{"id":5093,"date":"2019-02-05T11:20:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T11:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/?p=5093"},"modified":"2019-03-15T15:17:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T15:17:55","slug":"kents-communities-and-a-no-deal-brexit-accessibility-planning-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/2019\/02\/05\/kents-communities-and-a-no-deal-brexit-accessibility-planning-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent\u2019s Communities and a No-Deal Brexit: Accessibility Planning, Now!"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Dr Susan Kenyon, Faculty Director of Learning and Teaching at Canterbury Christ Church University.\u00a0 She has studied transport and travel behaviour since 1998 and has published extensively in the area of transport, accessibility and social exclusion.\u00a0 Dr Kenyon worked at a number of UK Universities and at Transport for London, before working at CCCU. You can find her University profile\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a crystal ball, or a political equivalent of the Gray\u2019s Sports Almanac, to tell me if the UK will exit the EU on 29th<\/sup>\u00a0March. \u00a0However, an analysis of alternative futurological sources \u2013 betting odds, opinion polls and \u2018expert\u2019 media commentary \u2013 suggests that, whilst the probability of leaving on the 29th<\/sup>\u00a0is declining, the probability that, if we do leave, we will leave without a deal, is rapidly increasing.<\/p>\n

For communities in Kent, this is deeply worrying.<\/p>\n

Kent is home to the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel, border crossing points which, together, represent the principal points of entry and exit for the UK\u2019s goods trade with the EU.\u00a0 Approximately 4 million freight vehicles and 23 million passengers cross these borders every year[1]<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that\u2019s around 11,000 HGVs and 63,000 passengers every day.\u00a0 More than 40% of vehicles on Kent\u2019s roads at any one time are freight vehicles, travelling through Kent, to reach their final destination.<\/p>\n

For communities in Kent, this becomes a problem when these vehicles cannot pass through our county.\u00a0 The Strategic Road Network (SRN) through Kent is limited, in terms of length and capacity.\u00a0 Any disruption to the flow of vehicles through Kent, to the west into England or the east into Europe, very quickly leads to congestion on motorways and trunk roads.\u00a0 This, in turn, leads to traffic leaking onto the Local Road Network (LRN), spreading congestion from the SRN into our towns and villages.<\/p>\n

So far, so interesting \u2013 to transport planners.\u00a0 But what has this to do with Brexit?<\/p>\n

In the event of a no-deal, at 11pm on 29th<\/sup>\u00a0March, the regulations that govern the entrance and exit of goods and people from the UK will change. \u00a0Because we will no longer be part of the single market, the conventions that currently allow people and goods to flow freely across our borders, from the UK to Europe and vice versa, will no longer apply.\u00a0 This means that border checks will need to be introduced on goods, to enforce tariffs and compliance with safety, sanitary and security regulations.\u00a0 Travellers are also likely to face changes to their border crossing, with increased customs, passports and security checks.<\/p>\n

Increased checks will slow the flow of people and goods across our borders.\u00a0 People and goods will not be able to exit Kent to the east into Europe as quickly as they could, before Brexit, because our border crossing points are not yet equipped to process vehicles, goods or people with these additional checks.<\/p>\n

Previous experience tells us that delays at these borders very quickly leads to gridlock on Kent\u2019s roads, with destructive effects for people in Kent\u2019s communities.<\/p>\n

In 2015, border closures resulted in a devastating reduction in accessibility to key services for local communities.<\/p>\n

Within hours, the bottle necks at our ports resulted in traffic jams on our major roads, which quickly led to traffic jams on our local roads.\u00a0 Because of this, people simply could not get to where they needed to go.<\/p>\n

Within days, our communities were suffering from the consequences of this.\u00a0 Care workers were not able to get to those they look after.\u00a0 Patients were not able to get to doctor\u2019s surgeries.\u00a0 Hospital appointments were missed.\u00a0 People could not get to shops to buy food.\u00a0 Employees could not get to work.\u00a0 Pupils could not get to school, nor students to Higher Education.\u00a0 Parents lived with the fear that they would not be able to get home to look after their children[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The increase in HGV use of local roads, plus increased non-designated HGV parking in our towns and villages, also had negative impacts on the living environment.\u00a0 This included community bifurcation, fear of road traffic incidents, fear of crime, alongside local environmental impacts, including noise, waste, pollution, air quality and potential localised climate change.<\/p>\n

Could this happen again?<\/p>\n

If our borders are slowed, or blocked, after Brexit, the logical assumption is that it is\u00a0inevitable<\/em>\u00a0that this will happen again.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, however, we do not yet have any reliable studies telling us what the impacts of Brexit border changes for communities in Kent will be.<\/p>\n

Three small studies have reported gridlock on specific roads on the SRN, focusing on the impact on through-times from the border crossings in the east to exit in the west[3]<\/a>.\u00a0 Political concern has focused on the impact of this on through-traffic carrying time-limited products, including vegetables and medicines, or products for just-in-time manufacturing, to the rest of the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n

However, we desperately need to understand the impacts of congestion on\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0roads in Kent.\u00a0 We need to understand the impacts not only on access by car, but also by public transport and on foot.\u00a0 We then need to understand the impacts of congestion across Kent upon accessibility for Kent\u2019s communities.\u00a0 Will children be able to get to school, employees to work, carers to the people that they look after?<\/p>\n

With information, we could plan to travel by alternative routes or modes, at different times, or to different locations.\u00a0 We could arrange community-focused solutions, for example co-ordinating medical appointments with others in the local area and car sharing to the surgery, co-ordinating delivery of goods\/medicines, co-ordinating work at home days to enable collection of children from school.\u00a0 We could develop safe walking routes and schedule walking buses along these routes, in place of vehicular transport, or develop contingency plans to ensure that care can continue, if carers cannot get to those they care for.\u00a0 We could plan for short-term virtual delivery of key services.<\/p>\n

All of these are possible short-term solutions to ensure that communities in Kent can thrive in the event of Brexit border disruption.\u00a0 But we need to act now.<\/p>\n

How can we do this?<\/p>\n

An important step is to create a transport model: mapping how traffic behaves under normal conditions, before adjusting key variables \u2013 in this case, congestion and road closures \u2013 to predict what will happen to the road network in different situations.<\/p>\n

A whole-county model will take time to develop.\u00a0 A more immediate solution would be to study the communities that we know will be affected first.<\/p>\n

Kent County Council\u2019s 5-step Freight Traffic Management Plan for Brexit, Operation Brock, gives us a clue as to which communities will be in the front line[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n