When town planners look at maps in an office, they see lines connecting points A to B. They look at road capacities on a dry Tuesday afternoon in July and calculate that a rural network can absorb a few thousand extra cars.
But those of us who live in the Forest of Dean, around Redmarley D’Abitot, and the Severn Vale know the reality of our geography. We know that our road network doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It operates at the mercy of the River Leadon and the River Severn.
The proposal to build 3,500 houses at Glynchbrook isn’t just an attack on our landscape – it is a recipe for a catastrophic infrastructure failure. Here is why the traffic models being used to justify this development are fundamentally flawed, and why the “Gridlock Multiplier” will bring our region to a standstill.
The Baseline Reality: 6,000 Extra Cars
Let’s start with the sheer volume. A rural settlement of 3,500 homes without a train station or a dedicated rapid-transit bus corridor will be almost entirely car-dependent. National statistics for rural areas show an average of roughly 2 cars per household.
This means the Glynchbrook development will inject an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 new vehicles into the local area.
Using standard trip generation rates, these vehicles will create upwards of 24,000 daily movements. And these movements won’t be spread evenly throughout the day. Because the site is remote from major employment hubs (Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester), it will create massive tidal flows of commuter traffic – thousands of cars leaving simultaneously between 7:30 am and 8:45 am, and returning between 4:30 pm and 6:00 pm.
The “Fair Weather” Fallacy
If the weather was always perfect, adding this volume of traffic to the A417, the B4213, and local rural lanes would result in severe congestion. But the weather is not always perfect.
The fatal flaw in the FoDDC’s draft plan is that it appears to assess road capacity based on ideal conditions. It completely ignores the Flood Multiplier.
Over the last decade, we have seen a sharp increase in the frequency and severity of flooding events. When the Severn or the Leadon break their banks, critical regional arteries – most notably the A417 at Maisemore – are forced to close.
When these primary routes close, the regional traffic doesn’t simply disappear. It diverts. Thousands of cars, delivery vans, and HGVs are forced onto the single-lane, ancient, sunken B-roads and unlit country lanes that serve communities like Redmarley and Lowbands.
The Gridlock Model
Our independent modelling paints a terrifying picture of what happens when a flood event coincides with a fully built Glynchbrook.
- Normal Capacity: On a good day, our rural B-roads can handle a specific maximum capacity before traffic grinds to a halt. The current village traffic sits safely below this line.
- The Flood Limit: When flooding forces detours, the effective safe capacity of our local network drops by over 60%. The roads simply cannot physically fit the diverted arterial traffic.
- The Breaking Point: If you add the projected 1,800+ morning peak trips from the new Glynchbrook development on top of a flooded network, the volume of traffic exceeds the physical capacity of the roads by nearly 400%.
The result? Total gridlock. Emergency vehicles unable to pass. Commutes that take hours. Villages cut off.
Adding Fuel to the Fire: Surface Runoff
The irony of the Glynchbrook proposal is that it will actively worsen the very flooding that causes this gridlock.
The development plans to concrete over hundreds of acres of permeable, Grade 2 and 3 agricultural land. That land currently acts as a natural sponge, absorbing rainwater. Replacing it with 3,500 roofs, driveways, pavements, and roads means millions of gallons of surface water will be displaced.
Even with modern Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), the sheer volume of runoff will inevitably end up downstream in the River Leadon catchment area, raising peak river levels faster and increasing the frequency of closures on the A417. It is a vicious cycle: the development creates the traffic, and the development creates the flooding that traps the traffic.
We Must Challenge the Evidence
We cannot allow the FoDDC to pass a Local Plan based on fair-weather assumptions. We must force them to model the traffic impacts of Glynchbrook based on a 1-in-10-year flood event – an event that climate change is turning into an annual occurrence.
To do this, we need professional traffic modellers and legal experts to tear apart the council’s Sustainability Appraisal at the public examination stage.
This is where we need your help. Please contribute to our Legal Expert Costs Fund via GoFundMe. Your donations will pay for the hard data, the traffic simulations, and the legal representation required to prove that Glynchbrook is an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen.
Furthermore, you must use this traffic data in your personal objections. When you submit your response to the FoDDC before the March 18th deadline, clearly state that the road network cannot support 3,500 car-dependent homes, especially during known, regular flood events.
Glynchbrook is the wrong place. Let’s make sure the Council hears us loudly, clearly, and with the evidence to prove it.
