I had a briefing recently with Highways England, the organisation in charge of our major roads. We were looking at the proposed infrastructure improvements over the next 10 to 20 years. All major highways improvements take many years to plan and implement. We focussed in on the three routes most essential to our Peninsula economy.
The M5 is the way in which most people reach our very special part of the world. For every one person who arrives by train, nine come by car or coach. In the summer, as we all know, the M5 between Taunton and Bristol can resemble a carpark in both directions, especially on a Friday. In fact Friday in summer has effectively become a non-travel-on-the-M5-day for most of us. Sadly there are no plans between now and 2030 to build a fourth lane along that section. The plan is to turn it into a smart motorway, with automated speed restrictions and better information to try to improve traffic flows during peak periods. This has worked well in stretches of the M25 and even the part of the M5 from junction 19 northwards.
The reason why the M5 is not going to be upgraded is that for most of the time – 6 days out of 7 it works very well. Compare this to some other motorways which clog up every day.
The A38 is already an expressway and now modest adjustments are planned to upgrade it to a new class of Expressway – with some slow moving traffic being banned and some junctions receiving attention. Sadly it is not going to become a motorway between now and 2030.
The one big change we should all benefit from is the duallingof the A303 which is the other spine road feeding our region. As many of us know to our frustration, there are several bottlenecks along its route, especially around Stonehenge. Work has now started in earnest on a scheme costing well over £1 billion to build a tunnel under Stonehenge and convert the entire stretch to a dual carriageway to Taunton. Although some are keen to also dual the road from Ilminster to Honiton, Highways England have no plans for that. Traffic would have to fork up to Taunton and then take the M5 down. Not ideal, but better than the current bottleneck.
Our wonderful region suffers from its peripherality, which is why we continue to battle for improved connectivity, by train, broadband and road.