Taking a Look at the 2011 Census

One of the biggest concerns shared by residents both inside and outside the SDL boundary is the impact on local traffic of both 3,500 extra homes at Arborfield, and also the effect of the existing Army housing losing the army places of work.

As part of the 2011 census a question was asked about the methods people used to get to work – those results have now been published, and the Guardian Datablog team have put together an excellent visualisation of the data. This makes really interesting viewing and highlights the problem when you focus in on Arborfield Garrison.

This first screenshot shows the percentages of people walking to work – note the military housing on the Garrison is actually split between two areas on this map, with the accommodation on Baird Road between Badgers Mount and Penrose Park being included in the Arborfield Cross section. What it shows is that 20-50% of residents walk to work – that’s more even than the numbers of residents in central Wokingham who walk, and is very unusual for this area. Even though the MoD is proposing to retain housing on this site, they aren’t retaining the base. The personnel housed here will be travelling to other facilities – i.e. they will be leaving and returning to the site by road.

If you take a look at the same map for those travelling by car or van, you can see a corresponding dip in car commuting compared to the surrounding area with the garrison area falling into the same category for car commuting as central Wokingham, with 15-30% of residents commuting by car as opposed to 45-60% of residents in the surrounding areas. It would be reasonable to assume that with the garrison gone whilst there may be some local walkable jobs residents here would have similar numbers driving as for other villages with large housing estates such as Finchampstead, Shinfield or Three Mile Cross at 45-60% (although note the 60-75% of driving commuters in the northern part of Finchampstead).

So what is the answer. The answer usually offered is to make public transport – in this case the local bus service – more attractive. Take a look at this map which is the figures for all public transport which includes those local residents who take the train. The whole map is one uniform colour indicating less than 15% of people use any form of public transport. The same map for bus travel only is even worse, less than 7%. Looking at the actual figures, Wokingham is pretty good for bus usage at 2.4% across the borough putting it mid-table (the figure for Arborfield Garrison itself is currently 1.17%), but however you look at it expecting public transport to seriously impact on people wanting to drive in and out of the SDL is at best pretty optimistic. The expectation is that the new residents who will move into the the SDL will all have a rather different attitude to public transport than those already there and who live in the surrounding area. The simple fact is that unless something changes drastically in the next few years building the new houses at Arborfield will have a significant impact on all the surrounding roads, in particular the A327 heading north through Arborfield and south through Eversley, and also the secondary routes to Wokingham through Barkham and Bracknell through Finchampstead will also get significantly more traffic. No amount of repeated traffic studies or playing with the figures is going to change that, the roads have to be able to cope otherwise the whole area will just grind to a halt.