A5 (Dunstable) (Hansard, 4 May 1999)

§ Sir David Madel (South-West Bedfordshire)

I welcome the opportunity to have a short debate on the proposal by the Highways Agency to establish a permanent bus lane on the A5 in Dunstable. I am sorry that the debate has been a long time in coming, and I am grateful that the Under-Secretary the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson) is here to reply.

The proposal by the Highways Agency is imminent. Later this month, it wishes to go ahead and make the bus lane permanent; 7 am to 7 pm every day of the week. I want the agency to think again on the timing of the proposal and on the practical details, should it come into permanent effect. I hope that I can persuade the Government to agree.

I am glad that the Under-Secretary is here to reply, because I wish to refer to her constituency in support of my arguments. My argument in that area is relevant to the current position in Dunstable.

The permanent bus lane proposals cannot be divorced from the traffic problems in Dunstable, particularly the heavy lorries that use the A5 through the town. They will go on doing so as long as we do not have a bypass. The latest position on the bypass is relevant to the proposal to establish a permanent bus lane, and has been summed up in a letter to me from Gwyn Drake.

Mr. Drake is divisional director, networking customer services, at the Highways Agency. His letter of 14 April, concerning the possibility of Dunstable getting an eastern bypass, says: Included amongst these studies will be one of the Ml corridor from London to the South Midlands. The A5 Dunstable Eastern Bypass will be considered as part of this study by the Regional Planning Conferences before a decision is made on whether that scheme, or indeed any, will proceed. The Government have earned not a cheer but a huge sigh of relief in Dunstable, because there was a possibility that the A5 eastern bypass would be dropped from the roads programme, as some other bypasses have been. However, I do not regard Mr. Drake's letter as very optimistic. Frankly, we in Dunstable do not need any more studies, conferences, inquiries, exhibitions or any of the other things that happen when a bypass is being considered. We have had more of those than the Minister and I have had hot dinners. We should now take the necessary and lawful measures to construct the bypass and not take refuge in endless inquiries, proposals, counter-proposals, exhibitions and pre-bypass conferences. We have had those in rich abundance and we now want to move ahead.

I accept that the bypass will not come overnight. In the absence of a bypass, I have some counter-proposals for the Government and the Highways Agency on the agency's plan for a bus lane on the A5 in Dunstable, operating from 7 am to 7 pm every day. My first counter-proposal is that it should not operate on a Sunday. The pattern of life is entirely different, and there is absolutely no need to operate it then, not least because children do not go to school on Sunday, so the school bus argument does not apply. The same argument applies to Saturday.

852 My counter-proposal on Mondays to Fridays is that, if we have to have the bus lane, it should operate from 7 am to 10 am and from 4 pm to 7 pm, in what is called the rush hour, although there is no rush hour in Dunstable, because rather than a rush of traffic we have constant congestion.

I said that I would mention the Minister's constituency. This morning, I drove down Finchley road, which I am pretty sure runs right through her constituency, towards Swiss Cottage. The bus lane there operates from 7 am to 10 am. The difference between that road and the A5 in Dunstable is that, in addition to the bus lane, it has two lanes for cars and lorries; no such luck in Dunstable, where we have only the one. If 7 am to 10 am is good enough for Finchley road, it is certainly good enough for Dunstable.

As I drove into London this morning, I noticed that Wellington road, which runs from Lord's cricket ground to Swiss Cottage and may be on the edge of the Minister's constituency, has a bus lane operating from 4 pm to 7 pm, which is exactly what I want for Dunstable. What is good enough for Wellington road in London should be good enough for the A5 in Dunstable. I think that that is a perfectly sensible counter-proposal.

My next counter-proposal is that when there is a crash on the M1b—and, alas, they happen—an electronic sign near the bus lane should be made to read, "Crash on M1, bus lane suspended". In other words, the bus lane could be used because of conditions on the M1.

