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Western Orbital Motorway | [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Summary
History
The Western Orbital Motorway has been on the agenda of West Midlands roads builders since the planners got their maps, pens and bits of string out in the late forties. Just like the M42 and the Birmingham Northern Relief Road the desire to complete a West Midlands Orbital or M25 style Motorway ring road has been slow in gestation. Indeed while the toll BNRR or M6 Toll as it is now to be known was heading towards the longest Public Inquiry into a road the UK has ever seen the Western Orbital Motorway was not attracting financial backers and was dropped from the National Roads programme. This was a great victory for environmentalists and was duly celebrated by people, communities and campaigners along the 33 mile green belt route and residents of the conurbation alike. That was in the heady days of the late nineties when the anti road movement was at its height and roads were being dropped all over the country and no minister worth their salt would be seen at a road opening ceremony.
The WOM is back
However we are in a new millennium and the road builders are back with a vengeance. This combined by the fall out of a botched rail privatisation and Labours failure to get to grips with the rail portfolio has led to the re-emergence of the roads programme and the WOM is back on the agenda. The road builders will say we are not planning a WOM: so successful have our campaigns been that the words Western Orbital Motorway sends them red with rage. They know that the campaigners have all the arguments and skills that are needed to defeat the WOM. We have done it before and we will do it again.
Dressed down as bypasses
Hence they are presenting the WOM as three separate by-passes. Friends of the Earth is not fooled by this sleight of hand and we will campaign to stop the WOM. This briefing is intended to inform you of the current agenda, how to campaign against the WOM and who to contact as part of your campaigns. There is plenty of information out there to which will draw your attention but most of all it will need all of us to galvanise together and mount yet another campaign if we are to defeat the latest round of road building proposals for the Western side of the West Midlands conurbation.
What are the current proposals
Due to the sensitive nature in using the term Western Orbital Motorway the current proposals consist of three bypasses:-
Western Stourbridge Bypass
Wolverhampton Western Bypass
An M54 to BNRR motorway
and a link from the line of the A449 Western Stourbridge bypass to the Dudley Southern bypass. This is intended to join the two bypasses where one finishes and the other starts thus creating essentially one route to the West of the Conurbation.
It is by suggesting three roads, not one road, and calling them bypasses, not motorways, that the developers hope to hood-wink local residents and campaigners into supporting these ‘congestion relieving schemes.’ The problem with this argument as we all know is that building roads doesn’t solve congestion; it encourages it. Only traffic reduction proposals will deliver free - running roads.
Therefore we all have to unite to defeat these proposals. We have to act quickly and here’s why
The boring bit
The acronyms RPG and MMS are to most people a great turn off BUT it is by these two processes that the WOM has been put back centre stage.
Regional Planning Guidance RPG
This is the statutory planning blueprint for the West Midlands Region and will replace the current RPG 11. It will run up to 2021, so action now will have a lasting effect. This document is currently out for consultation which ends on 30th January 2001. An Examination in Public (EiP) will be held in June 2002 in Birmingham. It is essential that as many people as possible respond to this document opposing the construction of these roads schemes. Policy T16 page 126 of the draft includes the proposal
"Development of improved road network management and prioritisation including a link between the A449 and Dudley Southern Bypass, Wolverhampton Western Bypass and a Stourbridge Western bypass."
