A recent article by Cllr Hunter of Berwick, who also owns a road haulage business called DHH Contracts, has joined many of the voices calling for dualling the A1.
In the article, she says that the lack of dual carriageway leads to vehicles being delayed, increasing costs such as driver hours and fuel, especially if caught in a traffic jam.
It is perfectly understandable the reasons why a road haulage business would seek to make road haulage as easy as possible by wider roads, and reduced risk of congestion (though massive traffic jams still happen even on multi-lane motorways such as the M62 which I drove on recently), but there are other contradictions in the article that seem odd to have been stated.
North to SE Northumberland: 16 year olds on the A1, or should they be on the train?
One of these points that seems to contradict itself is young people in and around Berwick travelling to places like Blyth for training, and that ‘…people can’t easily get down there by road.’ and especially “How is a 16-year-old going to get to Blyth for training?”
How many 16 year olds would have a valid licence to even drive a moped on or around their birthday? Will they have enough experience to safely handle such a long route, which can be challenging with traffic even in good conditions, let alone in poor, sometimes appalling weather.
16, 17, 18 year olds driving upto or beyond 570 miles a week?!?
Even for an experienced driver, a daily drive of an hour or more from Berwick to Blyth, a distance of 93km/57 miles is a significant round trip each day; expecting that from an young, less experienced driver is frankly absurd.
This is especially considering that for a driver of 16 years of age, they can can only legally drive a 50cc moped, quadricycles like the Citroën Ami, or agricultural tractors, with the moped being a very unsafe option anyway let alone over 100 miles a day on roads like the A1, especially in harsh wintery conditions such as fog, ice, snow, high winds, or heavy rain.
Even at 17, 18, or into their early 20’s, young drivers face prohibitively high costs of learning to drive, then purchasing, insuring, and running a vehicle again on huge weekly milage of over 570 miles a week (assuming 57 mile trip twice a day (Berwick to Blyth and back, five days per week).
Do that 39 weeks per year (term-time for schools/colleges), that would be at least 22,230 miles/year; how many insurance companies would even entertain that kind of milage from a young driver?
Rail rather than road
This is why I am actively lobbying for the Northumberland Coast Loop rail service to be implemented; expecting a young person of 16-20 to drive hundreds of miles per week, and the costs that involves is surely an unrealistic expectation, but catching a train is far more reasonable.
As can be seen in the images below, the route map shows the potential of a direct rail link from Berwick to Blyth via Pegswood and Bedlington, and just over two years ago, a railtour using the line through Hepscott to reach Bedlington.
Even with the largest of motorways, young people couldn’t easily get themselves from Berwick to SE Northumberland and back again using it due to the barriers of a licence and high costs of motoring at a young age.
In contrast, a rail fare is far cheaper (and could be made very affordable for a student/young person), is much safer as all trains are driven by highly trained and competent staff, and is accessible to everyone, regardless of disabilities such as visual impairment, physical disabilities, or neurodiversities.
Road isn’t really a viable option for young people, but rail really could be.
The petition above shows the strong and growing support for a new rail route linking Blyth to Berwick as part of a longer Newcastle to Edinburgh via Blyth route. If you also support it, please sign the petition.
The Northumberland Coast Loop 