Stonehenge: exposing the road lobby’s visual fibs

In order to help the Government’s plans, Highways England and their allies such as English Heritage have been busy telling the public the stones are completely blighted by traffic. Well, the road is there alright, and it carries traffic, but to say Stonehenge is somehow ruined is nonsense.

 

For starters, if you think the position is THIS, you’re mistaken. It’s not the A303, it’s the A344 which was closed and grassed over in 2013! That didn’t stop English Heritage presenting the picture of it in their blog last year. Why??

.

Second, if you think THIS is how things are, you’re mistaken. Yes, it’s the A303, but taken at peak time from far away with a very long lens to make it appear very close and overwhelming. Why did English Heritage, Historic England, and the National Trust do that and put it in their joint statement?

.

Here’s a much more honest photograph:

As you can see, the A303 is FAR further away and the intrusion is FAR less than the roads lobby tries to suggest – and the “blight” they talk about is FAR less than the massive new “remedial damage” they plan to inflict on the World Heritage Landscape in defiance of UNESCO’s wishes!

.

What’s more, Simon Jenkins, ex-Chairman of The National Trust, has cut through the false narrative of “a tunnel intended to restore tranquility” with devastating accuracy…

“The A303 bottleneck could be cured by leaving the existing road one way westbound and finding an alternative pathway to the south for an eastbound route. The landscape would look much as it does now but without the jams. Motorists would continue to get an uplifting glimpse of their past. The Wiltshire hillside would be scarred but it would not be torn open. Millions of pounds would be saved.”

At a standard cost of perhaps £10 -£15 million per mile, it might only cost £50-£75 million to build that eastbound route, compared to £1.5 billion for the short tunnel scheme, plus it would reduce the traffic intrusion by 50% and the queues by 100%!