“New forecasts and model runs should be undertaken to reflect the lack of traffic growth and the availability of new policy instruments since 2001.
The consultation should be withdrawn until this work is complete.
The work should be undertaken in a transparent manner to ensure that any future consultation is on a sound basis.”
Professor Wenban-Smith
“For these reasons the statement that this scheme is the only solution to local problems is not accurate and has no recent evidence which supports this claim.
Thus the current consultation is misleading and premature.”
Professor Wenban-Smith
“The Business Case is not yet finalised and the material which should underpin the consultation is subject to change.
An initial analysis of the Business Case shows serious problems, including:
Inconsistency between stability and decline in traffic locally, pre-dating the recession
Serious inaccuracies in the public transport model used to show the impact of the current road scheme including mode share and total number of trips
A majority of benefits accrue to longer distance traffic, not local traffic as is the stated purpose of the scheme
No account appears to have been taken of the Northern Hub initiative and the impact this, and electrification schemes, will have on longer distance journeys
Unanswered questions over how the new developments have been included in the model, especially in relation to TEMPRO
Lack of genuine sensitivity testing, including assumptions on land use, policies including limiting parking and Smarter Choices, and a traffic stability forecast
Questions over whether the Area of Influence is too small and fails to pick up longer distance impacts.”
Professor Wenban-Smith
“As the economic assessment, done in parallel with this transport report, shows, the majority of benefits are in the far distant future,”
Professor Wenban-Smith
“The Area of Influence (AoI) is relatively small, and this is surprising considering that the benefits from the scheme are mainly to longer distance traffic. In the current business case over half of the benefits come from journeys which are longer than the diameter of the AoI. This is unexplored in the Business Case.”
Professor Wenban-Smith
“1 Modelling accuracy
The current modelling is not fully multi-modal and the consultation contains assertions based on the 2001 MMS report, in turn based on older data.
There is thus no up to date systematic analysis against identified objectives and problems, as set out in Webtag, and no up to date consideration of other solutions.
This particularly unfortunate since the assumptions on traffic growth used in 2001 have proved to be incorrect and there is good local data which shows traffic falling for at least part of the AoI.
There is no walking or cycling in the demand model, this conceals the real impact of locating the new development in the planned locations and serving them by the proposed road scheme.
The public transport forecasts are not robustly validated and thus mode choice and the impacts of the scheme are again not well represented. This means the road traffic predictions will not be robust.
In particular the mode split predicted by the model for areas where it is currently measured, such as central Manchester and surrounding areas including Stockport, is not shown for the modelled base year or future years. “
Professor Wenban-Smith
Before they spend hundreds of millions of council taxpayers’ pounds on the bypass, they should have looked into the effects the above mentioned improvements will have. They haven’t bothered. They want the bypass irrespective of whether it is necessary. They think it is a vote winner.
Greater than 53% of predicted benefits are from longer distance journeys over 15 kilometres. As Professor Alan Wenban-Smith wisely points out:
“These are the ones most likely to benefit from the Northern Hub initiative, electrification schemes which have committed funding and the plans to build a fourth platform at Manchester Airport rail station.”
