Chairman's Statement at the M3 Inquiry - Trust Annual Report 1971
The proof of evidence submitted by the Preservation Trust is given below, omitting only the introductory sentences which have no bearing on the case.
3.1 When I heard of the proposal for the motorway I arranged for a meeting of the members of the Trust to be held at St. Faith's Hall, Winchester, on the 11th December 1970. The hall was full—I should think there were between 150 and 200 people there.
3.2 It was addressed by the County Surveyor who said that he didn't like the nearness of the proposed motorway to the City.
3.3 He and the members of the R.C.U. who were also present, then left.
3.4 Our members then considered the matter and those present, except for one Councillor, were unanimous in instructing me to object to the proposed route.
3.5 As a result I wrote the letter of objection dated 29th December 1970.
4.1 The historical and architectural importance of the City is unquestioned and acknowledged throughout the world.
4.2 What is perhaps not so widely known and appreciated is its unique setting. How fortunate we are to have such a heritage, unaffected by ribbon development, particularly in this south-eastern area of Winchester and with an ideal relationship of town, river and country due to development over hundreds of years. Such a setting cannot be recreated by planners anywhere under modern conditions. The river Itchen, water meadows and St. Catherine's Hill form an important part of the landscape.
4.3 I am convinced that the proposed motorway would be the first step in the destruction of the true character of Winchester as I have described it.
5.1 A motorway is essentially a large-scale artificial construction which is out of place in a small-scale intimate landscape such as is the setting of Winchester.
5.2 There will be ten traffic lanes close up to the eastern perimeter of the City, large directional signs at the proposed interchanges at Easton Lane and Bar End and a fly-over road at Hockley. How can such vast structures be successfully concealed or merged in the background as is sometimes possible in more open country?
5.3 The upheaval will be so great that the planting of trees and raising of earthworks, which will be an alien feature, cannot possibly disguise the disfigurement to the valley. The intrusion of a motorway is quite out of scale with the geological conformation of the whole of the Itchen valley.
5.4 Two footbridges have been promised for access to St. Catherine's Hill. Narrow footbridges and farm roads are most difficult to design satisfactorily. It is not the practice to design special footbridges but to buy them by the dozen, according to whatever may be the prevailing fashion. 5.5 Approaching Winchester from the south there will be a large directional sign just before the Hockley fly-over and another a mile away, giving warning of the interchange at Bar End.
5.6 This means therefore that between the Hockley fly-over and the Bar End interchange there will be two large footbridges and two large signs spoiling the views from St. Cross and the water meadows. It will be impossible for the landscape architect to conceal them.
5.7 I have read the evidence given by Mr. R. V. Hall on behalf of Winchester College and agree particularly with what he says in paragraphs 3. and 4. It must be very unsatisfactory to place the two interchanges at Easton Lane and Bar End only a mile and a half apart, particularly as it is intended that the motorway shall be used extensively by local traffic where it replaces the by-pass.
6.1 The present line of the preferred route seems to have been chosen because it is the cheapest and insufficient weight has been given to other factors.
6.2 Winchester City Council have acquiesced in the proposals apparently because of advice given that the motorway will provide a solution to the City traffic problems arising on the by-pass at no cost to the City.
7.1 The proposed route of the motorway passes so close to Winchester that it must become part of it.
7.2 There is no other historic city in this country with a motorway so close to it and the proposed line of the M3 will dominate the City and radically affect the way of life of its inhabitants.
7.3 I refer particularly to the Corporation's only high development at the Winnall flats as well as the housing estates nearby at Highcliffe and the recent development at Chalk Ridge.
7.4 St. Cross Hospital itself is not much more than a quarter mile from the proposed route and there are a number of houses in the St. Cross area not far away from it.
7.5 Altogether there are 2,519 electors in the City living within a quarter mile and an additional 1,493 electors living within a further quarter mile of the proposed route. To these must of course be added the children living with them.
7.6 The paths along the Itchen Navigation Canal in conjunction with St. Catherine's Hill and the water meadows have traditionally provided recreational facilities for countless residents and visitors.
7.7 The canal is to be moved some 200 feet westward and the motorway will cross part of the meadows, and so cut off the City and those meadows from St. Catherine's Hill.
7.8 The size and attraction of this amenity and recreational area will be reduced at a time when the demand for them will increase as more land around Winchester is developed for building purposes.
