The season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and integrated transport strategies

Autumn is definitely in the air and the nights are drawing in.   I find it very hard to shake off the feeling that a new “term” is starting, partly because autumn is when the new school and Parliamentary terms start. 

With a continuing war in Ukraine, an escalating conflict in the Middle East and the impacts of the Climate Emergency increasingly apparent, it would be easy to be downcast as the new term starts.  But there are also some reasons to feel optimistic, at least in terms of UK transport.  

New Government 

It has been very interesting seeing the new Government “hitting the ground running” on transport.  The new Secretary of State Louise Haigh MP announced her priorities on arriving at the DfT in July.  These are improving rail performance and delivering rail reform; Improving bus services and growing usage across the country; transforming infrastructure to work for the whole country, promoting social mobility and tackling regional inequality; delivering greener transport; and better integrating transport network.  These are all goals that TPS members can get firmly behind.   Critically, Louise Haigh also said that none of the government’s core goals - growth, net zero, opportunity, women and girls’ safety, health – “can be realised without transport as a key enabler”.  That sounds suspiciously (and positively) like treating transport – and mobility – as means to a set of ends, rather than as ends in themselves.

Meanwhile, Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams has been appointed as the  DfT Director in charge of developing the government’s integrated strategy, the first of its kind since John Prescott’s “New Deal for Transport” White Paper in 1998.  The TPS has called for such a strategy for a long time, so we will make sure we feed into the development of the new strategy at every opportunity.

With the new government committed to rail reform, rolling out bus franchising and further devolution of fundings and powers to regional and local authorities, these are interesting times for transport planners. 

Policy developments 

The consultation on the revised National Planning Policy Framework has just closed.   The TPS submitted detailed comments on the revised NPPF. 

We focussed our response on some of the practical challenges, implications and opportunities arising from proposed changes to Chapter 9 on promoting sustainable transport, and in particular the important move from ‘predict and provide’ to a “vision-led” approach to assessing the transport impacts and acceptability of new development.  

TPS members held a wide range of views on the proposed changes, with some differences in opinion between those who work predominantly for private sector clients versus those responsible for development management in local authorities. 

What is clear though is that there is great appetite for change across the profession to move towards creating places which are genuinely sustainable and liveable.  

The core message of the TPS’s response was that a move away from ‘predict and provide’ to “vision led” is welcomed, but without further guidance on how to set and agree an appropriate vision, and in the absence of a wider overarching National Transport strategy that might simplify this process, there is a risk that the changes will not deliver the outcomes the transport network, and local communities, need.   

The TPS response to the draft NPPF is here. 

Board and business plan 

Positive work is continuing  on developing the TPS’s strategy and business plan, following the inspiring session with Sonia Byers from Women in Transport back in June.  Lisa Martin is leading a piece of work looking at how we can develop our corporate supporters’ proposition to make it really clear the different ways that organisations can support the TPS and the value of that relationship to both parties.  Tim Cuthbert and Isabelle Milford are also looking at ways of ensuring we retain our existing individual members and how we can better link our different programmes such as skills, events, membership and communications.  

Events 

The TPS Board held its September Board meeting in Bristol, hosted at UWE by Board member and academic lead Jonathan Flower.  The Board meeting was followed by an excellent event at the Arnolfini Centre exploring “Traffic management in the South West” – debating the practicalities and poltics of managing traffic in the south west region.  There were thought-provoking presentations from Ed Plowden (Chair of Bristol City Council’s Transport Committee), Stephn Frost (from IPPR) and Hannah Foutain from the West of England Combined Authority.

The Bristol event was one in a series of events supporting Transport Planning Day at the ICE in London on 11 November.   I chaired the latest event in the series on 25 September, a webinar looking at reducing car travel in rural areas.  We had another fantastic slate of speakers – Stephen Joseph (University of Hertfordshire and the Foundation for Integrated Transport), Sharon Payne (rural transport lead from Transport East) and new mobility expert Beate Kubitz.  You can see a recording of the webinar here.

Autumn Reading

David Metz has a new book out that should be of interest to TPS members: 'Travel Behaviour Reconsidered in an Era of Decarbonisation. The core of the book is a critique of orthodox transport economic analysis and modelling. 

David is a former DfT Chief Scientist and was one of the first people to point out that while the total distance travelled in the UK has risen steadily over the past 40 years, the average time people spend travelling each day and the number of trips they make each year has stayed pretty constant over the same period.  This means the outcome of investing in the UK”s transport system has been that we have travelled faster – and hence further – within a “fixed” time budget. 

David’s new book is published by the UCL Press, an academic open access publisher. A PDF version can be downloaded free of charge.