§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is his Department's policy on the extent to which bypasses should provide for traffic growth beyond the volume of traffic to be re-routed round the town or village bypassed. [5925]
§ Mr. WattsThis depends on the circumstances of each individual scheme. The case for providing additional capacity to accommodate extra growth depends on such factors as the extent of the growth, the cost of accommodating it and the effect that such additional provision would have on the environment.
§ Mr. TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what research has been carried out to assess the extent to which the construction of bypasses relocate traffic problems. [5988]
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§ Mr. WattsThe Department monitors the impact of all trunk road schemes, including bypasses, after they have been opened so as to assess whether traffic problems have been reduced as expected. A report on this work, "Comparison of Forecast and Observed Traffic on Trunk Road Schemes", was published in 1993. A summary of a more recent and detailed study of a sample of schemes, "Post-implementation Scheme Evaluation: Were the COBA Assessments Accurate?" by Knight, Powell and Whittaker, was presented to the—planning and transportation research and computation—European Transport Forum in September this year.