Travel, Transport and Tourism - A vision for Melksham, 2026
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-10-03 08:05:33 - Graham Ellis
This is a seed document that I've prepared as a pump-priming exercise to help the Community Area Partnership (at the request of the vicechair of the steering group) and other associated organisations think ahead towards what they would like to see in the 2026 area plan. It comes in three main sections:
a) What should we be asking people?
b) Some background and thoughts that need to be considered in coming up with practical proposals (the less techincal reader might like to skip over this section ...)
c) A possible vision of Melksham, 2026, from a Travel, Transport and Tourism viewpoint
Views and thoughts are mine personally, and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any organisations on which I serve or which I represent from time to time
a) What should we be asking people?
* Where will Melksham and the surrounding area be with regards to travel, transport and tourism by 2026?
* What do the people who live in the area want to aim for?
* What will be possible and practical 15 years into the future, bearing in mind population changes, possible climate change, changes in resource availability, new technology, social and legal changes, changes in the desire and need to travel, and what is affordable?
* How do we get to where we want to be from where we are today?
* How do we make shorter term decisions so that we're not looking ONLY 15 years hence, but also looking at shorter term measures (some very much shorter term) that will make a real difference?
* How do the travel, transport and tourism issues interact with wider community plan issues such as business, health, ability and disabillity, sports leisure and culture, education, etc?
* Do we want to facilitate travel and tourism, and / or reduce the need for travel and discourage leisure visitors?
b) Some background and thoughts that need to be considered in coming up with practical proposals
* Although I'm writing this as a plan for the Melksham Area, Travel, Transport and Tourism have a uniquely important overlap to neighbouring areas and indeed areas further afield as they're all about getting people and goods from place to place, often between areas. Plans need to reflect and build in with government strategy too, unless the area wishes to head off on its own course which would be a hard and expensive road with reduced central funding or even central penalties.
* If we can get the long term goals sorted out, then shorter term decisions can be made that will work towards them without us bumbling forward not really knowing where we're going. Some actions (such as the recent re-arrangement of the X72 / 272 bus services) appear to be more along the lines of applying sticking plaster to a situation than actually looking to what will serve the travelling public best, or what it the medium or long term will bring the most revenue for the operators of the services.
* Although different members of our community hold differing views on whether or not the burning of fossil fuels is leading to changes in the weather pattern, it does no harm to work with an assumption that it IS leading to such changes. It's generally acknowldedged that supplies of fossil fuels are limited to a greater or lesser extent, so a reduction in their use will lead to a lengthening of the supply period irrespective of any global warning effect, and to conserve is to err on the side of safety
* In the current social environment, many / most people will be reluctant to relinquish the use of their own (private) means of transport that will get them from their source to their desitination in a time that they feel is acceptable, at a price they can afford, and travelling when they want to. So politicians and decision makers who propose / implement schemes which remove or reduce the ability to use private transport, or make it more expensive or less effective, are likely to make themselves unpopular with many individuals. If they're clever and farsighted politicians, they'll appreciate the need as outlined above (limited reserves forcing the need for a change) and look to implement those changes while looking to get others to "carry the can" - for example, an increase in car parking changes will be blamed on the bankers who have cause the economic position we're currently in, or it will be blamed on the public transport lobby as they're said to be requesting "more services that will have to be paid for".
* We have a peverse system where the provision of the elements needed by "Joe Public" for private transport is largely in the hands of the government or local government monopolies, whereas the provision of the element needed for public transport is in private hands. What do I mean by that? I'm asking "isn't it odd that if you go on public transport - a bus or a train - you're using a system run by a private company, but if you drive your private car on the road, it's a road maintained by a public organisation?"
* The interests of private companies that operate public transport are broadly in line with the interests of the users of their services, in that without the customer the providing company will have no business. However, in the detail the interests differ, with the transport company looking in most cases to maximise profit for its shareholders, and the travelling customer wishing to have low priced, reliable and frequent services operated on a wide variety of direct routes, quickly and by comfortable and spacious vehicles, running for extended hours ... all features of which can push up the cost of provision without a similar increase in profit.
* Easy to use and easy to learn about, user friendly, systems are key. Whilst there will always be an element of regular travellers who are experts at researching their optimum travel plans, the majority need to find out how they can best travel ahead of time, how long it will take, and how much it will cost. They need to be clearly informed along the way, and not be stymied by a lack of information - be it signposts or timetables, nor by a fare system that's complex to understand or has a bewildering set of arcane rules associated with it, and with a threat of sever penaltys if any of the rules is broken. A total system that is easy to research and use also has an environmental gain - for example, if most people who live in Calne and want to spend a few hours in Melksham would drive, not realising that there's a bus that might just be right for them.
