The Last Road Protest in Britain?

Overhead fly planes from the two runways at Manchester Airport, producing seven and half thousand tons of carbon dioxide a day.

At one end the three lane motorway that is the M67 ends in the two street village in which L S Lowry was born, the resulting traffic jams made worse by the construction of a loss making Tesco superstore.

At the other end is Britain's oldest National Park, across which lorries crawl 365 days a year.

In between lie the three Woodhead tunnels. Two about to be allowed to become derelict whilst the third, one of the newest railway tunnels in Britain, has not seen a passenger train pass through in more than half its life.

Welcome to the Integrated Transport disaster that is Longdendale.

Situated between Manchester and Sheffield, Longendale has a reputation as the 'Haunted Valley' with UFO hunters often camping out in search of the Longendale Lights. Cynics would say these are just aircraft coming in to land at Manchester Airport, but I do know someone who had an encounter with a 'ghost car' near the Devil's Elbow.

However there is nothing mysterious about the traffic congestion in the valley. Every day lorries rumble through the villages of Mottram, Tintwistle and Hollingworth a few feet from people's houses and a few inches from pedestrians.

A bypass was proposed, first in the seventies and then again in the noughties when it was killed off by campaigners and the Peak Park Authority, although this didn't stop the promised Tescos being built alongside the non-existant bypass.

But, like all the best villains, the road has risen from the grave. Not a bypass this time, but a possible Peak Park Motorway. 

Meetings are taking place across the Northwest of England to discuss a possible new road through Longdendale and that the public are not invited to participate. Department of Transport consultations on the a Route Based Strategy will be held in Warrington on 29/09/2013, Preston on 26/09/2013, Liverpool on 1/10/2013 and Manchester on 4/10/2013. ‘Local stakeholders’, as groups like GTi  are known, are not invited.

Meanwhile, as mentioned below, the Department for Transport appears minded to let the old Woodhead railway tunnels fall into disrepair, possibly preventing the newest tunnel ever being used again for trains. It seems not even Arriva, who had previously bid to reopen the line as part of the Trans-Pennine rail franchise, were consulted.

What is striking about the DfT's letter asking for opinions on the future of the tunnels is that there is
no mention of the traffic congestion in Longdendale. As far as the DfT is concerned, cars are from Venus and trains are from Mars. They are apples and cabbages, and can never be considered together in a strategy. Only more roads can end road congestion and only more railways can end train congestion. That the two are in any way related seems to be beyond their ken.

No doubt the Route Based Strategies will suggest a Peak Park Motorway. No doubt the new planning laws will see the Public Inquiry take place somewhere a long way from Longdendale. No doubt it will be a whitewash.

But equally, no doubt the campaigners will be back, lying in front of the bulldozers if necessary. 

We probably reached Peak Conventional Oil in 2007 and possibly Peak Car in the same year. Climate Change, as the IPCC reminded us today, is the big problem for twentifirst century.We do not need a Peak Motorway.

At some point sanity will kick in and we wills top building new roads. There will, one day, be the last road protest in Britain, and maybe this will be it.

So who's in then. The Last Road Protest In Britain?

Watch this space.

Urgent Action Needed To Save Woodhead Tunnels

The Woodhead Tunnels are in danger and immediate action is required to save them.

The three tunnels, which have not seen a train run through them for thirty two years, have up until now been maintained by the National Grid who used them for high voltage cables.

With now complete on installing cables in the new 1953 tunnel the National Grid has no more use for the older tunnels. The Department of Transport will therefore decide this month on whether to purchase the tunnels in order to maintain them for future use. If the 1953 tunnel were to be reopened for trains the Victorian tunnels could again be used for electricity - unless they have fallen down.

Simon Burns MP, the Minister of State for Transport, has written to Andrew Bingham MP asking for his views by the beginning of September.

Successful campaigning by the Save The Woodhead Tunnel group extracted from the
previous government a statement that they would consider the 'option' of preserving the tunnels, but the letter from the department appears to show how hollow those words were.

All this occurs at a time when the Highways Agency is consulting on Trans-Pennine Transport solutions. With the Woodhead Tunnels gone before the consultation has even started, the proposed Trans-Pennine Motorway could have the field to itself.

