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The cost of roadworks on the economy of our town - 1800 pounds per hour?

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-02-20 08:20:31 - Graham Ellis

There are roadworks - again - on the busy A350 road from Chippenham to Melksham. And when we arrived back there yesterday, mid-morning, we decided to take a taxi for the final 8 (AA distance by road) miles. The alternatives were just too awful, even with our green 'credentials' - a walk with luggage across Chippenham and a wait of just under an hour, or a four hour wait for a train.

The taxi fare wasn't a significant element of the budget of our week's trip to Frankfurt, but I'll admit to being shocked at the fare of 22 pounds. And as we sat in the queue at the road works in Beanacre, I watched the meter ticking on up, with that stretch adding an extra five pounds to the bill ...

I've often contended that the difficulties and cost of the final few miles of the journey to Melksham has a significant adverse effect on the economy of the town. The road works and taxi yesterday (a winter Saturday, when you would not expect to find traffic jams in villages the road passes through) put some sort of figure onto that. The journey took 15 minutes longer than I would have expected, and wait time for North Wilts taxis is 30p / minute. So that was a cost of 4.50. There were perhaps 100 cars in the queue, so that's a 4.50 x 100 x 4 = £1800.00 per hour in delay costs (there was only a short northbound queue!). Surprisingly, DfT (Department for Transport) guidance uses a figure higher that the 30 pence per minute when calculating delay costs in association with road schemes, so I am not going to discount the £1800.00 to allow for the fact that most people were queuing in their own vehicles.

Footnotes

I was aware of taxi wait time charges - but had understood them to apply to time when the taxi was sitting at an intermediate address, waiting for customers to load / unload / fetch something. But it appears that the meter was applying them as we sat in the road work queue too. In some ways, that's fair enough - the taxi driver shouldn't be the one who picks up the bill for delays caused by Wessex Water's works.

It wasn't a particularly nice taxi either - although meeting the legal requirement to be no smoking, we felt that the driver was probably a chain smoker when off duty / on breaks, with the smell of stale tobacco ingrained in the cab. A notice on the window of the vehicle warned us that the cab could only be booked through the office and not through the driver, or the insurance would be invalid. The taxi *was* on the rank at Chippenham station, and it *did* (I recall) have an official plate on it - so I think we were insured off the rank and I wonder if the notice was really intended to discourage direct bookings and moonlighting by the driver; if that's the case, it shows a lack of trust in their driver(s) by the operating company.

I contend that the driver should have known about the roadworks just 4 miles from where he collected the fare, and indeed our conversation with him indicated that he did and had been stuck there before. Why he didn't take the alternative rat run I don't know; he did offer to double back and go "the other way" once we were well stuck in the jam - but by that point it would have made very little difference.

I've been told that Taxi drivers at Chippenham station strongly object to the idea of an improved TransWilts train service - which I rather see as evidence that such a service would significantly dent their incomes. There's certainly a regular flow off trains into taxis during the day. With the first Melksham bus from the station not leaving until mid afternoon - a useable service for residents out for the day, but not for visitors coming to the town to visit businesses here, which is where the taxi 'flow' has grown to fill the gap.

Conculsions

Business-wise, we do not wish / cannot afford for our training course delegates to arrive in Melksham as unhappily as we did yesterday. We tend to prebook local taxi companies and take other measures to ensure that the final miles from the plane / train go smoothly. A good public transport link, connecting with long distance services would do wonders for this town.