Greens urge support for campaign against A6-M60 Bypass

8 November 2016

Stockport Green Party supports the efforts to ‘Stop the A6-M60 Bypass and save Stockport’s beautiful Goyt Valley and green spaces’.

Stockport Council will decide in spring 2017 whether to go ahead with a bid for up to £600 million from the Government to build the four-mile A6 to M60 Bypass. Stockport Green Party urges Stockport Council not to proceed with the road funding bid.

The dual-carriageway will devastate one of Stockport’s treasures, the Lower Goyt Valley, as well as the beautiful Poise Brook Valley and green spaces in Offerton, Hazel Grove and Lower Bredbury.

Along the route, residents’ quality of life will suffer from noise, disturbance, visual intrusion and increased pollution.

The Bypass itself is likely to be plagued by congestion. Roads leading to it will be jammed at peak hours.

Yet many councillors including those from areas along the route intend to support the Bypass. We have very little time left to stop them voting to commit a terrible act of vandalism.

Please sign the petition using the link below and ask your friends to add their support.

https://www.change.org/p/alex-ganotis-stop-the-a6-m60-bypass-save-stockport-s-beautiful-goyt-valley-and-green-spaces

The Council has for the past year been working on a “study” for the first stage of a Business Case which would be needed to bid for Government money to build the road. The discussion and vote in Council will happen after this study has been completed.

The Lower Goyt Valley is one of the Stockport’s treasures. Putting a massive road through it would be a horrendous self-inflicted wound upon the borough.

The bypass would be a four-and-a-half mile dual-carriageway extension of the A6-to-Manchester Airport “relief road”, which is already under construction. It’s the latest in a series of new roads claimed to sort out the terrible congestion south of Manchester. The bypass would cost a huge £580 million!

Greens believe that the by-pass will result in more traffic problems. The combined bypass and relief road will draw in drivers from the M56, A34, M60 and A6. To deter drivers from switching from the motorways to avoid jams, junctions along the new roads will be designed to be slow and traffic- signal controlled. These slow junctions are likely to create rush-hour blockages, such as those that occur regularly on the A34 at Handforth Dean, with the traffic likely to return to existing routes. Some modest short-term improvements may be achieved on some local roads but in the longer term the bypass could end up a horrendously costly and damaging failure. The jams caused by the M60 in Bredbury demonstrate the unintended consequences that new roads can create.

There are many reasons why the road will be bad for drivers and the local communities.

Fatal pollution fumes from heavy and congested traffic kill up to 50,000 people a year in the UK (including both NO2 and diesel particles). More traffic equals more deadly pollution in parts of Offerton and Bredbury.
The dual-carriageway route runs right up against homes in Bredbury, Foggbrook and Torkington. When it curves through Offerton and Bosden Farm Estates, the nearest homes will be only a stone’s throw away. As well as the effect of pollution residents will also suffer intrusive noise and views.
Peaceful fields south of Bredbury will be torn up, running the countryside. A 200-metre long bridge will cross the River Goyt, threatening the valley’s beauty and wildlife. The ancient woodland at Poise Brook valley wood and the local ecology will be severely damaged. The green buffer between Offerton and Offerton Green will be overwhelmed and Torkington’s countryside will suffer. The green belt includes extensive woodlands and the meandering river Goyt and its tributaries. The local ecosystem includes virgin woodland in Offerton, and the sight of kingfishers, jays, ducks, moorhens, badgers, rabbits, foxes, buzzards, newts, butterflies to name a few.
Heritage will be destroyed at Foggbrook where the bypass flattens old mill cottages and shaves Halliday Hill Farm, the ancient home of the Dodge family. Just out of Bredbury, close to Tudor Goyt Hall the bypass ploughs through a possible pre-Roman site that has not yet investigated by archaeologists.

In the view of SGP the construction of yet another road is totally unnecessary. Green party transport policy states that funding that at present is used for road building will be diverted for the reduction of excessive speeds on local streets and the reallocation of road space away from cars, with the aim of making all streets places which all people feel able to use, would come from funding that at present is used for road building.

There would be no new road building or widening schemes implemented except for essential access. A review of all proposed schemes would be eventually undertaken once the necessary measures, as outlined below, have been introduced, with the assumption that these will then be all deemed unnecessary.

Further details of the Green Party Transport Policy can be found here -
https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/tr.html

The aims of the transport policy include:

Where mobility is desired or needed, to satisfy this through sustainable modes of transport.
Transport and its infrastructure to have the minimum impact on the environment.
Degradation of community life by inappropriate transport modes, especially excessive car use, to be reduced and reversed wherever possible.
Transport should not endanger users or others and, where possible, should play a role in bringing about a more healthy population.

Greens believe that the current ‘Car culture’ needs to be addressed. Cars are currently seen as the primary means of transport by many people. The Green Party will work at all levels to alter this perception, by providing information on the problems and real costs of their use, and by improving the perception of all more sustainable methods of transport.

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