Keeping the tunnel open will cost £25,000 a year. By contrast the cost of the aborted inquiry into the Longendale Bypass alone was £16 million, or £39,000 a day.

Estimates of future traffic along any Trans-Pennine Motorway are unreliable - that's why the Public Inquiry ended - as are the potential saving of a rail alternative. However English Nature estimated that the road would add 15,840 tons of CO2 a year to the atmosphere, whilst the Translink proposal for reopening the tunnel estimated it could save 100,000 tons a year.

What To Do

If you want to see the tunnels saved for possible reuse, then you need to email or write to Andrew Bingham as soon as possible. Personal letters only please, he hates mass circulation emails and cards.

Andrew Bingham
Office of Andrew Bingham MP
20 Broad Walk
Buxton
SK17 6JR

andrew.bingham.mp@parliament.uk

My own email to Andrew Bingham (please don't copy - use your own words)

Dear Andrew

I am writing as I believe the Department of Transport is currently considering whether to purchase the Victorian Woodhead Tunnels from the National Grid in order to preserve them for future use.

I note that they are making this decision at the same time that the Department is consulting with stakeholders over proposed Trans-Pennine transport solutions, in which road building in the Longendale Valley will be on the table.

I strongly believe that with car use in this country on a plateau or declining and with oil prices showing no sign of reducing, increasing Trans-Pennine rail capacity is the solution to the traffic problems of the valley and that, along with electrifying the Hope Valley line and improvements in the Leeds-Manchester line, reopening the Woodhead line would be a way of doing this.

I am therefore very strongly of the opinion that to allow the Victorian tunnels to fall into disrepair now, when we have no solutions at all agreed upon would be the wrong decision and that the Department of Transport must take the necessary steps to preserve them. There will be a cost, but it will be utterly trivial compared to the cost of even an inquiry into a road scheme.

Like so much of what is best about Glossop, these tunnels are the legacy of the forward thinking and sound engineering of our Victorian ancestors. They should not be discarded lightly.

Yours sincerely

Martin Porter

Time Coop

 

Members have begun to swap time credits! 

What do you need a hand with? To find out more about how the Time Co-op works visit a broker during brokering hours: Thursdays 9.30am -1pm at Glossop Volunteer Centre and Sundays 2pm-5pm at The Oakwood Pub. 

Or come along to Green Drinks on Thursday 5^th and ask us any questions. 

We have lots of members who can help with gardening tasks. People often want to spruce their homes up at this time of year – anyone out there any good with a paintbrush?

The Time Co-op will be holding a pub quiz at the Oakwood as part of Green Drinks next month Thursday 3^rd October. 

The quiz will be deliberately tricky to take part in without a wide age range in your team! Bring your Grandad and your little sister – appropriate for adults of all ages. A chance to get to know some of the people you may like to swap time credits with. There may even be some time credits up for grabs…

 http://www.glossopdaletransition.org.uk/GTI/GlossopdaleTimeCo-op

Are you a member of a local community group? 

Would you and other members like to know a bit more about how time banking through the time co-op works? We would love to visit your group tell you about it and answer your questions. 

GlossopdaleTimeCo-op@inbox.com '

Do The Math film 8PM 19 June, The Oakwood

 

Glossopdale Transition initiative will be showing the film Do The Math by the campaigning organistion 350.org in the Oakwood pub.

350.org is an international organisation led by campaigning journalist Bill McKibben that aims to build grass roots movement to raise awareness of climate change and take action to stop the rise in atmospheric greenhouses gasses before it's too late.

The current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is 400 parts per million, a level that the earth has not seen for at least 3 million years, a time when Greenland and Antarctica were both covered in forests and sea levels were 25 meters higher than today.

350.org wish to start a grass roots campaign to get people to lobby their pension company, their university or any other large institution they are involved with to stop investing in carbon intensive industries.

The film will be shown upstairs in The Oakwood pub, 67 High Street West at 8PM on Wednesday 19th June 2013.

Transport in Transition Quiz

Yes, the Transport Group is finally doing something!

The next Green Drinks, on Thursday 6th June at 8Pm at The Oakwood, High Streetwest, Glossop will be our in inaugural event, a quiz.

