There has been a recent, and largely very welcome announcement in recent days about a £208m transport investment, part of a larger overall ‘£8.3bn transport vision’ which includes welcome schemes such as reopening of the Leamside Line, integrated ticketing, and wider public transport and active travel improvements.

That being said, dualling the A1 has once again reappeared, and given its £500m+ price tag would still constitute a sizeable chunk of the overall vision.

This latter scheme is undesirable for a number of reasons covered a lot of times before, but will be briefly reiterated here for clarity:

Dualling the A1 is poor value for money and bad for the environment, with little impact on safety.

Regardless of price, dualling the A1 has a benefit:cost ratio of just 0.8, meaning for every £1 in, only 80p of economic benefit would be returned. With a £500m+ price tag, this means an economic loss of £100m or more, which even in the best economic situation makes little sense, but with the huge pressure on the public purse, it makes zero sense now.

It is also negative on environmental grounds

The case against dualling doesn’t end at just being poor value for money, it also has adverse impacts on a large amount of ancient woodland, especially in and around the Coquet valley, as well as being responsible for 2,487,000 tonnes of CO² over its lifetime (build plus traffic, which is still significantly reliant upon petrol & diesel vehicles), a do-nothing scenario would result in lower emissions, especially if coupled with modal shift away from driving (which this campaign advocates for), and a do-nothing would also protect habitats such as ancient woodland, alongside allowing the £500m+ of financing to be allocated elsewhere.

Dualling is not a major safety fix

While it may be true that a dual carriageway may have some safety gains, it is far from making a road totally ‘safe’, as sadly borne out by fatal and serious accidents on already dualled sections of the A1 itself, as well as on similar roads elsewhere in the UK.

Part of the analysis by Space4Gosforth highlights this problem well, with a decade of accident data shown below.

Spending £500m+ on one thirteen-mile stretch of road could surely be better allocated to reducing road casualties across Northumberland as a whole. Accident rates on dual and single carriageway sections were so similar as to not represent any real difference; so in safety terms, the argument for dualling is a false one.

In the time period between 2014 and 2024, 141 lives were lost on Northumberland roads, and 1,550 serious injuries; inducing more road traffic will only make these figures worse, and the number is far too high a toll already.

Invest in the ECML & N.C.L. instead?

People still need to travel, and if not by road, they need a viable alternative to do so.

For the A1 in particular, especially the stretch between Morpeth and Berwick, the East Coast Main Line (ECML) runs in near parallel throughout, and represents where an alternative investment might be better placed.

As stated on the Railfuture North East webpage, a study into a local (all stations rail service) between Newcastle and Berwick was carried out as recently as 2019, and found to be economically viable (i.e. benefit:cost ratio greater than 1:1), this would represent an excellent scheme for Kim McGuinness to implement rather than the deeply flawed dualling of the A1.

Consider the Northumberland Coast Loop too.

Alongside improving the ECML rail service as above, the Northumberland Coast Loop could also be considered. This route would offer a new rail route between Newcastle and Berwick or Edinburgh going via Bedlington, and Pegswood.

As can be seen from the above maps, a rail service via the Northumberland Line as far as Bedlington, then cutting across west to Pegswood is already possible on existing track, and was traversed by the SRPS operated ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’ on the 8th March 2025.

The Northumberland Line, on the day of opening Newsham station, was revealed to have carried over 135,000 passengers, despite being open for less than 100 days and with only two stations open between 15th December 2024 and Monday 17th March 2025 (opening day for Newsham station).

Running through trains from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Bedlington (or vice versa), would give this area a new northbound service that would very much compliment the existing and already popular Northumberland Line service between Ashington and Newcastle.

A previous petition for the route obtained a total of 742 signatures, with a current one, that is still ongoing and aiming for the aforementioned Newcastle – Bedlington – Edinburgh rail service performing strongly.

With an overall cost of £298.5m, the Northumberland Line, 18 miles in length gives a very approximate cost per mile of £16.6m per mile.

For the Bedlington to Pegswood link, about 6 miles between stations, a similar cost per mile would mean such a link would be in the ballpark of £99.6m, but that would likely include station costs of the proposed Choppington station as the Northumberland Line figure is counted as an ‘all in’ scheme and not trackwork separate to stations, and it may even be possible to build a station on the Morpeth North Curve where this line joins the ECML to allow Morpeth to be served by trains on this route.

Taking this near £100m figure as a baseline, it can be seen that this is a mere fraction of A1 dualling costs, and if £500m+ is available for the corridor, would mean £400m+ would also be available for the ECML between Morpeth and Berwick?

Similarly, a popular proposal that would complement the wider bettering of public transport is for a dedicated ‘Bus Meets Train shuttle between Alnwick, Alnmouth Station, Warkworth, and Amble, with a petition for this again performing very strongly to date, despite only recently being launched. Again this bus service would cost a mere fraction of that proposed to be spent on dualling the A1 in Northumberland, but would give potentially greater economic and certain environmental benefits to the popular tourist towns of Alnwick, Warkworth, and Amble.

We would implore Kim McGuinness, as North East Mayor to reconsider dualling the A1, and instead invest the funds into the ECML and N.C.L. rail routes.