A1P (1) MAJOR HIGHWAY SCHEMES - A5225 ... - Wigan Council

development which will enhance the overall quality of life. The supporting text to policy
T1 recognises that it is now widely accepted that constructing new roads to accommodate
future traffic growth is neither environmentally nor economically sustainable. The
emphasis should, therefore, be on increasing the role of public transport, cycling and
walking, together with making the best use of existing highway infrastructure.
10.78 PPS1 (paragraph 27) advises that, in preparing development plans, LPAs should
ensure that new development is located where everyone can have access to services or
facilities on foot, bicycle or public transport rather than having to rely on access by car.
Planning should actively manage patterns of urban growth to make the fullest use of
public transport and focus development in existing centres and near to major public
transport interchanges.
10.79 PPG13 (paragraph 6) reinforces this advice. It emphasises, among other things,
that when preparing development plans LPAs should protect routes that could be critical
in developing infrastructure to widen transport choices for both passenger and freight
movement. Paragraph 19 advises that, in preparing their development plans, LPAs should
give particular emphasis to accessibility in identifying the preferred areas and sites where
jobs, shopping, leisure facilities and services are located to ensure that they will offer
realistic, safe and easy access by a range of transport modes and not exclusively by car.
10.80 RPG13 (paragraph 2.2) provides that the overall aim of regional planning
guidance is to promote sustainable patterns of spatial development. This is to be
delivered, among other things, through promoting economy in the use of land and
adopting a sequential approach to meeting development needs to ensure that priority is
given to reusing suitable previously-developed land. Policy DP1 amplifies this objective
by providing that such land should be accessible by public transport, walking or cycling.
10.81 Wigan has, ever since the inception of the modern town planning system in 1947,
not benefited from a fundamental restructuring of its strategic route network. The main
east-west highway across the centre of the Borough is the A577. This is typical of the
strategic route network in Wigan in that it passes through the built-up areas and the retail
centres of settlements, fragmenting these and introducing noise, air pollution and traffic
hazard. It carries both local and through traffic. Heavy goods vehicles share the same
road surface with buses and cyclists. Due to the cramped layout of much of the older
housing stock this traffic flow is, at many places, separated from the front elevations of
dwellings by only the width of a narrow footway.
10.82 The LPA argues that the safeguarding of the route of the A5225 is a necessary
prelude to the eventual development of a highway scheme which would actively promote
a sustainable pattern of settlement, both through the unlocking for development of large
areas of land for employment near to where potential employees live and also by
removing unsuitable traffic from the existing road network, thereby significantly
upgrading the quality of life for the many households which live near to it and providing
the scope for the introduction of sustainable transport modes along it. The supporting text
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