Economic impacts on Basingstoke and Andover
Many commentators consider that restricting development on greenfield sites is the best way to encourage the regeneration of ‘brownfield’ or previously developed sites. Hampshire's planners believe that a new town at Micheldever Station would seriously affect the business, industrial and housing markets in both Basingstoke and Andover.

Transport implications
Winchester City Council and Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council jointly commissioned a Further Assessment of Micheldever (Babtie Group, 1998), looking at the transport and economic implications of Eagle Star’s new town proposal. Both councils endorsed the report’s findings, despite protests by Eagle Star’s planning consultants, Barton Willmore.

The report forecasts that a 9,000 home new town at Micheldever Station would generate 1.3 million kilometres of car travel, and cause massive increases in traffic on the already congested roads into Winchester and Basingstoke.

At the time, Eagle Star claimed that the proposed new town would attract 12,000 jobs, and that about 50% of the workforce would live and work in the new town. The Babtie report says that the level of containment is likely to be much lower than this, at least in the short to medium term. This is because of uncertainties such as the timing, scale and type of employment in the new town, as well as the fact that the new town would be very attractive to commuters, particularly those working in Winchester and Basingstoke.

The report points out that even a 50% level of containment would mean that some 6,000 workers would commute out of the new town daily, whilst an equivalent number would commute in. Even if 15% of daily trips to Winchester and Basingstoke were made by public transport – a figure which the report describes as ‘unrealistic’ – there would still be over 13,000 daily car journeys to Winchester and Basingstoke.

The Babtie report therefore uses a figure of 33% employment containment and assumes that 5% of trips to Basingstoke and Winchester would be made by rail. These figures were used to assess the impact of the proposed new town on future levels of traffic congestion, and on local rural roads and transport networks.

The biggest impact would be on local roads, with traffic on Larkwhistle Farm Road increasing by 1,781% above the levels forecast if the new town were not built. This figure represents over 32,000 additional vehicles per day leaving the new town to continue their journeys on the A33. As a result, the A33 into Winchester would exceed its congestion capacity, with increases in traffic of 246%. Over half of these additional vehicles (nearly 12,000 per day) are projected to enter Winchester via Kings Worthy, causing an 81% increase in traffic on Worthy Road. The remaining 9,550 per day would join the bypass at junction 9 of the M3, which is already highly congested at peak periods and weekends. Traffic on the A33 heading northwards from Micheldever would rise by 90%, while traffic into Basingstoke on the A30 would increase by 40%.

• Starting with the story so far, our other Market Town briefings look at farming & wildlife, and the eco-towns initiative.