* The need to travel, and to travel fast ... why do people need or want to travel in the first place? Significant strides in technology mean that more people can work from home, and that there's less need for trips to the shops with internet ordering and home delivery. Are further developments expected which will lead to a significant reduction (or slowing of growth) in the need for travel to work, school, or shops? And if these regular journeys which are time critical become less significant in the mix, and occasional / leisure journeys become more significant, does the speed of travel become less significant? On current technology, travel at bewteen 40 m.p.h. and 70 m.p.h. is most fuel efficient on the road. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_economy_vs_speed_1997.png . I am researching the figure for rail.
* In a tiny village, there are few services and people need to travel a significant distance to access servies as parts of their daily needs. As the size of a community grows, the need to travel outside the community reduces, and the need to travel within increases. And as the community expands still further, those internal travel needs become travel over greater distances once again. The average journey for a person who lives in Keevil or in London may be 6 miles, but the average journey for someone from Melksham may by just 2 miles.
* Most transport modes are quiet most of the time. You wouldn't believe that if you're stuck in a traffic jam, crowded into a train, or charged a sky-high fare for an airline flight. But think about it - if 600 cars all drive to Melksham Oak in a 30 minute period in the morning, and again in a 30 minute period in the evening ... then there are 100 in each 30 minute period during the day, and 30 in 30 minutes at night, you're looking at a total of 127800 vehicle movements per day. Of those, 25% (36000) will complain loudly that the road is "always busy" although in fact the road will be congested for only 1 hour in 24 - i.e. 4% of the time. In pratise, peak times are often more condensed than this.
* We have seen a noticable shift to 7 day trading rather than 5 days, and to extended hours and flexitime evening out travel requirements and making fuller use of service buildings, offices and shops. At the same time, public transport provision on the "new" day of Sunday especially has lagged behind its provision on other days, and car parking charges on Sunday are significantly different too. Are we going to see a further move towards a continuum of services 24 hours a day, seven days a week or are other factors (such as the need to teach a whole class in school at the same time, to provide a whole family with the same leisure hours, and to schedule tourism around the length of the day and weather) going to lead to a tailing off of the current trend towards evening out?
* Delivery and goods. We're currently living in a more materialistic society than was the case a century or two ago - and with that comes the shipment of goods, delivery, etc. Will we find that we actually move to being less materialistic into the future? What about the environemntal effect of all of those delivery vans? Deliveries were made by horse and cart 200 years ago. 50 years ago the post office more or less held a monopoly. Where are we headed in another 15 years and longer? Why send 10 different carriers with half-full vans out from Swindon each day when a centralised system could do it? And what about the other end of the story - the collection and shipping of waste?
* Growth of tourism. With more leisure time, will people travel more? Will the tourist trade become more important? What does the Melksham area offer and what will it offer? Transport - accommodation - entertainment and things to do - places to eat?
* What difference is an ageing population, with more leisure time but less mobility and less able to drive their own vehicles doing (and going to do) to transport requirements for 2026? Why - when we have trusted people to make decisions for us throughout their working life - do we take that ability to decide away from them when they become senior citizens and decide that we'll collect their money (and ours) in taxes and spend it on their bus fares, etc, rather than letting them make individual decisions. A service that's free to the user at the point of delivery is going to have a distorted useage curve.
* I don't know what the "average person"'s daily and less frequent travel habits are - nor do I know what their key deciders are in deciding those habits. And I don't think anyone has this sort of information; for sure, "they" do vehicle, passenger and transport counts but that doesn't take a look at the factors that would encourage or discourage further use, and only rarely does it go beyond a single mode. Over 80% of train journeys in a recent survey were linked to further travel arrangements to the station at the source, and / or from the final station to destination. There is a need for local research in order to help establish the ways forward that would be most economic and best used.
* Technology such as proximity sensors for parking are now commercially viable and indeed becoming stanards, and it's likely that the driving of cars could be automated in the near future. This would allow shorter distances and close-coupled convoys of vehicles to be run, allowing greater throughput on current roads. There is something of an issue with pedestrian safety on such a system, as they cannot be automated. Similar technology advances will enable vericles to be ever more efficient and perhaps alternatively fueled.
* There's a quest for ever-safer transport - but actually it's pretty safe anyway. Old data (2002) shows one rail death per 2,500,000,000 passenger kilometres, one aircraft death per 1,660,000,000 passenger kilometres, one ferry death per 750,000,000 passenger kilometres and one road death per 90,000,000 passenger kilometres. That puts rail 27 times safer than road, and even on the road you would have to travel over 3,500 km per day, every day for a 70 year life for there to be a 50 / 50 chance of you being a road death. The statistics for a road death hide a signifcant difference between figures for pedestrians, cyclists, motor cyclists, car drivers and passenger and bus/coach passengers. Whilst it's natural to spend ever-more money on more and more safety features, there becomes point at which it's better to accept the risk. If a train company were allowed to operate a service from Chippenham to Trowbridge that was only 1/3 as safe as the current average, the service might be economically viable - and it would still be 9 times safer than the road average.