7.9 I am aware that Lancaster has been mentioned as an example of a similar sort of town skirted by a motorway, namely the M.6. I have accordingly visited Lancaster myself after previously making enquiries of the Local Authority as to the position there. I found that the M.6 ran about 1 mile from the south-eastern corner of Lancaster but not at all near its historic centre and at a point where there was a hill to hide it. The University is too close and on the top of a hill and there is a considerable degree of noise there. The exits from the M.6 are 7 miles apart, that to the south being 5 miles from Lancaster and that to the north 2 miles. There are large roundabout schemes at both these exits to disperse traffic. There are two building developments, both small, near the motorway. Further development in the meadows is not permitted. I am informed that the northern interchange has been made use of to such an extent by westbound traffic for Morecambe that further relief road works have become necessary. This, I suggest, is a good example of how motorways and their interchanges can generate traffic from unexpected quarters and is a warning that prior planning of the whole regional transportation system is an essential prerequisite.
7.10 I have also visited Tewkesbury. The M5 there is 1.8 miles away. The road joining it is uninteresting and passes through suburbia.
7.11 I have also visited Worcester. The M.5 is 2 miles from the Cathedral. There is a dual carriageway for 1 mile and then a roundabout to disperse traffic and a good two-way road to the City centre. The finest views here are from the west of the City where the famous cricket ground is situate and this remains undisturbed.
7.12 If the motorway is constructed on the line proposed I have no doubt that there will be a large amount of additional traffic coming into Winchester because:
- It will attract commuters to the City, as Winchester will be within an hour's run of London.
- For the same reason, it will attract visitors for a day out. What could be more delightful to a Londoner than a day on Farley Mount?
- It will be far easier and more convenient for businessmen and lawyers to come by car than by train.
- The City will form an attractive service area for the private motorist.
- It will also form an attractive service area for the drivers of heavy vehicles and in particular to the Worthy Lane coach station which will again involve travelling to and along North Walls.
8.1 It has been said that the motorway will help to relieve the congestion of the City traffic. I do not believe that this is so.
8.2 I am well acquainted with the traffic problems in Winchester, as I have studied the situation as Chairman of the Winchester Preservation Trust whose views have been asked for from time to time by the appropriate traffic authorities.
8.3 The City traffic plan was designed to connect to the by-pass and would in my opinion be incapable of absorbing the additional volume of traffic which will be generated by a motorway.
8.4 The greater part of the present and future population in Winchester is situate in the western sector, so congestion is likely to be increased by traffic crossing the centre of Winchester to reach the motorway.
8.5 In view of the siting of the two interchanges and the City's traffic plan, all traffic coming into the City from the motorway or going to the motorway from it will be compelled to use North Walls. Traffic there is already swollen and likely to become worse due to the proposed intensive use of the floor area for shopping in the centre and the creation of a new shopping centre at Westgate. The City traffic plan on completion will have no more traffic lanes than at present from east to west, even allowing for the extra carriageway in North Walls, since that will only compensate for the loss of the closure of the High Street although I appreciate it is proposed that the lanes in North Walls shall be wider. As a frequent user of motorways travelling to the Midlands and to Yorkshire I cannot recall any exits where the distribution of traffic is so inadequate, and which will so abruptly require the driver to change to the completely different requirements of small-scale urban roads. Moreover the exit roads are so short that there is a possibility of traffic jams extending from the City to the motorway itself at peak holiday traffic periods.
8.6 What is in fact referred to as the Inner Ring Road is three sides of the original City rectangle, following the line of the City walls. The purpose of this network is to serve the environmental areas.
8.7 Most of the network roads are too narrow of course to serve modern traffic. The City traffic plan, evolved over a number of years, aims to remove the traffic from the south side containing the Cathedral, the College and St. Cross. Kingsgate Street is one of the finest unspoilt Georgian streets in the Country. There must be a capacity relationship between the network and the environmental areas.
8.8 It is unwise to feed in wide roads which stimulate vehicular movement from areas on the outskirts if the central areas are not capable of accommodating the traffic. Neither is it satisfactory to redevelop a town centre with large office blocks. Yet Winchester is the victim of several different and conflicting authorities which work on such a big scale that no small authority can stop them.
8.9 A large residential area has developed west of the City. Two-thirds of the population live there. Other factors causing growth in traffic are County Council offices and the Hospital, both continually expanding, the new Law Courts, two large secondary schools, I.B.M. Hursley, and the proposed development of Crawley Court. The access to all these is through North Walls—but in the meantime the central area is being planned to generate more traffic, with every shop increasing their selling space and a whole new commercial complex planned for the Westgate area. The access to these is also North Walls.
8.10 Professor Colin Buchanan gives the striking analogy "Practically any new road cut through a densely populated area will, as a drain cut across a sodden field fills with water, attract enough vehicles in terms of flow. But if a wider view is taken, the actual contribution to relieving the centre is extremely uncertain."
