Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain

Peter Headicar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134104963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Transport in the twenty-first century represents a significant challenge at the global and the local scale. Aided by over sixty clear illustrations, Peter Headicar disentangles this complex, modern issue in five parts, offering critical insights into:

• the nature of transport
• the evolution of policy and planning
• policy instruments
• planning procedures
• the contemporary agenda.

Distinctive features include the links forged throughout between transport and spatial planning, which are often neglected.

Designed as an essential text for transport planning students and as a source of reference for planning practitioners, it also furthers understanding of related fields such as urban and regional planning, geography, environmental studies and public policy. Based in the postgraduate course the author developed at Oxford Brookes University, this indispensable text draws on a lifetime of professional experience in the field.

Part I
The nature of transport

Transport is such a pervasive feature of contemporary life that it may seem unnecessary to spend much time studying the nature of it. Many people seem to think they understand it well enough already. Given half a chance in casual conversation they will not only give you their opinion on the causes of present transport problems but identify the solutions as well!

However a few minutes thought or discussion – particularly with people outside your own immediate circle – should demonstrate that what each of us thinks of as ‘transport’ is likely to depend on which modes of transport we use ourselves and the context in which we use them (e.g. in town or country, or for business, commuting, shopping or leisure). There are plainly different requirements for example between people and freight and between motorised and non-motorised modes.

There is also a distinction to be made between the vehicles and the infrastructure which together comprise a transport system. All transport involves the movement of some person or object (usually in a specially designed vehicle) and a purpose-built track or other adapted space over which it can be moved. The two are obviously functionally inter-dependent, but not always in balance. Can there in fact be such a thing as an ‘unsafe’ road which needs to be improved, or are what we call ‘accidents’ the result of inappropriate driver behaviour?

Another way of viewing transport is in terms of the interactions between users of a particular mode. The speed I am able to drive along a road, or the comfort I have when travelling on a train, will depend on the number of other people who decide to travel the same way at the same time. So it is not just the nature of the transport system itself which determines the conditions I experience; the way other people use it affects me too (and me them).

This applies even more to the interaction between modes, particularly where (as with roads) they make use of the same space. The needs of buses, vans and lorries could be met much better if there weren’t also cars to cater for (both moving and parked). Pedestrians and cyclists would have a much easier time if all motorists could be banned. (Motorists might well return the compliment!)

Then we need to consider the way transport systems and their users taken together interact with everything else. Traffic flows down a street may be welcomed by frontage shopkeepers who benefit from passing trade, but cursed by other residents because of the threat they pose to safety and the local environment. Increasing traffic levels on scenic rural roads may represent improved access to countryside recreation for some but reduced enjoyment for others.

Understanding what transport represents at a particular place and time for all the different users and non-users is thus much more complex than might first appear. But for planning purposes making sense of a situation in ‘snapshot’ mode alone is not enough. Planning is essentially concerned with change – anticipating it and seeking to influence it. So recognising where current conditions ‘sit’ in a trajectory of change – and identifying the factors which determine this trajectory – are critical.

Transport improvements – particularly individuals’ acquisition of a private car – can themselves be an important impetus to people changing their travel behaviour. So the link between travel and transport provision is not merely in that one direction. The two interact.

The social and economic forces promoting change or acting as a brake on it are deep-seated and relatively slow-moving. To understand the source of present conditions and to identify the main drivers and constraints on change we have to review trends over a long period. In this first part of the book we set out to portray the current nature of transport and travel in Great Britain in the context of changes which have taken place over the last half century.

Although fifty years seems like a convenient round number the mid-1950s is not an arbitrary starting date. It marks the time when the country began to resume normality after the Second World War. 1953 was the year when the use of public transport reached its peak. Travel by car exceeded travel by public transport for the first time in 1959. Freight haulage by road overtook the volume carried by rail in 1955.

The 1950s thus mark the beginning of the modern transport era characterised by the dominance of the motor vehicle. It was in the 1950s that the ownership of private cars began to change quite rapidly from a luxury affordable only by the well-off to the commonplace household item it is today. The transformation to a fully motorised society represents the seismic shift whose consequences we are still grappling with. It is a transformation which is still far from complete – we are little more than halfway to a notional scenario in which every adult has their own private car.

In reviewing trends we look first at the relationship between transport and economic development (Chapter 1) and then at changes in population, land use and travel behaviour which are to a large extent linked to the underlying economic changes (Chapter 2). Their combined effect will then be presented in terms of the trends in traffic growth and its various impacts (Chapter 3). Increasingly it is public attitudes towards these impacts as much as the demands for transport itself which are conditioning transport policy and hence a commentary on attitudinal trends is included as well.

Unless stated otherwise all the figures quoted come from the annual compendium of Transport Statistics for Great Britain (TSGB) – with most information presented for England, Scotland and Wales together or the associated commentary on Transport Trends prepared by the Government Statistical Service. Fuller information on personal travel is derived from the National Travel Survey (NTS), itself now reported on annually. These can be accessed via the DfT website (http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics) whilst the full extent of official statistics can be accessed at http://www.statistics.gov.uk. For non-transport data, use is made of the compendium published as Social Trends.

Many of the indicators which we now regard as important for transport planning were not surveyed in the past. In particular, information on travel (i.e. people) as distinct from transport (vehicles) only began to be collected in 1965 and at intervals thereafter. The recording of certain types of impact and public attitudes to them is more recent still. In many cases it is therefore only possible to present trends for recent periods and between specific survey dates.

