Planning Incentives 'lead to housing estates centered on car use'

[whole diary]

[grahame]

The report being reported is already the subject of this thread - thought the thread title is wrong, it should be Transport for new Homes. There was a similar piece in this morning's Times, too - why the interest only now?

The LONDON launch was today  ... though of course the Oxford one had a higher class of speaker!

[eXPassenger]

The report being reported is already the subject of this thread - thought the thread title is wrong, it should be Transport for new Homes. There was a similar piece in this morning's Times, too - why the interest only now?

Sorry.  I had read the earlier post and thought this was a new item.

[grahame]

The report being reported is already the subject of this thread - thought the thread title is wrong, it should be Transport for new Homes. There was a similar piece in this morning's Times, too - why the interest only now?

Sorry.  I had read the earlier post and thought this was a new item.

I will merge the two and correct the old (confusing) title a bit later

[Lee]

Also worth noting, as is so often the case with such articles, we are only getting part of the story here. Take the Castle Mead estate for example - What the article doesn't mention is that the successful 2013 Wiltshire Council LSTF^▸ (Local Sustainable Transport Fund) bid that provided the initial funding for an appropriate TransWilts rail service also funded a team of people who went door to door talking to each of the Castle Mead residents, assessing their transport needs, and providing them with information about the local bus service from the estate to Trowbridge, onward bus and rail connections from Trowbridge itself, and other sustainable transport options such as local walking and cycle routes.

This wasn't a Johnny-Come-Lately exercise either - the bus route was already put in place before the bulk of the new homes went up, and the team operated while houses were literally being built and occupied around them.

How do I know this? - I was the leader of the team.

[grahame]

The report being reported is already the subject of this thread - thought the thread title is wrong, it should be Transport for new Homes. There was a similar piece in this morning's Times, too - why the interest only now?

Sorry.  I had read the earlier post and thought this was a new item.

I will merge the two and correct the old (confusing) title a bit later

Merged and subject line sorted

[grahame]

https://www.transporttimes.co.uk/news.php/Transport-for-New-Homes---are-we-building-sustainable-development-or-mini-America-343/ - very interesting piece from Jenny

Transport for new homes - are we building sustainable development or mini-America?

Author: Jenny Raggett, Project Lead, Transport for New Homes

[stuving]

I'm not sure where the Town and Country Planning Association stand on transport these days, but they are having a seminar on it soon (28th November):

TCPA seminar: Planning and delivering sustainable transport in large scale new communities

As part of our New Communities Group programme of events, this half-day seminar will explore approaches to planning and delivering sustainable transport in large scale new developments. The seminar will cover:

    Designing sustainable and healthy modes of transport
    Integrating existing and new transport
    Assessing need

Programme*

13.05   Developing local cycling and walking infrastructure plans - Richard Mace, Head of Engagement & Commercial, and Isobel Pastor, Head of Housing and Transport Policy, Department for Transport

13.25   Opportunities for ‘Smart, Shared, Sustainable Mobility’ - Geoff Snelson, Director of Strategy and Futures, Milton Keynes Council

14:30   Introducing Green Cities - Julia Thrift, Projects and Operations Director, TCPA

14:40   Best practice in planning for sustainable transport - Lynda Addison OBE, Malcolm Baker Consulting

15:00   Opportunities for transport innovation – Longcross Garden Village - Nick Lloyd-Davies, Senior Planning Project Officer, Runnymede Borough Council

 Price: £50+vat (£60) for TCPA Members; £100+vat (£120) for non-members; FREE for TCPA New Communities Group members.

*edited

Their annual conference starts today, with Nick Raynsford introducing the report of his review into planning in England. This isn't on the TCPA site yet (presumably waiting for this morning's launch), but has been reported elsewhere:

A review of the English planning system led by former housing minister Nick Raynsford has warned that there is a ‘chaotic patchwork’ of responsibilities and that permitted development is ‘toxic’.

The system is not compatible with promoting the health, wellbeing and civil rights of communities, says the review, which was commissioned by the Town & Country Planning Association (TCPA) and carried out by a task force led by Raynsford.

Planning has a huge potential to make people’s lives better, says the review, but this opportunity has been undermined by deregulation. The report, Planning 2020: Raynsford Review of Planning in England, calls on the government to immediately restrict permitted development, which allows the conversion of commercial buildings to housing units without any proper safeguards on quality, with a senior member of the review team branding it ‘toxic’ for enabling conversion to homes lacking light or space.

I can't see much about transport in that, though.

