M3 - Trust Annual Report 1973
After almost two years the Minister for Transport Industries the Rt. Hon. John Peyton, M.P. accepted the preferred route of the M3 which had been the subject of the Public Inquiry in the spring of 1971. It was accompanied by this statement in a press release. "It is necessary somehow to extract the traffic from Winchester itself and the overloaded by-pass. The present route offers not only the best means of doing this but the only way which would not involve braking into unspoilt country". No evidence was produced at the Inquiry to show how the first objective could succeed. It is quite extraordinary that the chief reason given in support of the scheme, turns out to be the one aspect of the affair which was not touched upon at the inquiry, except by the Preservation Trust. If there has been any further investigation of the effect of connecting Winchester's local traffic with a motorway, the findings have not been published.
The national motorway policy is the affair of the Department of the Environment, and the local traffic is the affair of the City Council, and what happens when the two are connected is nobody's business. There is just the delightful assumption that if enough car space is provided everything will turn out for the best.
The Minister's argument depends on the idea that future traffic volumes are largely independent of the road system which is provided; hence better roads will simply drain away traffic from existing roads. Experience all over the world indicates that this is not the case. No cities, including those that have built extensive motorways, have found that they bring long term relief to the other streets. All that happens is that the whole of the expanded network rapidly fills up. The importance of the well known phenomenon, that traffic volumes increase as a result of providing increased road capacity is overlooked (vide "Transport Strategy in London, Chapter 3).
To take but one example, the provision of a motorway so near to Winchester will increase the volume of traffic having Winchester as a destination. This traffic will have to traverse the area formerly bounded by the walls of the historic city because there is no possibility of another route without the destruction of many more houses.
It is claimed that there will be an advantage in re-routing traffic from St. Cross to the motorway via North Walls. The distance will be greater than at present, but the route also leads traffic to the centre, to join other traffic from all directions seeking entry to the M3,—the reverse of the present arrangement whereby traffic is encouraged to find the by-pass at a number of access points on the perimeter. Indeed there would be nothing at all to prevent the traffic volumes building up in St. Cross to present levels or beyond. It is quite impossible for the City Council or anyone else "after long and careful consideration" to predict that the traffic flows within the city will be in any way reduced.
Central Winchester should not be used as an area to collect traffic for an 18 mile stretch of motorway. We must get used to the idea that if car ownership increases to the predicted levels there is nothing which we can do to make Winchester and other historic towns (including London) available to any private motorist who chooses to go wherever he will and as fast as he can without impediment. They will have to go about their daily business by Public Transport, which in the case of Winchester is a relatively small area. New roads are not the answer. The road problem is exclusively a problem of traffic management.
The spontaneous reaction of the Winchester citizens was immediate. They were shocked by the announcement, and the depth of feeling revealed, took the authorities by surprise. The Chairman of the Preservation Trust was invited to join a new combined protest movement, to be known as the Winchester M3 Joint Action Group and was elected Chairman, after it had become abundently clear that support was widespread and that this was an occasion when public opinion was instinctively right.
The events since then will still be fresh in the minds of the Trust's members. The public meeting in New Hall, the very successful petition, corresspondence in The Times and the Hampshire Chronicle, the raising of the matter again in the City Council, when it became clear that acceptance was reluctant. The authorities can no longer derive much comfort from the support of the Winchester City Council in this clear demonstration that they do not, and indeed never did, represent the views of the citizens on this issue.
Many of us who are car owners, seldom stop to think what cars do to the environment. Near at home we might consider the unlovely sight of Winchester's car parks. Compare these central open spaces, with the Abbey Gardens, the Cathedral Close and Oram's Arbor. Then consider how the City might look if all open spaces were occupied by cars. A few square yards of grass and some trees give minimal improvement, but car parks constitute sterile ground.
Then think what happens with an urban motorway, for this indeed is what the M3 really is, as it proceeds for almost three miles within the City boundary. Like railway lines in towns, nobody with a choice, wants to live nearby. So instead of a mixed community, only the lowest income groups, who have no choice, will remain, and the whole area deteriorates.
This is what will happen if the M3 is allowed to proceed on the preferred route, instead of a longer and therefore more expensive route. What is the right priority? What is the true economy ? Why do we forget the lessons provided by the railways in the nineteenth century? All this needs no proof to anyone who has seen what happens to streets of houses and blocks of flats when a motorway is built close by.