An Integrated National Transport Strategy… now there’s an idea!
Neil Taylor is a Director of the Integrated Transport Planning Advisory Group of Royal HaskoningDHV. If you would like to discuss any of the ideas discussed in this blog, or are keen to work with ITP’s team to improve transport system integration for people in your area, then please get in touch.
We are now publishing a series of blogs that explore some of the key messages from ITP’s submission, and share the views of our experts. Here are three highlights I picked out:
Integration is about more than ‘just’ transport
On reviewing our submission, it became clear that an integrated national transport strategy probably needs to extend beyond ‘just’ transport systems.Greater consideration over locations approved for new development, and the scale and density of such growth, can ensure we reinforce and create patterns of movement demand that yield realistic and deliverable prospects of being served by active travel and public transport networks. Planning and designing transport links, mobility hubs, and services that cater for people’s everyday trips – retrofitting existing infrastructure where necessary – has the potential to unlock considerable capacity from existing highway networks upon which most journeys in the UK currently rely. Not doing this, and accommodating piecemeal car-dependent developments through Local Plans, undermines efforts to establish better-integrated sustainable transport networks.
Those who remember Regional Development Agencies and their efforts to align spatial and multi-modal transport strategies within their geographies may sense the wheel turning full-circle. Nonetheless, this feels like a logical next step for Combined Authorities with devolved powers for spatial and transport planning – following the trail that London and, more recently, Greater Manchester have been blazing.
A people-centred approach is needed to improve accessibility of the existing network
We often identify people by the transport modes they happen to be using at any given moment, or which they most frequently use. In reality, lots of us use a range of travel options depending on the timing, purpose and locations of the journeys we are making.
A truly integrated national transport system would enable people without prior experience of any route, service or trip option feel confident they can complete a journey in a new location, or at an unfamiliar time of day. In the 21st Century this requires a combination of accurate, real-time, digital information plus comprehensive, discoverable, and consistent physical signage and wayfinding cues that enable travelers to make the best-informed travel decisions they can with the least hassle.
In practice, this may mean considerable investment over time to upgrade, and maintain, both physical assets and digital datasets on everything from where publicly accessible toilets can be found (the lack of which is often a huge barrier to public transport travel for older and disabled people), to where the bus you are waiting for is currently - and how long it is expected to take to arrive with you.
Funding needs to follow policy
In his book ‘Measure What Matters’, John Doerr notes that “Ideas are easy. Execution is everything”. This summarises a perennial challenge for Government attempts to deliver impactful national transport strategies. Recent experience (see Decarbonising Transport – A Better Greener Britain) has shown just how challenging it can be when seeking to move the needle on transport-related issues of vital importance.Whatever ideas and conclusions find their way into the published Integrated National Transport Strategy, it is clear that Government and the Department for Transport, will need to align national, regional and local transport funding commitments with the policy objectives defined in the plan. A starting point might simply be to prioritise funds for better maintaining, improving and joining-up the country’s existing transport route, service and network assets (including repairing potholed roads) to optimise what we already have, for all travellers, rather than to allocating the bulk of the transport budget towards further extending those networks - and the associated maintenance obligations.
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