Aggregate Industries’ Transport Assessment is at Revision E. It’s been played about with since it was written in July 2018 – bits added, bits taken away. It is the third TA from Aggregate Industries for the company's proposal to quarry Straitgate Farm. As we posted in Transport Assessments & HGVs: How consultants create an alternative reality, these documents are supposed to be "thorough assessments of the transport implications of development."
One of the transport implications of this development is that the tenant dairy farmer would have to take cows across the B3174 Exeter Road to seek replacement pasture, should Aggregate Industries take land away for quarrying and soil storage. We recently posted about the cows in Bovine movements revisited – more than 2 years on.
Aggregate Industries has provided this helpful map to show where the cows would cross:
You might have thought therefore – given that Aggregate Industries has spent more than two years dealing with the issue – that its consultants would have actually assessed the transport implications of this development, and particularly what traffic queues might result from cattle crossing this road.
Aggregate Industries' Transport Assessment recognises that:
3.2.5 It is noted that when the herd is moved it is done so in batches that restrict the traffic delay period to 15 minutes. Therefore on average the delay to a vehicle using the B3174 as a result of herd movement is between 10 – 15 minutes at any one time.
But Aggregate Industries hasn’t wanted to feed the number of vehicles using this road into the mix. It hasn’t wanted to answer a number of very important questions: What number of vehicles would typically be held up by 150 cows crossing at milking times? What traffic queue lengths could result? Would the road system still function safely, for example if vehicles backed up onto the Daisymount roundabout? Would this have any impact on the A30?
The provision of a Cattle crossing over the B3174 may have severe impact on the operation of the B3174, which in the absence of assessment is not known.
In the absence of such an assessment, we previously used numbers from a Highways England traffic count commissioned in November 2015 to show that queues of over 100 vehicles from the cattle crossing make AI’s plans unworkable:
During the 15 minutes crossing times, over 100 vehicles can be travelling on the B3174 Exeter Road, in one direction or the other. If we assume an average queuing vehicle length of 7.5m, including gaps, this means that traffic queues could stretch to the A30 Daisymount Junction and half way to Ottery.
This does NOT take into account the HGVs – up to 216 movements a day – that would be generated by Aggregate Industries' plans to quarry Straitgate Farm.
This does NOT take into account the extra development in Ottery St Mary since 2015. This does NOT take into account the plans for the Tipton St John school relocation and the additional 150 houses needed to pay for it. This does NOT take into account the extra traffic generated by the "Massive new service station and drive-thru McDonalds" planned for the A30 Daisymount junction. So, let's therefore call it a best case scenario.
Why hasn’t this assessment been done by Aggregate Industries? Why hasn’t Devon County Council called for it – in the more than 2 years of to-ing and fro-ing? Was there a worry of what it might reveal?
Or was the Council labouring under the illusion that the statement 1.1.8 in Aggregate Industries' TA – "there will not be a need to intensify livestock crossings over the B3174 Exeter Road above that already stated as the baseline" – could, in some post truth world, be relied upon?
Has the Council forgotten that 56 acres of pasture would be removed in Phase 1 alone – 40% of the land available on the northern side of the B3174, where the milking parlour is located? Does the Council not realise that few dairy farmers could cope with losing such a portion of productive land and still remain viable? According to the Supporting Statement, Phase 1 would not be restored until Phase 3:
3.4.10 Soils and overburden from [Phase 3] would be direct placed back into phases 1 and 2 to complete restoration in these areas.
And that’s only Phase 1. In total, 105 acres of pasture is proposed for quarrying and soil storage:
The application site covers an area extending to some 42.5ha, with mineral extraction proposed to take place within 22.6ha with the remainder of the site occupied by temporary soil storage bunds, mitigation planting and site management and access areas. 2.1.10
Given such a situation, what farmer would not be forced to intensify livestock crossings to access replacement land – even if it were across a road – rather than twiddle their thumbs and watch their business go down the pan?