* Travel on foot, by cycle, by train and by bus offers a health premium. The exercise that's naturally involved in each of these, but which is not involved in private car journeys, has been calculated to be significant. In other words, if there was a significant move from private to public transport there would also be a significant improvement in the health of the population, and a resultant reduction in healthcare costs.
c) A possible vision of Melksham, 2026, from a Travel, Transport and Tourism viewpoint
Flying a kite ... Travel Transport, and toursim in Melksham in 2026
This is a description on how Melksham MIGHT look in 15 to 20 years time ... please note that it's just one possible scenario that I've written up to help prime the pump. It has no authority behind it, no market research has been done to see if it's what people want. Prices, where quoted / suggested, are at 2010 equivalent values.
General - setting the scene
Melksham 2026 is a town with a population of 40000 - of whom 15% are children or or school age, 55% are of working age, and 29% are at or above retirment age. [2001 census - 18%, 66%, 16% for the UK]. One in 50 is a wheelchair user [1 in 80 in 2007 for the UK] [I don't think this figure includes babies in prams and pushchairs, though surely we should use that figure?]
The town in centred around the river, and in summer is bustling with visitors who eat at the waterfront cafes, watch the boats go by as they take holidaymakers from boat bases at places like Dundas, Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon and Foxhangers through to Lacock, Calne and the counrtryside towards Swindon and beyond.
To the south, the town's shopping / commercial area spreads out to the old Market Place, and to the north it goes up to the Chippenham to Westbury road, taking in the riverside leisure complex and "Wessex as it Was" Museum, based on "Brewer's Quay" in Weymouth, and the cinema on the same site. Other tourist attractions in the town and neighbourhood include the "Spa Towns museum" at Melksham Spa, Lacock, the Courts at Holt, Chalfield Manor, the Pack Horse riverside walk to Whaddon and the "water and rail" walk to and cycle tour to Devizes. The Conigre and Backwater nature reserves are very popular with bird watchers ...
Businesses are dotted around the town - you'll find business parks very much as they were in 2010, but with additional industry to the West of Bowerhill, nestling up to the Semington bypass, the old Semington Bypass, and to the South of Berryfield.
Additional housing has been built to the west of the town / south of the road to Bath - near the Shurnold area, and on the site of the former George Ward school. Mixed development has aslo taken place to the north of Dunch lane and west of the railway line, infilling towards the site of the former electricty substation.
Melksham Oak Secondary School has been a great success since it opened in 2010, and has recently expanded to handle an increase capacity of 1800 pupils. Expanded medical facilities for the aging population and additional sheltered accommodation have been provided on Spa Road around the old Canberra / Hospital / Gifford's / Snowberry lane area.
The Transport Infrastructure
Melksham is now headlined in the travel brochures as a "port" and a centre for walking and cycling in the Avon Valley, with days out to Longleat, Bath, Salisbury and Weymouth as major attrractions. But for the actual travel, you'll look far more to road and rail than to waterborene travel.
The shape of the road network / infrastructure has changed little over the years; a few infill sections have been constructured filling obvious gaps that existed in 2010, and new roads built to serve the Shurnold Farm and Southbrook areas, linking the Bradford-on-Avon road, the Bath road at Poplar farm and through to the Chippenham Road at Beechfield.
From the Market Square to the corner of Lowborne / Bank Street is pedestrianised, with access for buses only. Access-only is allowed to Canon Square, and to the blue-badge-only parking area of what used to be the central car park.
A bus and coach station / parking area for the town has been provided next to Asda, adjoining the old Bath Road, with a flat pedestrian underpass through to the riverside complex. Car parking is provide across the road on the old station yard site, and on the old electric substation land by the river. A new foot and cycle was across Challeymead bridge from that car park takes visitors through the Conigre Mead nature reserve, up to the church and old town Melksham.
The railway line through Melksham has been redoubled using the existing trackbed. The old platform has been brought back into use for its full length of five carriages, and a new platform constructed on the "up" line of similar length to the south of the road bridge; since the road bridge now carries only local traffic, it's used to access both platforms without steps.
