A village transport plan
In July 2009, the Department for Transport published guidance for the new round of local transport plans, which will now be an ongoing process instead of being replaced every 5 years.Local authorities need to draw up and consult on plans for their areas for 2011 and beyond.
Local people can take the initiative and create a plan for sustainable local transport in their village.
1. Understand the process
2. Find your allies
3. Outline challenges
4. Draw up a list
5. Sift through your options
6. Present your plan
If you understand the new 'prioritise, appraise and evaluate' process mentioned in Guidance on Local Transport Plans, you are likely to be one step ahead of many council officers.
Doing your own research will be very helpful. The guidance explains how new plans should work, and the web-based is supposed to be regularly updated. You can find information on walking, cycling and car clubs under the 'sustainable transport' heading.
Working together with a wide range of partners can increase your influence.
Contact the relevant transport officer in your county council or unitary authority to talk through your idea, gain their support and ask for their help.
You will be able to feed your plan into the consultation on your authority's local transport plan.
Initiatives such as transition town groups and local networks such as Sustainable Youlgrave in Derbyshire show how much momentum teamwork can generate.
Wide public involvement gives you legitimacy as well as possibly finding you more volunteers to help out.
Online surveys, which some websites allow you to create for free, can be a quick and easy way of finding out what people think. But make sure to include people without access to the internet. You can find copyright-free mapping information in more and more parts of the country.
Local interest groups and professionals are increasingly promoting physically active travel. Your local health authority may also be a potential ally, with funds and a strong influence on local strategic partnerships.
Encouraging walking and cycling in the countryside is an aim in CPRE's 2026: A Vision for the Countryside and CPRE is one of over 100 groups signed up to the national Take Action on Active Travel alliance; this can be a useful ice-breaker when making contact.
Parish and town councils are other important allies, as are local businesses and tourist attractions. Parish and business travel plans can contain useful information. And the website of the Sustainable Leisure Travel Network has good resources for promoting green access to countryside attractions.
It's also a good idea to make links with those in neighbouring local authority areas. After all, many transport issues cut across administrative boundaries or can be solved better with some economies of scale.
The local transport plan guidance encourages joint local transport plans that cross authority boundaries. Joint plans may include all or just part of an authority's area, for example just the parts that fall within a National Park or within commuting distance of a major conurbation.
Ask the council's transport officer about any relevant cross-boundary agreements that your plan could feed into.
Delivering a Sustainable Transport System is the DfT's overarching policy. It sets out 5 national transport goals:
- reduce carbon emissions
- support economic growth
- promote equality of opportunity
- contribute to better safety, security and health
- improve quality of life and promote a healthy environment
Think about the challenges to promoting sustainable transport and car use reduction in your local area. In identifying the challenges, think how you would overcome them.
You need to focus on outcomes - what you are trying to achieve or prevent - rather than on how these should be done. It is best to come up with a wide range of options rather than favouring a specific type of solution.
They should be broad enough to be relevant to a wide range of circumstances and to stand the test of time.
Finally, select a manageable number of issues to work on. Having come up with solutions that addressed over 50 challenges would be unwieldy.
While Delivering a Sustainable Transport System contains examples of higher level challenges relating to issues such as access to jobs, new housing, and noise levels, you could include things like
- inaccessibility of local food
- traffic sign clutter
- walkers, riders and cyclists feeling intimidated by traffic
- inaccessibility of visitor and leisure attractions.
The more schemes or solutions you draw up the better, so you can show you've considered all the options. Packages of options can work better than individual ones. For example:
- Better information could cover maps of local paths on village notice boards, and better waymarking for rights of way.
- Walking and cycling could include
* a new Right of Way or permissive route or upgrading an existing one (better surfaces, for instance)
* a 20mph zone or 40mph zone on surrounding minor rural roads
*a community speed watch scheme
*cycle training - Low carbon package might contain
* a low carbon car club
* cooking oil collection for biodiesel - Public transport could cover a community transport or taxibus service using new powers in the Local Transport Act 2008.
You will need to look at the options and score them.
- How well do they fit with the different goals and challenges?
- How deliverable are they?
- Are they value for money?
- Do they fit with existing national and regional programmes and strategies?
- How do they compare across networks and modes?
- How well will they work over the short, medium and long term?
Local transport plans will be assessed as part of the wider comprehensive area assessment, so be aware of the national indicators set for local area agreements, and match items in your plan with the relevant indicators.
These cover statistics such as carbon emissions and the proportion of children not getting to school by car.
Different local areas have chosen different - and sometimes additional - indicators.
Local authority support is more likely if you can show why your proposals will deliver better scores for their selected indicators.
When you've drawn up your plan, present it to the transport planners at your local authority who are preparing the local transport plan.
It could also be something that feeds into a local development framework, parish plan or transition town initiative.
It won't be something for the short term, so you'll need to allow time for implementation and subsequent monitoring.
Reproduced with permission from the September 2009 edition of CPRE's member magazine Fieldwork
Would you like to set up your own local lift-sharing, walk-sharing or bike-sharing scheme? Here's how!
Fiona Cowan
30 November 2009 Back to top
(12 Kb)