I do not normally disagree with Bedfordshire police—in fact, I am a strong supporter of theirs—but I do not agree with their approach to this problem. Once there is a crash on the MI, Dunstable becomes very clogged up. The police say that they do not divert traffic into Dunstable, but that is not the point because the traffic goes there anyway. After a smash on the MI in the Luton area, or between Luton and Toddington, or between Luton and junction 9—the A5 turn-off—lorry and car drivers who have their radios tuned to a frequency with traffic reports, which will mention the heavy congestion on the M1 caused by the smash, will turn off in the Milton Keynes area. They will drive down the Milton Keynes bypass, which is a nice dual carriageway, and through Great Brickhills—another nice dual carriageway bypass—to the A5 in Bedfordshire and through Dunstable.

My constituents cannot understand why, if there is a crash on the M1, we should have extra congestion in Dunstable simply because the Highways Agency wants the bus lane to operate regardless of the conditions on the M1. That is a serious, practical point and it strikes a chord with my constituents and those who travel through Dunstable if the M1 is at a complete standstill.

If we are to have the bus lane, we do not need to waste money on painting it. My constituents are law abiding and they can read. The Highways Agency should keep costs down. A white line and a sign saying "bus lane" are all that is needed. We do not need money spent on painting the bus lane red or green. My constituents would not understand that, in view of the police and revenue support grant settlements we have had. If there is money around to be spent on paint, the priority in Bedfordshire is to paint the schools, not the bus lane.

I have taken a close interest in the bypasses that have gone ahead, especially the Newbury bypass, with the long battle to get it through. It opened in November and I have 853 consulted people in Newbury. Once it opened, they say that there was a noticeable reduction in heavy goods vehicles throughout the day, especially at peak times, and—along with pedestrianisation of the town centre, which followed soon after the bypass opened—the town is now more attractive for shoppers and commercial organisations. That is exactly what would happen in Dunstable if we could get our bypass. The heavy lorries would leave and we could get on with pedestrianisation measures and with the bus lanes. The Highways Agency is putting the cart before the horse by introducing the bus lane before we have the bypass.

If the Highways Agency and the Government insist on going ahead with the bus lane without the bypass, the least I hope that they will do is to agree to my counterproposals. They have the support of my constituents, they are practical—I have thought them out carefully—and they are for the benefit of the town and my constituents. If they were adopted, the Highways Agency would do itself a world of good in public esteem in my constituency. I hope that the Minister will agree.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Ms Glenda Jackson)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South-West (Sir David Madel) on securing this debate. As he has been at pains to point out, the A5 is a trunk road on the core network, of which the High street in Dunstable forms a part. I am aware of the hon. Gentleman's misgivings about the experimental bus lane.

The Government want to make buses a real and attractive alternative to cars, especially in busy town centres such as Dunstable where there are congested roads such as the A5. Our intention to do this was set out in last summer's White Paper entitled "A New Deal for Transport", and the detail was provided in the daughter document published in March, "From Workhorse to Thoroughbred—A Better Role for Bus Travel". With the national picture showing that a quarter of all car journeys are now of less than two miles, it is surely sensible to examine and, I hope, change our travel habits.

The Highways Agency, responding to the challenge of making best use of our trunk roads, has discussed the management of traffic on the A5 in Dunstable with the local authorities, the bus companies and the police. It has recognised that bus priority in Dunstable High street would be a positive benefit.

The idea is not new. It was first suggested in 1994 by the South Bedfordshire district council as a means of encouraging the use of public transport. This was subsequently carried forward in the booklet entitled "The Future of Our Town Centre—A Draft Strategy for Dunstable" as promoted and published by the Dunstable town centre management committee. In December 1996, a seminar attended by local authorities, industry and road user groups concluded that there was a need for a southbound bus lane to improve the reliability of bus services through the town centre. This was regarded as a precursor to any town centre improvements and as a valuable means of encouraging the shift away from the car to public transport.

The Highways Agency proceeded with caution and decided that the bus lane should be introduced on an experimental basis. Its success would be monitored before 854 the decision was taken to confirm or remove it. The trial southbound bus lane—360 m, or 400 yd, in length—was set up in High street north on 9 March 1998. A monitoring exercise has been under way since that time. That has shown that bus patronage has increased by about 18 per cent., and that bus journey times have reduced by up to four minutes and reliability has improved. The A5 through Dunstable is congested, and queueing has always been a factor, but the monitoring has shown too that journey times for other road users have not been significantly affected, and that safety for cyclists, permitted to use the bus lane, has improved.

