The Blackwater Valley Action Group
LETTER to Highways Agency from Mr Ken Winckle, Kelvedon

(also attached to BwVAG letter to Highways Agency)

17 May 2005

Highways Agency
Heron House
49 Goldington Rd
Bedford
MK40 3LL

Dear Ms Davidson

A120 Improvement - Economic Analysis

Thank you for your email of the 6th May 2005. I would like to make the following observations:

  1. The NPV for the Southern route uniquely includes £160.8 million due to an improvement to the A12 to the South of the proposed junction. This represents 28% of the total NPV for the route. Whilst I recognise that this improvement will occur at the same time as the A120 upgrade, I fail to see the logic of its associated benefit value being assigned to the Southern route since has no bearing whatsoever on that route. Surely this benefit value should be assigned solely to the A12 improvement project that you advise is scheduled for completion in 2020. To include it in the A120  Southern route NPV seems to me to be at the very least opportunistic, if not disingenuous, since you advise that it will be transferred to the A12 on completion of that project.
  2. You comment that the A12 project will be completed by 2020 and that you are therefore crediting the A120 Southern route with the value associated with the improved section of the A12 south of the A12/A120 junction for eight years. As a point of detail the Highways Agency brochure states that the A120 opening will be in 2013 and the difference is therefore not eight but seven years. More importantly in this context, Chris Shuker advised me in his letter of 9th March 2005 that the schedule published in the consultation document was the best achievable and not the most likely and that it would not be unreasonable, based on historic data, to expect a delay of three years. I make this point to emphasise my view that the inclusion of the benefit value for the section South of the junction is ill judged and inappropriate. I would also add that as a public body, the Highways Agency surely has a fundamental responsibility to present the general public with information on costs, schedules, economics and other variables that stochastically have the most likely chance of occurring. Where this is not possible because for example, insufficient work has been done, then the prevailing uncertainty should, at the very least, be qualitatively described. There has, to my knowledge at least, been no attempt made so far to do this. On the contrary my perception is that the Highways Agency has entered the public domain phase of this project with a demeanour and a data set that might be perceived as being more robust than it actually is at this early stage. The emerging issue regarding the size and cost of the bridge required to cross the Blackwater floodplain in the Southern route is an obvious example of this.
  3. Throughout the consultation process, I have been advised by Highways Agency and Hyder staff that a strategic driver in determining the A120 upgrade route has been the retention of an East - West bearing. By this, I presume that what was meant was that the new road should follow the existing route as closely as possible since by doing so it would achieve the most efficient connection between Braintree and Marks Tey. The Southern route manifestly fails to achieve this since it joins the A12 2.5 miles to the South of Marks Tey and covers a distance of 18.7 miles from end to end. This is 1.6 miles longer than either of the two shortest options. However, because the Southern route does deviate to the South it accrues £152.2 million of value by taking traffic off the B1018. Simplistically this begs the question - is the intention of upgrading the A120 to provide an efficient Braintree to Marks Tey leg of a Trans European highway or is it to create a Northern bypass for Witham. I note that despite the fact that they all join the A12 approximately 1km to the North of the junction for the Southern route, none of the other three options carry any value for taking traffic off the B1018. Is it really the case that £152 million of value is 100% sensitive to 1km of distance? Conversations that I have had with commercial and HGV drivers lead me to believe that they will add several kilometers to a journey if it results in access to dual carriage highway free of roundabouts, junctions and traffic lights.
  4. Despite the fact that a route to the South of Kelvedon was within the geographic boundaries set for the Hyder study, I understand that this option was rejected because of the East - West strategic driver. Clearly, had this option been evaluated, a larger tranche of value than the £152.2 million associated with the Southern route would have accrued as a result of B1018 traffic diversion since the junction would be even closer to Witham. Presumably the A120 value would also be greater since it would be even shorter as indeed would the negative benefit associated with the A12 to the North of the junction since the distance to Marks Tey would be greater. My underlying question here concerns how exactly the interface between strategic objectives and value creation is managed since, by presenting the economics in the manner that you have, an obvious paradox has emerged, i.e. the further South the route the greater the value but the more the strategic driver is compromised.
  5. If the four routes are stripped of benefit accruing from B road traffic diversion the NPV’s become Northern £165 million, Coggeshall Bypass £129 million, Southern £266 million and Southern Alt. £317 million. The paradox therefore persists in that appears that a short  South Easterly bearing A120 combined with a longer 3 lane section of A12 prevails. Incidentally, it is not clear to me why the A12 section of the Southern Alt route has a noticeably smaller disbenefit than the identical A12 components of the Northern and Coggeshall Bypass routes. On economics alone the case for a route to the South of Kelvedon would therefore appear to be compelling and since you made your decision to promote the Southerly route on economics alone, having deemed all other factors to be approximately the same, you do not appear to have any reasonable argument for excluding this option.
  6. The Highways Agency has made no attempt to explain to the general public how the interface between the A120 and the A12 projects has been dealt with and yet there is considerable interaction in respect of phasing, routing, engineering, costs and economics. As a member of the general public, I know that I speak on behalf of many other individuals and bodies when I say that this serious omission needs the urgent attention of the Highways Agency since, absent this, it is just about impossible to fully understand what exactly is going on.

I look forward to receiving your comments.  

Sincerely,

Ken Winckle