ePetition details

Stop the Durham Relief Roads

We the undersigned petition the Council to To abandon & stop immediately the Durham County Plan proposals for the Northern & Western Relief Roads that will destroy & effect forever the beautiful countryside & disturb wild life habitat at Kepier & Frankland Woods, Low Newton Nature Reserve & The River Browney Valley. .

The Relief Roads will have a terrible effect on the following sites: Kepier & Frankland Woods, Low Newton Nature Reserve & the River Browney Valley.
• The Relief Roads will destroy & affect the beautiful woodland, Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Low Newton, nature/history – mining, quarrying, railway, and Beaurepaire & Neville’s Cross Battle site. Destroy & ruin green spaces for humans & habitats for wild life that will be devastated and/or affected forever by the roads.
• The potential for infill building, houses/industrial sites along the Relief Roads route ending village & suburban areas. In time this will result in considerably more traffic, more congestion, and so more air pollution.
• The Relief Roads will reduce trade in Durham City Centre. It has been demonstrated that roads which are justified on the basis of economic growth rarely deliver it. In this case, it seems likely that the roads will facilitate travel to the out-of-town shopping centres at the expense of the city centre, thus starving it of investment. This process has taken place in many of County Durham’s towns.
• That the Relief Roads are not needed, well below national average for traffic congestion compared to other cities. The Relief Roads will create air & noise pollution in the villages & suburban areas.
• The cost - £100 million budget for the Relief Roads which will rise exponentially due to old mining works & other issues contractors come across (use the Thinford overspend as an example). I would rather the money would be spent on new schools, improving front line social care, and improved sustainable transport to alleviate any traffic problems
• Moving some relatively minor issues of twice daily traffic build up that lasts for 15 to 30 minutes a day to the villages & suburban areas that do not have the road infrastructure big enough to cope.

This ePetition ran from 29/01/2019 to 07/03/2019 and has now finished.

342 people signed this ePetition.