PCC (Plymouth City Council) is proposing changes to Manadon Roundabout and are seeking the views of the public in a consultation. Information be found on the PCC website here. The deadline for comment is June 24th 2025

We have formulated our response which can be seen below.

THE MANADON UPGRADE

The Council has set out its plans to upgrade the Manadon roundabout and has invited comments. These comments reflect the views of the Plymouth Cycling Campaign.

The scheme is described as “a once-in-a-generation investment designed to make travel through the area safer, more efficient and future-proofed for the city’s growth”. This is highly debatable. The Council must be aware of the extensive research[1] and analysis that demonstrates that widening roads does not reduce congestion beyond the short term due to induced demand. Indeed the Council seems to recognise this as it says on the website “you may still queue in familiar places, but without this project, those queues would be much worse and stretch far beyond the roundabout” (bold added). So in fact this development will not improve the situation but will according to the Council avoid making it worse.  However the research that has taken place shows that authorities constantly under estimate the amount of traffic road developments encourage, so it is likely that congestion will get worse.

Q Why has the Council chosen to ignore the weight of evidence demonstrating the futility of road building/widening in reducing congestion?

The Council has announced that the scheme is estimated to cost £156m. The track record of authorities delivering major projects to time and cost is not great[2]. Should the cost increase, where is the additional money going to come from?

This sort of money could provide a major boost to alternative travel modes such as buses and bicycles. There are already a considerable number of bus routes that run through Manadon connecting Derriford and beyond with the city centre. The Council also has identified strategic cycling routes that could be implemented for this sort of funding and could radically improve and encourage cycling within Plymouth. The claim that the scheme will encourage more people to walk and cycle is unsubstantiated, The Council has been told on multiple occasions that creating piecemeal and isolated cycling paths which do not provide a coherent network is pointless as cyclists are still confronted with joining traffic flows at various points which deters any but the most confident. In any event the scheme proposals seem indicate a preference for shared paths, which Active Travel England state should generally be avoided.

Q What evaluation has the Council carried out to assess alternative methods of reducing traffic at Manadon, such as adequate public transport or proper cycling paths that offer continuous routes and are LTN 1/20 compliant?

The Council maintains that tackling climate change is one of its top priorities and that they are committed to encouraging sustainable and cleaner transport, and decarbonising and future proofing the transport system. However how can this possibly be the case if the Council are actively promoting the use of the car, a major contributor to climate damage? The Council is unlikely to achieve its Net Zero target in any event, this scheme will only further undermine that target. The University of Exeter 2022 report[3] assessing the steps needed to achieve Net Zero stated that “Pre COVID rises in vehicle miles in Plymouth need to be reversed to hit the 2030 target of a 10% decline in the 964 million miles driven in 2019, an 8.7 million mile per year reduction to 2030”[4] Instead of which the Council is building to accommodate additional traffic, which flies in the face of its statement that “new cycleways and footbridges will make it easier and safer to walk and cycle, reducing car dependency.

Q         Does this signal the end of the Council’s actions to achieve zero net carbon by 2020? If not how can they reconcile these plans with that objective? How do they intend to offset the rise in carbon emissions that will result?

The Manadon scheme is one of a number of road schemes that the Council has recently delivered or is currently working on. The Forder Valley link road was recently built at a cost of £52m. One of the stated objectives of that project was to relieve the pressure on the Manadon roundabout and the A386 to Tavistock. Are we to assume that objective has failed given the Council believes the Manadon scheme is necessary? If so, what confidence does the Council have that Manadon will deliver the stated objectives?

Q What degree of confidence has the Council in its projections given the failure of Forder Valley to relieve the pressure on Manadon?

Finally, the Council has presumably developed a cost benefit analysis for this project – has this/will this be published, along with any impact assessments, such as economic and environmental, that have been produced?

---

[1] See for example here https://vtpi.org/gentraf.pdf

[2]  The Governments report into its major projects 2023/24 showed that  25 projects were rated green (11% of the GMPP), 27 projects were assigned Red (12%), 163 projects (72%) were rated Amber and 12 were exempt (5%).

[3] https://www.plymouth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Plymouth-Emissions-Report-2021.pdf

[4] Plymouth-Emissions-Report-2021page 4