8.11 Furthermore there are no more traffic lanes planned through Winchester from east to west than there are now. In fact traffic lanes will be lost with the closure of the High Street. St. George's Street which now accepts a large proportion of the through traffic, is scheduled to become a distributor road only and is to be replaced by the second carriageway in North Walls. It should be added that the traffic plan is intended to accept south-bound traffic into North Walls and so to the Bar End interchange instead of travelling through St. Cross.
8.12 The Easton Lane interchange will be quite unsuitable as a direct motorway link. Directly after leaving the motorway there will be six junctions in the WinneII Estate as traffic passes through. Each of these is likely to have heavy goods vehicles negotiating sharp turns. What length of road is needed to 'condition' the driver leaving the motorway?
8.13 Professor Colin Buchanan also says "The idea that any urban area as it stands has a definable maximum traffic capacity if the environment is to be secured is very important. There is really nothing strange about it. A factory is designed for so much plant and so many operatives, a school is designed for so many children, a house will hold so many occupants, and, if more are crammed in, it becomes a slum. There is some elasticity in capacity but not much. Exactly the same rule applies to an area occupied by buildings and the amount of traffic it can decently contain."
8.14 The present volume of traffic is already far too great for the inadequate road system which cannot accept any further traffic flow.
8.15 Enquiries show that at both Worcester and Lancaster the problem of the north and south-bound traffic has been solved by motorways but that the traffic to the west has increased to such an extent that further road construction is necessary to take the extra flow.
8.16 We have seen how pressure is building up to have a larger population of both residents and workers in Winchester. To have a motorway can only stimulate the process, but meanwhile there is no increase of provision for internal traffic. Only measures to ease the flow. Moreover there is no external diversionary route for west-bound traffic.
8.17 In peak periods it may well be that traffic jams could build up on to the motorway itself in ten years' time.
8.18 If the environment is sacrosanct, and if no major reconstruction can be undertaken, then accessibility must be limited. The futile attempts to cater for the whole future demands of traffic must be put aside. The motorway will increase traffic through Winchester with westward traffic towards Romsey and the New Forest which must pass up North Walls.
9.1 Noise. Much technical data has been presented and explained, but Mr. Gordon's most important remark was contained in his opening statement when he said that human values were more important than scientific accuracy. Many people do not share the view that the degree of acceptable sound is measured by the level at which people can communicate.
9.2 Acceptable noise level, it should be stressed, depends on quite different factors. A person who finds a dripping tap intolerable may well be perfectly happy with the sound of a far noisier water mill, though the latter may well interfere more with communication. The sort of noise level we can accept depends entirely on personal reactions and hardly at all on the number of decibels.
9.3 Reactions to noise will also be coloured by personal attitudes to motorways. Motorists who like to drive fast or owners of service stations who can earn their living by motorways are more likely to find the noise tolerable than nature lovers, ramblers or anyone who prefers and constantly pursues silence. We should not depend on the ability of the human ear to disregard unwanted sound as a means of self-protection. This lowers the quality of life and destroys the the awareness of our surroundings. In Winchester the number of people subjected to noise will be large.
9.4 The height of the embankment screening Winchester College and St. Cross from the worst effects of noise has been discussed at length. It must be realised that while a higher embankment may reduce noise in the valley, it will increase the visual intrusion. Of the visual aspects, the rise of the Hockley fly-over on the high embankment will be even worse than the bad effect of the motorway.
10.1 I do not propose to try to deal in detail with the question of costing but in a television programme on 'Housing' earlier last month it was stated that there is a 10% reduction in the value of houses in proximity to a motorway. Many owners of houses which are within a quarter of a mile of the motorway are likely to suffer a fall in value.
10.2 There would also no doubt be a loss by reason of rate reductions, so causing a sum which has to be spread over the rest of the ratepayers as a whole.
11.1 I am impressed by the insistence of the Southampton Corporation on saving The Avenue, while at the same time producing a very awkward access line to the City.
11.2 I do not however agree with the necessity to have the Nursling terminal as a three-lane dual carriageway. A large proportion of the traffic will have been taken by the M.27 to both east and west. I compare the road to the entry of the M.4 into London, which reduces satisfactorily into two lanes before reaching the relief of the North Circular Road.
12.1 When the preferred route was first made public last October, it did not produce any marked immediate public reaction. This, I consider, was due to the mode of presentation. No detail or useful information was given concerning alternative routes and the preferred route was put forward as the cheapest and therefore the only viable route.
12.2 The feeling was engendered, though I hasten to add that this was probably not intentional, that the immediate construction of a motorway was essential to the region, that the preferred route was the only acceptable one and that to all intents and purposes, the powers that be, had already decided the issue.