The Highways Agency received nine letters objecting to the confirmation of the bus lane, and the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire has also raised four issues that are of concern. The main worry cited by the nine objectors was that the bus lane had increased queueing and congestion in the town centre, leading to rat running along adjacent roads. However, the monitoring exercise has shown that the bus lane has not created significant problems for other road users. Surveys have shown that journey times and queues have remained much as before the bus lane was introduced. All the objectors have received individual letters of explanation from the Highways Agency.

The concerns of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, which he outlined, focus on four aspects of the bus lane—the hours that it operates; the days of the week on which it operates; whether it should be open to other users, such as taxis and motorcycles; and whether it should be suspended, by electronic signing, when an incident occurs on—and so when traffic diverts from—the M1. The hon. Gentleman is also worried about the possible costs of painting the lane.

I know that the hon. Gentleman feels that the bus lane is premature until the future of the A5 Dunstable eastern bypass has been decided. Indeed, he said that the proposal was a case of putting the cart before the horse. The hon. Gentleman discussed these points at a meeting with officers from the Highways Agency, and as a result the agency consulted further with its partners on this initiative—the district, town and county councils, the Arriva bus company and the Bedfordshire police.

The consensus was that the hours of operation were appropriate, and were producing real benefits, but that the facility need not operate on Sundays. Therefore, the Sunday operation would not be confirmed.

It was felt that usage of the bus lane should not be extended to taxis and motorcycles. The use of bus lanes by motorcycles is a complex issue, but here, it was felt that the mixture would not be a happy one. As taxis in Dunstable are not generally of the black cab type, the police felt that there could be enforcement problems.

The police did not want special signing or suspension of the bus lane during an incident on the Ml, as this southbound section of the A5 was not on the recognised, signed diversion route. Painting the relevant part of the road would reinforce to road users that they were not allowed in the bus route.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned bus routes in my constituency on the Finchley road but neglected to point out that the part to which he referred is also a red route. I am not aware that anyone has advocated making the A5 through Dunstable town centre a red route. 855 The A5 Dunstable eastern bypass was part of the trunk road programme reviewed last year. The report "New Deal for Trunk Roads in England" did not include the scheme in the targeted programme of improvements, but listed it as a scheme that will be considered in the London to south midlands multi-modal study, subject to the views of the regional planning conference. The bypass, if eventually built, will not be a reality within the short to medium term.

Although I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument, I cannot agree that the bus lane is putting the cart before the horse. If measures are not taken to deal with congestion now, the situation for all our constituents could become intolerable and have a most deleterious effect on the life of city centres by making it so unpleasant that people did not wish to live, shop or introduce businesses there. I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman's assessment of which is the cart and which the horse in this debate.

We need to make a difference to people's travel habits now if we are to bring any change for the better to hard-pressed communities such as Dunstable. The Highways Agency is right to set about making better use of trunk roads such as the A5. There is always a duty to ensure that new initiatives are effective and bring real improvements and, on balance, do not make conditions 856 worse for road users. In this case, I am content that the cautious approach and monitoring work that the Highways Agency has carried out has amply demonstrated that the bus lane is a good investment, and fully in accord with Government policy.

Last November, my noble Friend Lord Whitty, the Minister for Roads and Road Safety announced the success of the trial bus lane and his intention to make it permanent. A draft traffic regulation order was published in January to start the process of confirmation. That order attracted the nine objections to which I referred.

The Highways Agency's divisional director has considered in detail all the comments and objections received, and recommended to Lord Whitty that the objections should be overruled. He is minded to accept that recommendation and confirm the order but wishes to consider the issues raised in this debate.

For a modest investment, a process of real change in travel habits to make better use of our trunk roads and support bus services has been started in Dunstable. The quality partnership approach that the Highways Agency has adopted is sound and has enabled it to demonstrate the support for, and benefits of, the project. I believe that the bus lane is effective and I look forward to Lord Whitty confirming that it will be made permanent.