Transport Planning Notes
Why is there any need for transport planning? The simplistic answers:
“Everyone has or wants a car, so new roads must be built”
“If only were better, I would use it”
“If freight were made to use rail, motorway congestion could be solved”
But, simplistic answers are:
not environmentally feasible, and / or
cost too much, and / or
not politically feasible, and / or
unpredictable in their consequences
If the simplistic answers are wrong, what are the right questions?
Possibilities:
“What sort of cities do we want to live in?”
“What could go wrong if we simply allow the trend towards sole reliance upon car travel to continue?”
“What sort of cities do we want to live in?”
Any consensus view would be too general to help in making plans
Someone, or some political agency, would have to play at god
Ideas as to what was desirable would change as ‘progress’ was made: Planned utopias often disappoint e. g. New Towns
“What could go wrong if we simply allow the trend towards sole reliance upon car travel to continue?”
Possibly a better question
It is easier to gain some consensus about future problems than about some planned utopia.
So what are the consequences of this trend, and why is it so hard to escape from them?
Rising car ownership
An apparently irresistible trend, worldwide.
If you have a car, you want to use it; if you do not own one, you want one!
Rising car use inevitably fosters as a consequence dispersal
Factors favouring dispersal:
1.
Industry & office employment:
Push factors: congestion and shortage of land in long established centres.
Pull factors: Greater land availability on peripheral sites. Locational ties reduced by area wide availability of power grids and information networks:
proximity to workforce and to markets no longer crucial.
Factors favouring dispersal:
2.
Housing
Motive: Newer housing on greenfield sites is more attractive than inner city areas, environmentally and socially.
Opportunity: Rising income and car ownership.
Factors favouring dispersal:
3. Economies of scale
Concentration of retailing into larger out of centre units. Lower costs to retailer, even if travel costs to customers higher.
Concentration of schools, hospitals etc into larger units on basis of specialist facilities
Future further dispersal?
e-mail, video conferencing may have some impact.
Counter-trends: A new equilibrium as peripheral congestion gets as bad as central area congestion.
Inner city living could become more fashionable e. g. docklands.
BUT traditional outward factors still operate
Why is it so hard to escape from the trend towards dispersal?
If a new road is built to solve a specific environmental problem, it will create spare road capacity.
That spare capacity will be seen as an opportunity for more travel, rather than as a saving of journey time, as
people behave as though they have a travel time budget.
Is dispersal a bad thing?
Not necessarily, but there are potential problems, which transport planners should consider e. g
1.
The decline or death of the traditional city and town centre
2. Dispersal is bad for the provision of any form of public transport, especially fixed track.
Decentralisation increases dependence upon the car, to the disadvantage of non-car owners. The challenge to planners is to redress this imbalance by providing multi-modal access to -decentralised functions
The role of central areas: in the past
Crucial: practically and politically.
Any society needed a focal point for the exchange of goods, services and information
The development of job specialisation and trade depended upon access
The role of central areas in the future
Arguably little practical need.
Exchange of services and information can be achieved through “the invisible city” of telecommunications and the media
BUT face to face communication does provide an alternative, not subject to control by e.
g. media tycoons, and
Capital cities worldwide seem to have undiminished importance
The role of central areas in the future: provincial cities
The central areas of all U. K provincial cities have declining employment and retailing
This is a response to the lack of change in road and public transport provision
Are major new shopping centres evolving into the town centres of the future?
Superstores are providing more diverse services
The role of central areas in the future: historic town centres
These still provide living and shopping facilities within walking distance
Redevelopment to accommodate the car will be limited.
The advantages of attractive environment may ensure their survival,
and become the preferred residence of those unwilling or unable to use cars for all movement
People adversely affected by decline in public transport
The non car owning population is diminishing BUT
The young below car driving age are restricted in mobility, or reliant upon parents.
The elderly. Renewal of driving licences after the age of 70 dependent upon health.
Indirect adverse effects of dispersal
Centralisation of facilities implies more lengthy travel to local facilities e. g. shop, pub, library.
If necessary journeys are longer, the alternative modes of walking or cycling become less feasible
Local facilities such as shops are in decline because of competition from superstores enjoying economies of scale
Equity of dispersal.
The declining number of families without a car are put at a disadvantage by dispersal as:
It is harder to get to more remote shops on deteriorating public transport
Prices are higher in local shops that remain.
i.
e dispersal makes the poor poorer.
Possible responses to potential problems of city centre decline and of dispersal
1. Spend to a solution.
2.
Legislate to restrict land use changes
3. Cope with uncertainty about the future with flexible plans.
1. Spend to a solution.
It’s been tried!
But 1. 2 miles of new road in Docklands cost lb 200 million,
the extension of one underground line, the Jubilee, cost lb 3 billion
2. Legislate to restrict land use changes
Planning Policy Guidance Note 13
This is an advice note first issued in 1994 by John Gummed, then Secretary of State for the Environment, advising local planning authorities on what development proposals to approve.
PPG 13
1.
Development that tends to attract journeys should be located where it is readily accessible by a choice of methods.
Shops, offices and entertainment facilities should be located together, so that one journey can serve several purposes, and public transport may be available.
PPG 13
2. Housing development needs to be accessible to public transport, so that there is an alternative to the car.
PPG 13
But:
1. Is this policy switch too late? So much out-of-town retailing has already been permitted.
2. Policy relies upon improved public transport and this is now provided in an unplanned way by the private sector.
3. Cope with uncertainty about the future with flexible plans.
Traditionally, a flexible transport plan was one that provided generous but vague reservations for new road space.
This caused blight.
Flexibility ought to mean the retention of alternative ways of reaching destinations
Flexibility
The alternative modes available are car, bus, cycling, walking and in limited cases rail.
The type of land use best able of offer flexibility (i.
e a choice of modes of access) is one in which most urban services are local.
Such a land use pattern is best able to cope with inevitable uncertainties about the future.
Elements of practical transport planning
Some road building
Some investment in public transport
Some restrictions, possibly by pricing road space
Some land use regulation, subject to developer and political acceptability
What the policy mix implies
In effect, the division of the country into
areas where car-based mobility is paramount,
i. e. a land of ring roads, business parks and superstores, and
areas (isolated “islands”? ) where public transport, access on foot, and environmental considerations take priority.
If the policy mix is wrong…
And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.