12.3 I myself found that the more deeply I investigated the situation, the more apparent it became that this was not the only route and that it was likely to cause irreparable damage to the environment. I observed mounting opposition to the proposal and by the end of last year when we were nearing the time by which objections had to be lodged, public opinion was sufficiently marked for the Minister to order an Enquiry. Since the beginning of the year, there has been remarkable and ever-increasing upsurge of public opinion in opposition to a motorway in the vicinity of Winchester.
12.4 Once the full implications of the proposal have been realised and this Enquiry has been an important factor in clarifying the issues, I sincerely believe that the majority of the inhabitants of the City of Winchester and of the various parishes through which the motorway passes and those interested in the future of this area will be united in their opposition to the preferred route, accepting no mere local variations but requiring that it shall not pass by Winchester and through Compton.
13.1 I feel I cannot leave this matter without drawing attention to the difficulties in which objectors find themselves in a matter of this kind.
13.2 The plan for the motorway is drawn up over a number of years by a large team of planners, surveyors, engineers, landscape architects and experts in various subjects including applied acoustics. They have unlimited resources in so far as their salaries are paid, and every justifiable expense with regard to the preliminary work can be met without difficulty.
13.3 On the other hand the objectors are limited to what they can afford and as much spare time as they can find for a thorough investigation over a period of six months.
13.4 We are very fortunate however to have had the help of so many people who have devoted their individual skills and much time to the serious study of the proposals, so that the views we put forward are not merely those of amateurs but are well informed demanding serious attention.
13.5 Reference has been made to the public meetings which have been held about the motorway in the City and elsewhere. I have attended three of these and should like to pay tribute to the willingness of the County Surveyor and the Road Construction Unit team to give information. What must however be made clear and understood is that such meetings, where the public were in ignorance of the details until the meeting took place, gives no opportunity for informed appraisal of the proposals. A considerable time has to elapse before the advantages and disadvantages come to light.
13.6 The proposed route has received the support of certain Local Authorities. I have been employed by various Local Authorities for 33 years and, as mentioned, I am now myself a member of the City Council. It would not therefore be out of place for me to make a short observation about local government. The matters with which local government is concerned become very complex and beyond the comprehension of the elected representative in a short space of time for lack of technical knowledge, data and time. The responsibilities of the officers are heavy and they discharge their duties most conscientiously. I know how hard they work. The result of their labours depends on their brief, and this in turn is generally drawn up by another officer before approval of the Council. Finance is always an important factor. Once a brief is given it involves the commitment of very large resources, building up powerful vested interests. The officers become attached to their plan and are loth to abandon it although the brief may have been incomplete in the first place.
14.1 Taking the larger view this is a decision of national and not only local importance. This is an historic City of European importance—of world importance. It is as important to England as Urbino is to Italy. There is no other historic City which has such a close relationship with its setting. It is the last one to have a natural unspoilt contact with the countryside. Notice how we have to use the word 'unspoilt' as a word of high praise. What a dreadful admission, but we know that what is proposed will inevitably destroy for ever what is a unique national asset, and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—which Mr. Porter and Mr. Gordon can do to alter this fact.
14.2 This area, to the country as a whole, is of overwhelming importance because it is not built over, a national asset which must not on any account be lost.
14.3 In the early days of motorways it is doubtful whether the planners or engineers would have had the audacity to propose a motorway close to Winchester but one detects an increasing boldness as the idea of a motorway is more widely known and accepted.
14.4 The use of the computer in selecting the preferred route is profoundly disturbing. This is precisely what far-seeing people have feared for some time. Winchester on these terms has ceased to be a City and become just another urban development area. Everything is being planned on a purely quantitative basis. Not because the computer can do these things better, but because everything is reduced to what a machine is capable of doing. The decision concerning a motorway in this area must be one of human judgment aided perhaps by the computer to a limited degree. The reason for this is that the computer cannot possibly take human values into account.
15.1 In his address to the Third Countryside Conference at The Guildhall, London, last October the Prime Minister said : "Once we change our environment through some development we cannot any longer put a cost on what has been removed or on some particular quality of life which we ourselves value and which would be denied to those who come after us. One has to bear in mind that in the long term it might often cost less to pursue a policy which could be more costly in the short-term than to go ahead on a cheaper plan and then pay to correct some piece of devastation or some new form of pollution."
15.2 If the only objective is to ascertain the cheapest and most direct route between Popham and Southampton which can be constructed in the shortest possible time, then the preferred route may be the best route. If the problem is considered as a whole, taking into account the long-term and regional planning and the value of our environment, then the preferred route may well turn out to be the worst route. It would be a tragedy if the European Conservation Year of 1970 should be remembered as the year when Winchester decided to destroy the ltchen valley and its own environment.