Highways Agency

Introduction

Ministerial Announcements

On the 20 July, 2005, the Minister of State for Transport Dr. Stephen Ladyman announced the Government's plans to carry out a detailed review of the options for the A303 Stonehenge Improvement Scheme. This was combined with an announcement that the Public Inquiry Inspector was satisfied that the case for the Published Scheme had been made and recommended that the Scheme Orders should be made, subject to some minor modifications.

The reason for the Review is that there has been a significant increase in the estimated cost of the Scheme since the Public Inquiry. Given the scale of the cost increase, the Government has decided to re-examine whether the Published Scheme still represents value for money and is the best option for delivering improvements to the setting of Stonehenge and to the A303. Subsequent to the announcement in July 2005, a cross-government steering group has been established to take forward the review, the details and Terms of Reference for which were announced by the Minister of State for Transport on the 31 October 2005 (See Appendix A of the report).

Scope of this Report

This Report is a working document to support items 5e) and 5f) of the Terms of Reference. It presents the assessment of the five options put forward for public consultation in early 2006,namely:

• The Published Scheme.
• Cut & Cover Tunnel.
• Northern Route.
• Southern Route.
• Partial Solution.

The assessment of the options follows the method for preparation of a Stage 2 Report as described in TD 37/93 Scheme Assessment Reporting (Design Manual for Roads and Bridges Volume 5, Section 1, Part 2). Hence all the options have been assessed on a similar basis, except that the Published Scheme has been subject to a full Stage 3 assessment, culminating in the A303 Stonehenge Improvement Environmental Statement published in 2003 and in the evidence presented at Public Inquiry in 2004.

The following chapters present details of the assessments for each option. Chapter 2 describes each option and also presents the cost review that has been undertaken for the Published Scheme with its bored tunnel. Chapter 3 covers the engineering assessment of each option, before Chapters 4 and 5 present respectively the environmental assessments and the traffic and economic assessments. For some topics full assessments for each option have been presented. This results in some repetition of text but allows each option to be read on a stand-alone basis and reduces the need for cross-referencing.

Various individuals and bodies suggested alternative routes in response to the public consultation. Details of these are generally included in the separate Scheme Review - Public Consultation Report, but the detailed assessment of two routes within a corridor suggested by The National Trust has been attached to this Report at Appendix B to allow ready comparison with the public consultation options.

In addition, effects have been appraised using Transport Analysis Guidance (WebTAG) methodology (particularly for noise and air quality) to prepare Appraisal Summary Tables (ASTs). The AST for the Published Scheme was prepared and presented at the Public Inquiry in 2004, and is a full Stage 3 DMRB assessment and WebTAG appraisal. ASTs for other options in this review have been prepared to Stage 2, and for some topics contain elements of Stage 3. However, it should be noted that the purpose of the review is to determine whether any of the options would offer equivalent or an acceptable level of benefits to the Published Scheme at less cost. Therefore, in order to facilitate comparison with the Published Scheme, the ASTs have been prepared to a similar format. The AST tables for each option, together that prepared for the Published Scheme in 2004, are attached at Appendix C.

The Published Scheme has been developed over a long period and assessed and refined in detail prior to the 2004 Public Inquiry. Other options, particularly the Northern and Southern Routes, have not been considered to this same level of detail. It is therefore possible that with further development and consideration of possible mitigation the negative impacts of these options could be marginally reduced, but it is considered that this would make no significant difference to the overall comparison of options.

Download the Detailed Assessment Report - Stage 2

You can download a copy of the Detailed Assessment Report - Stage 2 in PDF format below. Due to their large file size, some of the figures associated with this report are available to download as separate PDFs.

• Detailed Assessment of Options Report - Stage 2 (1.3MB PDF)

Figures

• Figure 2.1 (251KB PDF) 
• Figure 2.2 (589KB PDF)
• Figure 2.3 (558KB PDF)
• Figure 2.4 (485KB PDF)
• Figure 2.5 (559KB PDF)
• Figure 2.6 (490KB PDF)
• Figure 3.1 - 3.5 (858KB PDF)
• Figure 4.1 (408KB PDF)
• Figure 4.2  (367KB PDF)
• Figure 4.3 (324KB PDF)
• Figure 4.4 (212KB PDF)
• Figure 4.5 (551KB PDF)
• Figure 4.6 (486KB PDF)
• Figure 4.7 (491KB PDF)
• Figure 4.8 (491KB PDF)
• Figure 4.9 (488KB PDF)
• Figure 4.10 (290KB PDF)
• Figure 4.11 (256KB PDF)
• Figure 5.1 - 5.15 (1.14MB PDF)
• Figure 5.16 - 5.30 (1.6MB PDF)
• Figure B1.1 (506KB PDF)
• Figure B1.2 (454KB PDF)
• Figure B1.3 (289KB PDF)
• Figure B1.4 (848KB PDF)
• Figure B2.1 (841KB PDF)
• Figure B3.1 (722KB PDF)
• Figure B3.2 (645KB PDF)
• Figure B3.3 (568KB PDF)
• Figure B3.4 (301KB PDF)
• Figure B3.5 (834KB PDF)
• Figure B3.6 (289KB PDF)
• Figure B3.7 (371KB PDF)