is not entertaining to be involved in a traffic accident, especially when it happened because one was giving way, as one rightly should, to oncoming traffic before turning right.
A week or so ago I spent a day with some of the county surveyors of East Anglia, looking at accident investigation and prevention sites. The AIP is a low-cost scheme, whereby it is possible to reduce the incidence of accidents, and accidents involving personal injury—roughly one in 10—by making sure that there is proper analysis and investigation of where accidents take place and in what conditions. Such investigations include accidents involving perceptual errors by drivers. That is a common theme to many of the points that my hon. Friend made.
My hon. Friend rightly said that we do not want unnecessary new roads, which are expensive in money and agricultural land. We want to make sure that the resources used are properly justified. As my hon. Friend would expect, in determining standards we must satisfy the needs of the traffic expected on particular lengths. We do not provide a particular standard just because a road is called a trunk road. We try to meet likely need rather than provide uniformity just because of classification as a trunk road.
I should like to say a word to those from the London area who think that just because we trunk about 70 miles of road it will automatically be dualled. My hon. Friend will confirm that that is not so. In fact, about 60 per cent. of our national roads are not dual carriageways.
425 We have introduced new departmental standards to allow greater flexibility in assessing the carriageway width to be adopted where we improve a road or provide a new road. This allows more new routes to be assessed as to whether they should be dual carriageways. I do not want to overstate the effect. Frankly, it is unlikely to alter dramatically the overall balance between single and dual carriageways. The new standards allow a lower threshold for considering whether dualling would be right. The road would not necessarily be built to that standard just because it came above the lower threshold that we can now use for consideration. It is one factor among others. We need to consider the economic and the environmental impact of particular schemes. I should like to pay a tribute to the staff of the Department of Transport in our regional offices and at headquarters. Most people now accept that the environmental considerations are taken into account to a greater extent than previously. The people who have worked out better methods of proceeding in this context do not normally receive any recognition. People now take for granted the fact that roads are blended into the landscape wherever possible.
The new threshold for considering dual carriageways is 11,000 vehicles a day. Current traffic flows on the A140 range from 7,500 to 9,000 vehicles a day. I must say—and I do not say this in any sense to comfort my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central — that the average accident rate for that route is not above average for that kind of road. I will continue to see whether factors arise which justify special measures and we will continue to monitor the route as traffic increases. My hon. Friend has stated that the rate of traffic growth in East Anglia and in his part of Suffolk has been above average.
I have mentioned that accident investigation and prevention teams continue to identify accident black spots. We are considering schemes that have a significant impact at specific locations where the rate is higher than we think should be tolerated.
Along the Suffolk length of the A140 improvements have already been made at the B1078 junction where a right turning lane has been provided. At the Yaxley crossroads signing and carriageway markings have been improved and the junction widened. Following representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central, improvements were made at the B1118 Oakley crossroads early last year when the road was widened, traffic islands were constructed and improvements made to signing and to carriageway markings.
That is a good example of an AIP scheme. I would ask anyone involved in such matters, whether they be members of a county highway authority or in the Department, to keep their eyes and ears open for problems and also to pay attention to representations made by the public and by Members of Parliament. Consideration of ideas that have been put forward or anxieties about a particular junction or stretch of road can lead to improvements. If you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have any roads that you are worried about, I hope that you, as well as other hon. Members present, will take up my invitation.
In the three years before the improvements at the Oakley crossroads there were seven personal injury accidents. Since then there as been one injury accident in 426 18 months. That is the level of improvement that we are seeking. We welcome the work which leads to such a reduction.
Another accident site has been identified at the A1120 Stonham crossroads. There have been 12 injury accidents there in three years and we are now considering what improvements can best be made. We are looking at the possibility of further additions where these can be justified.
My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central referred to the desirability of bypassing the villages of Little Stonham and Earl Stonham. I will consider my hon. Friend's points and if, after consideration, we have to decide that the economic case is not strong enough and that other competing claims on our resources appear to have higher priority, that will not be a final decision. These issues are reviewed and we will continue to keep an eye on the position. However, I cannot promise—certainly not tonight that such a scheme would secure a place in the programme in the near future.
In conjunction with the county council, we are considering the case for bypassing Brockford, but we have not yet identified a viable scheme which might go into the programme. As I say, we give high priority to monitoring safety and to assessing road accidents. Last year road accidents were responsible for 5,200 deaths and 315,000 injuries.
I refer to the point raised by my hon. Friend about slow moving agricultural vehicles. There was one point which I have not heard before. He referred to the adaptation of what appeared to be conventional heavy goods trailers being towed behind agricultural tractors. I will try to gather more information on that and, if necessary, will ask my hon. Friend for examples for the experts to examine.
I also think that my hon. Friend is right about having talks with the National Farmers Union on the desirability of slow-moving agricultural vehicles having flashing lights so that other drivers may know what is happening. I give a warning to drivers: do not expect every slow-moving vehicle to have a flashing beacon. For example, a horse-drawn cart—normally used for recreation—may be on the road, as may be cyclists. There is always the possibility that car may have broken down around the bend or that a driver may be waiting to turn right into a drive. There is a responsibility on all road users, whether in private cars or commercial vehicles, to drive so that we can stop within the distance that we can see, and to notice what is happening in front of us.
I accept my hon. Friend's point about the need to make it easier for people to understand what they are seeing. I shall do all that I can to emphasise the message. I shall also consider, perhaps in consultation with others, whether in future there should be compulsory legislation to ensure that vehicles that owners know will be moving slowly are better identified.
I shall write to my hon. Friend about any of his points with which I have not been able to deal. We can discuss any points that he thinks we should go through together. I do not think that I shall be able to visit Suffolk this side of the recess, but if I can discover some suitable time later in the year I should like to see the conditions that he has described so eloquently to the House. Quite frankly, I should like to spend much more time going out and about, not only to assess potential needs but to stand at the crossroads that he identified as an accident site and to obtain more publicity for that sort of thing.
427 The 40 accidents last year on my hon. Friend's section of the A140 might illustrate other AIP sites with which we should deal. Even if dualling or some other major improvement has to be delayed, there may be works that can be done in an attempt to find a way of improving the safety and relieving some of the danger.
My hon. Friend has done a service to the House as well as to his constituents. There cannot be too much attention 428 paid to these issues. As road safety improves, it will be because of debates such as this initiated by mv hon. Friend.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Twelve o'clock.