The M3 Decision - Trust Annual Report 1980
Three years after completion of the inquiry, the Secretaries of State have confirmed the Inspector's recommendation to complete the M3 from Popham to Bar End, and to consider a less damaging proposal from there to Compton. This decision is likely to leave the most congested and worst part of the by-pass unimproved for several years yet.
The Trust was represented at the inquiry by the M3 Joint Action Group, whose main arguments were endorsed by the Inspector's findings: ". . . the evidence does not support an overriding urgency for a comprehensive scheme . . . the economic justification for the proposals appears from the evidence to be highly dubious . . . the accident rates on the present road are not high enough to establish great urgency . . . the M3 costs are likely to have been underestimated by the Department , the Department's estimate for the J.A.G. cost is likely to be too high by (say) £2m ... south of the A31 junction the J.A.G. road could accommodate the traffic likely in 1995 provided a 60 m.p.h. speed restriction was applied." The final decision, however, is a compromise that owes more to administrative expediency than to logic or need. Unless the southern section is improved at the same time or prior to the motorway, there will be the tragic mess of traffic lights and sub-standard bends within one mile of the end of the 70 m.p.h. motorway. If designed from the start as an improved all-purpose road for the most heavily trafficked water meadow section, it is inconceivable that a motorway would have been proposed just from Popham to Bar End. The Inquiry showed that the original M3 scheme was unjustified: the current proposal is little better and fails to comply with the recent Transport White Paper in that it neither offers value for money nor improves the route to the port of Southampton.