Because we are concerned mainly with ‘national’ policy the characteristics of transport and travel are generally presented as aggregate or average figures in order to give the overall picture. (Sometimes, depending on the statistical source, figures for Wales and/or Scotland have to be excluded.) Where characteristics vary within the national population we try and show their range as well.

In particular the spatial dimension of variation is highlighted. This is because our personal understanding of transport is likely to be strongly conditioned by the nature of the areas we happen to know well. In fact there are wide variations both within and between regions and these are becoming more pronounced over time. Whatever you think transport is like in Great Britain the reality is almost certainly different!

1 Transport and economic development

1.1 Introduction

It is currently fashionable, in certain social circles at least, to discuss people’s travel behaviour as a matter of lifestyle choice, in much the same way as whether they buy organic food. Of course individuals can make quite radical changes to enhance their own well-being and/or to support some altruistic principle. (We will be exploring later – in Chapter 16 – the scope which exists for such changes in behaviour.) But there is a danger of extrapolating from this and imagining that transport policy in the round can be presented as primarily a matter of personal choice.

For a start, not all transport is personal in nature. Just under a fifth of all road vehicle miles is represented by freight movements which deliver the goods and support the services which are central to our lives. Of the remaining (mostly car) mileage about 40% is made up of personal travel for commuting or business purposes, and a further 30% is for education (including escort), shopping or personal business reasons. Although there may be some scope for people to alter the means of travel involved in these journeys, their overall volume and pattern is essentially determined by the spatial organisation of economic activity in their home area. Leisure journeys which utilise sports or entertainment facilities are constrained similarly. Many social journeys involve the maintenance of links with friends and family who have become physically separated as a result of moving to take up opportunities offered by different job, housing or education markets.

To begin with we therefore review the fundamental relationship between transport and economic development and how this has evolved to create the patterns of travel on which we now depend to sustain our present living standards and social networks (1.2). We then look at trends in transport supply and transport costs (1.3 and 1.4) and at changes surrounding car ownership and licence holding which are central to the private car becoming the dominant travel mode (1.5).

1.2 Transport and the economy

Before the era of mechanised transport, trade and travel was limited to what could be accomplished on foot or horseback or by wagon, barge or sail. The settlement pattern of villages, market and coastal towns across most of the country reflects this. Even when mechanised transport was developed, its use for regular personal travel was inhibited by cost. The density and form of present-day towns derives from the fact that walking was and still is used for a large proportion of everyday journeys.

Transport investment, including exploitation of the opportunities created by mechanical invention, depended on the surplus generated from economic development. Economic development itself is facilitated by transport improvements – both the capability of vehicles and the standards of the infrastructure on which they operate. Together these reduce the time and cost involved in overcoming distance and thus enhance the opportunities for trade, specialisation of production and economies of scale. A classic example of this is provided by the brewing industry which has evolved from small, independent local firms serving their tied houses by horse and drey to national and even international conglomerates with transport forming a massive logistical component in their operation.

The accompanying growth in personal incomes has facilitated the purchase of passenger transport, initially in its cheaper public or ‘mass’ form – trams, trains and buses – but increasingly via the acquisition of private, individualised modes – bicycles, motor-cycles and cars. Mechanised transport not merely reduces the time and effort involved in accessing facilities used previously, it also opens up a wider range of opportunities which can be utilised given the ability to make longer journeys.

Because the volume of transport today is on such an enormous scale it is tempting to imagine that travel itself is the product of the mechanised era. Yet centuries before the invention of either the steam, internal combustion or jet engines, merchants, diplomats, scholars and artists moved across the known world exchanging ideas and goods, imposing religious and secular orders in shifting networks that represent the very core of our civilisation. Meanwhile the mass of ordinary people lived, worked and died near where they were born. Even today, in a society seemingly preoccupied with mobility, many people still live within a few miles of their birthplace. But it is the transformation in the daily lives of these ordinary people which has produced the enormous growth in travel and traffic that is the object of attention of today’s transport planners and the focus of this book.

Successive periods of economic development, often coupled with technological advances in transport and communication, have altered the organisation and location of industry. In itself this has generated enormous increases in freight movement and business travel which can be regarded as the ‘baseload’ of contemporary transport demand. But it has also altered the economic poles around which ordinary people sustain their lives. Nationally there have been migrations over successive generations to the more prosperous areas – first from villages to the towns and cities of the industrial revolution, then to London and other cities with more modern industries, more recently to southern England as a whole which is dominated by the growth of ‘London’ as a metropolis of world-wide significance. Locally the focus of urban activity has also shifted – firstly from religious centres and agricultural markets to concentrations of heavy industry and mass manufacture; more recently to today’s regional office complexes, shopping centres, universities and mega-hospitals.

But there have also been fundamental changes in the living habits of people themselves associated with economic advancement in general and transport improvement in particular. In the 18th and 19th centuries only a tiny minority of aristocrats or successful entrepreneurs was able to enjoy the benefits of both town and country by having residences in both and moving seasonally between them. Subsequently the mechanisation of transport – train, tram, bus, then car – facilitated suburbanisation, giving the mass of the population the benefits of more spacious housing and better living environments whilst retaining a degree of everyday access to both town and country, albeit at the price of ever greater dependence on transport. Today, in relation to London particularly, ‘suburbanisation’ amongst wealthier groups takes the form of weekly commuting to second homes in the country or by the sea, sometimes outside Britain altogether.

Transport improvements also provided operators with the opportunity to m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I The nature of transport
• PART II The evolution of transport policy and planning
• PART III Ends and means
• PART IV Strategies, plans and planning procedures
• PART V The contemporary policy agenda
• Bibliography
• Government publications