[grahame]

Thought back to Transport for New Homes ( http://www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk ) at today's BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Story

New UK^▸ (United Kingdom) housing 'dominated by roads'

Planners and engineers have been rapped for allowing new housing developments to be dominated by roads.

A report says too many highways engineers are still approving roads that do not fully account for pedestrians and cyclists.

It follows a government survey suggesting an increase in public concern over the impact of cars on people's health and the environment.

The new report comes from University College London (UCL).

Its author, Prof Matthew Carmona, told BBC News: “Far too many new developments are still all about the car. It’s all about making sure cars don’t need to slow down. Pedestrians and cyclists just have to get out of the way.

Whether we move away from cars by moving to cycles and walking, or by moving to buses, light rail and trains, we should be moving away from - or at least offering an alternative to - private car dependent.

[CyclingSid]

Unfortuneatly when they do provide cycling infrastructure, all too often the standard is that low as to be almost unusable. I get the impression that designing for cyclists and pedestrians is not something that figures highly in a highway engineers education and training.

[SandTEngineer]

Unfortuneatly when they do provide cycling infrastructure, all too often the standard is that low as to be almost unusable. I get the impression that designing for cyclists and pedestrians is not something that figures highly in a highway engineers education and training.

Well, my experience is that when the cycling infrastructure is provided, cyclists still stick to the adjacent road

[Richard Fairhurst]

You could possibly say that the two might be connected...

[Reading General]

Whether we move away from cars by moving to cycles and walking, or by moving to buses, light rail and trains, we should be moving away from - or at least offering an alternative to - private car dependent.

The key word here is alternative. The alternative has to be available and that is not something you can really leave in the hands of a private, for profit bus company without council support from the beginning. As a minimum target, the journey from new estates to the town/city centre, the area we need to remove cars from the most, needs to be available from the moment new residents move in. But this doesn't mean simply adding another bus service and another potential six or so buses an hour to an already busy location, the possibilities of fitting it in among the already running services should be viewed first, after all many of our town centres are at capacity for accommodating buses at the moment, Oxford springs to mind.

The design of estates needs to change too, away from this winding road that is difficult for public transport to negotiate, to a more traditional layout. Much time and the amount of stops can be saved on bus services which run along straight roads, it's much easier to find the route and making good progress is key to keeping people using services. It is of no coincidence that, on post war housing estates, the bus stop nearest the shops is often the most popular to join the route and head to town. If people can access the shops on foot, they can access the main public transport choice, they also feel safer waiting amongst others for transport too.

One aspect of modern estates and public transport that doesn't work that well is the method of increasing coverage with enormous, one way terminal loops. Buses (trolleys, trams) always have to wait time somewhere on a loop and this is often at the expense of passengers only a couple of stops from home. On a particular route I used to drive, I would run the bus around the loop without destinations to drop people off before heading back to the start if I had more than 5 minutes to wait, this unfortunately had to stop when branded buses arrived as it would cause people on their way to a stop to start legging it for the bus thinking it was early or the previous bus running late. The routes that work best are the routes that run in a straight line to a terminal point and U-turn with as little one way running as possible. If a large loop is necessary it should be run as a pair of circular services but even these can be frustrating for passengers heading to a common point not knowing which one on which side of the road is coming first. Public transport requires some effort from the user in order for it to make progress, so the temptation to place many bus stops along a route or run the route to every corner of the estate must be resisted.

[broadgage]

Agree, new housing estates need to be bus friendly from the beginning.
A straight, or nearly straight main road for the buses. Shops and pubs along the main road.
Numerous short side streets off the main road, the majority of the houses to be in these side streets which need to be short enough that walking to the main road and the bus stops therein is easy.
These side streets can be relatively narrow, wide enough for a fire engine or a refuse truck, or indeed a bus in case of diversions, and could reasonably be one way, alternate side streets being one way in opposite directions.
Those ends of the side streets distant from the main road to be linked together by a secondary road, so as to provide access from different directions, and to allow pedestrians and cyclists to take the most direct route to neighbours.
The main road needs to be wide enough for buses to pass each other with ease.

Speed limit 30 mph on the main road, 20 MPH in the side streets and the secondary roads.

[CyclingSid]

"Cyclists dismount" signs, has anybody ever seen a "Cyclists remount" sign?

[mjones]

Well, my experience is that when the cycling infrastructure is provided, cyclists still stick to the adjacent road

Yet in countries that provide cycling infrastructure that is actually helpful to cyclists, rather than simply trying force them onto the footway,  cyclists can be observed to be using it in large numbers.