While on page 127 under investment priority Road measurers
"M54 -M6- BNRR link road"
So there we have it: in policy terms the WOM is back on the agenda. You can engage with the RPG consultation process by contacting David Littlewood at the Government Office for the West Midlands (GOWM) on 012 12 12 54 72 and ask him to send you a copy of the draft RPG. Alternatively you could write to him at c/o WMRPG, secretariat, CH1, GOWM, 77 Paradise Circus, Queensway, Birmingham. B1 2DT or via email The RPG is also available electronically at
Multi Modal Study for the West Midlands
The MMS’s were established after the production of the Transport White Paper as a way for people to solve the transport nightmare that we are facing. The government was facing a number of hard decision on road schemes all over the UK. They were not prepared to make those decisions but thought it would be better for local people to have a far greater input into the design of the future transport network of the country. The idea was to have inclusive project management groups bringing together environmentalists and the business sector as well as the transport operators, local and regional government, politicians as well as the wider community to work on a solutions agenda for their area. The West Midlands Multi Modal is one of those studies. This started work in 1999 and produced its final report on November 9th 2001 the day after the draft RPG was produced. It was within the MMS that the WOM was reborn. The business community could not stand the fact that they had been defeated at every stage on the WOM.:- the traffic is not there to justify it, no financial backers were prepared to take it on as a private Toll road in the same way as the BNRR, the environmental arguments are very strong and local communities very active in defence of their environment. The report for the West Midlands Multi Modal study is on the GOWM site
How WOM came back
The business community saw the MMS as an ideal way of bullying the WOM back onto the agenda. However they were met with fierce resistance from the environmental lobby and local residents. So much so that even they have been convinced that the term WOM doesn’t wash. Hence the two bypasses and the motorway link. They are even selling the schemes on what they will do for the regeneration of Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton and other parts of the Black Country. This again is dubious at best as all new roads not only generate traffic but attract development. This would suck jobs away from the heart of the conurbation onto the WOM in a similar way that the M42 has become a development corridor on the East of the conurbation. It is for this reason that powerful decision makers in the heart of the Conurbation are opposed to the new schemes. It is essential for the well- being of the local economy that these schemes are dropped and investment made into the public transport networks, cycle ways, decent footpaths and home zones to act as a catalyst for the Urban Renaissance the West Midlands is crying out for.
What Next
The next stage of the MMS process will be to consider the regeneration impact, both benefits and disbenefits, of the proposed bypasses. This is an important piece of work and will be completed in time for the RPG EiP in June 2002. It is essential that we monitor the progress of this study and ensure that we are able to digest the conclusions well in advance of the EiP.
Now the hard work
It essential that as many people as possible know your views on these proposals. They affect a huge number of people from the Black Country and the rural Shires of Worcestershire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. So let you local regional, national and European Decision makers know your feelings. Get writing those letters, visit your local councilor and voice your concerns and visit your MP at their surgery.
MPs
All contactable via House of Commons, London SW1A 1AA or tel 020 72 19 30 00 if you don’t know your MP or in which constituency you reside try http://www.locata.co.uk/commons/
MEPs
There are currently eight MEPs representing the West Midlands region they can all be contacted via their regional offices as follows
Conservatives c/o West Midlands Conservative Office 10 Greenfield Cresent Edgbaston Birmingham B15 3AU
Labour c/o 67 Birmingham Road, West Bromwich, West Midlands, B70 6PY. Tel: 0121 553 6601 Fax: 0121 553 6602 Email:
Liberal Democrat c/o 5 Ely Street, Stratford upon Avon Warwickshire CV37 6LW
West Midlands Regional Assembly
This is the regional body with ultimate responsibility for recommending to the Government the region’s views on the Multi Modal Study and the Regional Planning Guidance. You can find out who is representing you on the WMRA by contacting the West Midlands Local Government association on 012 16 78 10 10 or visiting their web site
Campaigning Works
The Green Belt campaigners from the North of Birmingham have been campaigning for years on proposals by the City Council to develop Green Belt land at Peddimore and Bassets Pole for industry. In the current Unitary Develoment Plan review the council is seeking not only to take these sites out of the Green Belt but also to extend their size. This has resulted in a massive 30 000 people objecting to these proposals and the Government Office for the West Midlands objecting as well. The decision by the GOWM will add weight to the campaigns to save these areas of our environment. If local people affected by the proposed re-emergence of the WOM make their feelings felt and their voices heard then we can defeat these schemes and have some fun at the same time.
This briefing is also available in Rich Text Format (RTF).
Contact Details
West Midlands FOE,
c/o The Warehouse
54-57 Allison Street
Digbeth
Birmingham B5 5TH.