By Jack Lindsay – Principal Transport Planner.
For me, Transport Planning Day is a day of reflection, celebrating and recognising the great work we, as Transport Planners, do to shape the way people travel. On the other hand, it should act as an opportunity to take a step back and review our role and responsibilities, whether best practices are being implemented, and if not, what we can do better.
“Vision and Validate” – Overcoming Implementation Barriers
The proposed NPPF changes and their impact on local plan preparation/implementation should play a crucial part in ensuring development is located in appropriate locations and forms. When it comes to how Transport Planners assess the impact of new developments and how to best plan for sustainable and active travel, the role of ‘Vision and Validate’ has been the desired approach for some time now. However, the approach continues to face barriers regarding its use across the board. We are moving in the right direction; however, many Transport documents supporting planning applications continue to focus on assessing the development’s highway impact based on historical traffic predictions, and alternative ‘Visions’ are not evaluated.
One primary barrier to “Vision and Validate” is achieving broad stakeholder support. Limited timeframes also make it challenging to complete thorough assessments. Local Highway Authorities (LHAs) require data-driven evidence to be satisfied that the proposed visions will successfully achieve their aims. Unfortunately, many schemes lack sufficient data to quantify their benefits, making it difficult to justify that the desired outcomes will come to fruition. Early engagement with LHAs is essential to align evidence needs, ensuring realistic and achievable proposed visions.
Leveraging Assessment Tools and Evidence-Based Best Practices
Tools like the LTN 1/20 Cycle Level of Service (CLoS) and Junction Assessment Tool (JAT) are examples of effective ways to score the quality of existing and proposed non-motorised user infrastructure. Other useful tools include the Active Travel England crossing selector and route checkers. Together, using these can help transport planners evaluate and justify why schemes should have desired benefits to support visions. The more the tools transport planners use, the larger the evidence base, providing further opportunities to identify and refine best practices.
The Importance of “Monitor and Manage”
While planning a ‘Vision’ is critical, ensuring that infrastructure performs as expected is equally important. Evaluating how well infrastructure performs is essential to achieving sustainable goals. The “Validate” stage assesses infrastructure effectiveness based on actual use and continuous improvement. This feedback loop enables Transport Planners to gather user input, make necessary adjustments, and ensure that active travel infrastructure adapts over time to meet user needs and reduce car dependency.
A successful example of this approach is BWB’s “monitor and manage” system at Peddimore, Birmingham. Visionary sustainable travel measures were set out in the Transport Assessment (TA), with funds conditioned to address any issues if traffic flows exceed predictions. Monitoring has shown high levels of sustainable travel in the early stages of the development build-out, validating the original vision.
Advancing “Vision and Validate” in Transport Planning
To continue growing the use of the “Vision and Validate” approach, several steps are essential:
- Guidance / TA Requirements: As Transport Planners, we should advocate the use of “Vision and Validate.” Local authority guidance needs to ensure that the Vision and Validate methodology is the default position in their jurisdiction. There are examples of where the approach is used as standard; however, there are still areas in the UK where the use of Vision and Validate is not being considered or deemed required or appropriate.
- Early Engagement: Early collaboration between transport planners and key stakeholders (such as LHAs) is critical to capture relevant data, align goals, and establish assessment principles that ensure the “Vision” is deemed achievable and can ultimately be validated.
- Integrate Monitor and Manage: Travel Plans and Section 106 agreements act as fantastic opportunities to include mechanisms for monitoring and managing infrastructure to ensure visions are still realised if schemes need to adapt post-occupation.
- Commitment to Change: Shifting Transport Assessments so they focus on prioritising sustainable, community-focused designs requires transport planners to advocate for forward-thinking approaches, which, as a standard we should all continue to push for!
Whilst there have clearly been great strides in the approaches used in Transport Assessments, Transport Planning Day offers that opportunity for us all to ask how we can do better, be better, and be braver in ensuring we develop the best possible places for people!