Please come along to a light hearted evening that will gently introduce some of the themes of why we need to change from carbon-fuel dependent means of transportation that destroy communities to something cleaner, greener and ultimately more effective.

There will be prizes, but not necessarily good ones.  We may have an old Jeremy Clarkson book to give away to whoever comes first, in which case the person who

comes second will get two Jeremy Clarkson books...

So come along and help launch and direct the Transport Group. We are interested in 20mph speed limits, alternatives to the Longendale Bypass, idea on getting more people to walk, cycle and use buses and trains more and aeroplanes less.

Your support and inspiration is all we need.

May 2013 Newsletter and Events

Well, things continue to happen, but as ever we can do more.

GITAC went for a dawn walk on 20th April. Luckily the unseasonal snow (possibly caused by the premature melting of the arctic ice) had more or less melted for them.

The Time Co-op ran a quiz on 24th April at The Oakwood. Despite some disputed marking (c is the speed of light in a vacuum - those three words are very important......) a good time was had by all and the other people who didn't win weren't bitter.

The Transport Group meanwhile remains stuck in the station, in need of a jump start, but will hopefully take off soon before I run out of metaphors.

If you want to help be involved in any of these groups, please get in touch.

May looks like being a bit busy though.

Firstly we've Green Drinks as usual, on Thursday 2nd May, 8PM in The Oakwood. If you come

along we're the ones who aren't knitting.

Then on the Wednesday 8th May, also at The Oakwood, we're showing another film! This will be Transition 2.0, a film about what other Transition Towns have been up to. We've been granted permission to show the film for donations only, so please come along and prepare to be inspired for a few pounds or whatever you can afford.

On 15th May we've been invited to an informal meeting with the Transition Sheffield. The plan is to car share there and come back the same evening, but the Sheffield people - who may be a little younger than our committee - have offered us a floor to sleep on if anyone wants to make an all-nighter of it.

We may also be having an Extraordinary General Meeting later next month as well, but we'll contact you separately about that.

Finally, something that made me think this week. Transition Town was founded partly on the fear that the end of cheap oil will be a major shock to our already fragile economy. However as Jeremy Leggett pointed out in The Guardian, Peal Oil isn't the only way carbon fuels can crash the banks. If fear of Climate Change means we never burn the assets the coal and oil companies hold, that will lead to a six trillion dollar black hole in the world's financial system.

That's another reason why we're trying to build a resilient community in Glossopdale.

Transition Transport

The Transport in Transition sub-group aims to campaign to get the people of Glossop less dependent on carbon fuelled transportation and getting about in a greener and more sustainable way.

In due course we will be looking at car sharing, helping people to make better use of bus and trains and considering reducing the use of aeroplanes.

20 Is Plenty

However the greenest method of travel is your own feet, whether in direct contact with the ground or pedalling a bike.

Three things make walking and cycling a pain in Glossopdale. The first is the hills, the second the weather and the third is the traffic. There's not much we can do about the first two except learn a bit of resilience, but we can do something about the traffic.

To start things off we want motorists to slow down, at least in residential areas.

The Gory Facts

• Britain has the highest percentage of pedestrians killed in road accidents in Europe
• 2011 saw a 3% increase in road deaths and a 12% increase in pedestrian casulaties

Now The Good News

• 34 local authorities, with a population of 8.4 million people, have adopted default 20mph speed limits on urban streets.
• Portsmouth saw accidents fall 22% when they introduced the scheme

It's Not About Speed Bumps  

One thing we can probably all agree on is that 'traffic calming' is not great. It delays ambulances, increases traffic fumes and fuel use as cars accelerate between bumps and it really annoys drivers.

For the same money you can make 50 miles of street a 20mph zone, with a much greater overall reduction in speed. Once motorists get used to a 20mph default speed limit they don't need the bumps.

The Transition Perspective

Fewer people killed or injured on the road is a good thing in itself, but Transition Towns would want this to be a first step towards people reclaiming the streets.

We would want to see not only more walking and cycling, but street parties, play streets and more imaginative use of urban space.

If you want to get involved, contact Martin at glossopdaletransitioninitiative@inbox.com