Cycleways and footpaths have been improved; from the Kennet and Avon Canal, via Melksham Without playing field a cycle path runs up to the Melksham bypass, from where it follows the path of the old canal through the back of the town and on to the north. Another path runs from the Town Centre via the Stratton Walk right out to the East of the town - the 2010/2013 housing area. From the river bridge, a cycleway leads past the station to the Shurnold and Southbrook areas. A further cycleway loops around the west of the town following the bypass and crossing the river at Challymead bridge with links to the path to the south, the link from the 'new' canal to the town centre, and the cycleway to Shurnold and Southbrook
A cycle and footway from Melksham Oak through to Dauncey Gardens allows direct access in all weather from East Melksham to the school and other facilities.
Transport services
Private car parking is provided at the old railway and electric substation sites at 1 pound per hour, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., 7 days a week; concessionary rate for blue badge holders is 50p per hour. Charges are payable on exit and rounded down to the nearest hour (so in effect that's a free hour). There is also car parking at Lowbourne, and at King's Street, at the same rate, and at Snowberry (for medical and Spa museum) where there's a maximum charge of 5 pounds for the day.
Two rail services call at Melksham in each direction each hour - the electric service from Southend to Bristol, and the Weymouth to Cambridge which is currently a mixed traction unit. [Southend - Shenfield - Stratford - London Central - Heathrow - Maidenhead - Taplow - Reading - Didcot - Wantage - Swindon - Wootton Bassett - Chippenham - Melksham - Bradford-on-Avon - Bath - Keynsham - Bristol and Weymouth - Dorchester - Yeovil Interchange - Yeovil Town - Castle Cary - Frome - Westbury - all stations via Swindon to Oxford - Bicester - Bletchley - Bedford - Sandy - Cambridge - Cambridge Science Park; connections at Bristol and Oxford for the Wales and the North, Westbury for Salisbury, Southampton, Southampton Airport and Portsmouth.]
Local Bus services, run every 30 minutes as follows:
Melksham Oak - Bowerhill - Snowberry - Town Centre - Bus station - Shurnhold - Southbrook
Berryfield - Bowerhill Industry - Snowberry - Town Centre - Bus Station - Avon Road - Southbrook
Woodrow - Sandridge - Dauncey Gardens - Snowberry Lane - Snowberry - Town Centre - Bus Station
The three services above giving a 10 minute frequency from Snowberry to the (Bus) Station
Semington - Town Centre - Bus Station - Beanacre - Lacock (every 30 minutes, route 234, runs Trowbridge Station to Chippenham Station)
Holt - Broughton Gifford - Countrywide (via bypass) Snowberry - Town Centre - Bus Station - Shaw - Whitley - Atworth - Corsham (hourly, zigzag, runs Bradford-on-Avon to Chippenham)
Hourly extensions to the Melksham Oak bus to / from Devizes via Sells Green; also extends to Bath
Other hourly extends to / from Seend
Town bus - 2 times per hour; circular route 14 almost unchanged - but serves bus station and Market place only once.
Flat fare - 1.50 per journey within the Melksham area. Buses run by a local interest group, from 06:30 until mid evening - then further buses at hourly intervals.
All buses have low floor and with wheelchair access.
ISVs - Individual Shared Vehicles - are available throughout the town. there are Car Club cars based at the Transport Hub, Bowerhill, Snowberry, Southbrook and Dauncey Gardens, with vehicles being returnable to any of these locations. Cycle hire is based at the same locations, and there's an extra base at the Riverside Car Park.
Taxis are available at the Market Square, the Transport Hub, and at the town bridge beside the leisure complex. Half of the taxis are wheelchair accessible.
Primary schools remain scattered through the town, and all are connected to the cycleways so that mums / dads can cycle with their children to school if they wish. Traffic is limited to 20 m.p.h within 400 yards of the schools.
Most secondary school children in Melksham attend Melksham Oak, served by buses as outlined above. At school start / end times, the Woodrow and Berryfield services make a detour from Snowberry to the school to provide school transport. These extensions / changes apply for several hours to allow for after school activities.
With its wide variety of restaurants, Melksham has become a favourite stopping point on coach tours of the Wessex area. Staying at hotels in the leisure quarter, various groups stop for anything from one to five nights and use the area as a base. You'll note that overseas visitors can arrive directly in Melksham by train from Heathrow, or from Statford where they've changed from trains from Germany, France and Belgium. This electric train also links into Bath; the car park at the Transport Hub is indeed a park and ride for tourists and commuters to there and to Bristol, Swindon and Oxford too.
Conclusion
This document's very much a starting point - which I hope may provide some thoughts in helping to seed ideas. In my view, there's very much a need to draw up a vision for the future - but a flexible one to allow for economic, social and technical changes over the next 20 years - and work towards that. Travel, Transport and Tourism is not short term.