Memorandum by Joint Committee for Strategic
Planning and Transportation (MMS 14)
MULTI-MODAL TRANSPORT STUDIES
1. The Joint Committee for Strategic Planning
and Transportation comprises members of the four Unitary Authorities
of Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South
Gloucestershire. It was established in 1996 to prepare a Joint
Structure Plan and to provide joint advice to the four councils
on strategic planning and transportation.
2. Of particular concern to the Joint Committee
is the London to South West and South Wales Multi-Modal Study
(SWARMMS), which was published in May 2002. The Joint Committee
submitted a joint, inter-authority response on SWARMMS to the
South West Regional Assembly (SWRA), which supplemented individual
submissions by the four councils.
3. In its response, the Joint Committee:
— noted the importance of the former
Avon area in the SWARMMS study area, as the largest urban centre
in the region at an important gateway to the South West;
— agreed in principle with the objectives
of the study and welcomed the general thrust of the strategy as
far as it was developed in the consultants' report;
— supported many of the study's proposals,
whilst requiring further information on others; and
— agreed that further testing was needed
to support the study's objectives by means of a further strategic
transport study of the Greater Bristol Area.
4. In particular, the four councils supported
all the rail proposals in the SWARMMS Greater Bristol Area Plan,
as consistent with Regional Planning Guidance (RPG 10) and the
Councils' Joint Rail Strategy (agreed in June 2000). This strategy
had been intended to form:
— a statement of the Councils' rail
aspirations in the four Local Transport Plans;
— the Councils' input to Railtrack
Network Management Statements and programmes;
— the Councils' input to the Shadow
Strategic Rail Authority for franchise specifications; and
— a basis for Rail Passenger Partnership
(RPP) bids and the application of other funds.
5. On many proposals from the study, there
was a need for further information before the Councils could express
firm views one way or the other. Costs for some schemes appeared
unrealistically high or much too low. In some cases, the location
and nature of the proposals was in doubt. Schemes on which further
information was required included:
— the Intelligent Transport Systems
techniques on motorways, where more information was needed on
the methods proposed for dealing with motorway incidents;
— motorway widening proposals in Air
Quality Management Areas: the likely scale of trip generation,
their interaction with public transport improvements, and effects
of the relative phasing of different schemes, were all needed;
— the "Coachway" and coach
service proposals: more clarity was needed about whether these
were realistic, and how they could be taken forward; and
— park and ride schemes, where information
was needed on the revenue implications, and clarification that
there were not alternative locations where car users could be
intercepted earlier in their journeys.
6. The four councils agreed that a further
strategic transport study of the Greater Bristol Area was needed:
— to test further some of the SWARMMS
schemes to establish the interactions between them and their order
of phasing, ensure value for money (eg improvements on parallel
rail and road routes), and to test further alternatives to traditional
road widening solutions which could lessen reliance on the car;
— to supplement the SWARMMS proposals
by finding additional local solutions to yield strategic benefits,
and additional schemes to address peak period problems not dealt
with in SWARMMS (eg light rapid transit and road user charging);
and
— to test future land-use options in
the region's biggest Principal Urban Area for the period to 2016,
to inform a review of the Joint Replacement Structure Plan, and
to establish the transport provision needed to address traffic
congestion and make them more sustainable.
7. In their submission to the South West
Regional Assembly, the councils pressed for early completion of
the follow-up strategic transport study proposed by SWARMMS and
for it to feed into the forthcoming review of the Regional Transport
Strategy. They also called on the Government to safeguard funding
to implement schemes that would emerge from the follow-up strategic
transport study. They were concerned that this new study should
not delay funding for schemes already identified in SWARMMS and
agreed by the Councils as short-term priorities, whilst further
work would lead on to clarify medium- and long-term priorities.
8. Although the SWARMMS study covered many
of the area's strategic transport corridors, the councils reminded
the Regional Assembly that there were also other strategic priorities
not included in SWARMMS. These included the Bristol and Bath to
South Coast corridor, which is the subject of a separate study
and includes the problems of linking the A36 and A46 in the Bath
area. Rail schemes arising from the Strategic Rail Authority's
Bristol Area Rail Capacity Study should also receive urgent priority.
9. Finally, the councils noted that the
SWARMMS study placed heavy reliance on existing funding streams
including Local Transport Plan funding and local revenue streams.
In the Greater Bristol Area, substantial extra funding would be
required to address existing problems, accommodate the pace of
development set in Regional Planning Guidance and secure the public
transport improvements needed before road user charging could
be introduced.
10. The four councils participated in hearings
held by the South West Regional Assembly and are satisfied that
their views were reflected in the Assembly's response to the Secretary
of State.
11. The Joint Committee's response to the
SWARMMS study addressed a number of the questions posed by the
Select Committee. These questions are now addressed more specifically.
12. Limitations of the SWARMMS study included
its attempt to cover a very large area—probably the largest
of all the Multi-Modal Studies. This appeared to result in varying
levels of detail being applied to different parts of the corridor
and insufficient detail in the Greater Bristol Area, in particular,
to the relationships between strategic and local transport problems
and solutions.
13. The time-scale of the study raises questions,
inter alia, about the land-use assumptions that were applied
to the study. Although the TEMPRO database is a consistent approach
used for all Multi-Modal Studies, it cannot reflect land-use changes
over a long period in an area of rapid change. The study promised
to consult on different land-use scenarios but did not do so.
14. There are doubts about whether SWARMMS
was value for money in this area, as it has left a lot of unanswered
questions to be investigated in the follow-up Greater Bristol
Strategic Transport Study. Amongst these is the need for more
detailed study of almost every scheme to make the business, economic,
environmental and regeneration case required by the Government.
The four councils are currently working with the Government Office
and the Highways Agency on the brief for the Strategic Transport
Study and are being asked to make financial contributions.
15. As outlined above, there are concerns
about the reliability of the cost estimates, especially as many
proposals have not been defined in sufficient detail in this area.
There are also concerns about the deliverability of the SWARMMS
proposals. This is partly because of the reliance on existing
funding streams, including Local Transport Plans and revenue funding,
especially for the "soft" measures required to counter
growth in road traffic, including "local" use of the
strategic road network. It is also because of concerns about the
apparent disparity of approach between different modes and different
agencies. It appears that the backlog of investment that has to
be made up to repair the area's deficit in transport infrastructure
is far beyond the scope of the Government's 10-Year Plan and (even
more) the Strategic Rail Authority's Strategic Plan.
16. At the Regional Assembly's hearings,
it became apparent that the Strategic Rail Authority did not expect
to be able to fund many of the required investments in rail improvements
for many years. However, the Highways Agency appeared to be in
a position to implement some motorway widening schemes at an early
stage, with ministerial approval, before other solutions to congestion
had been examined fully.
17. The councils are concerned, therefore,
that a multi-modal approach to studying strategic transport corridors
may not be carried forward into a multi-modal, inter-agency, approach
to investment priorities. This is primarily because of the separate
and independent nature of the implementing agencies. It arises
partly because of the different objectives, levels of funding
and other resources available to those agencies and partly because
of the apparent lack of mechanisms to co-ordinate transport investment
between modes and agencies at regional and sub-regional levels.
18. A specific concern is that Government
targets for the Strategic Rail Authority, expressed in terms of
growth of passenger-kilometres, are biased in favour of improvements
in capacity for long-distance rail journeys. This approach appears
to discriminate against investment to enhance local rail travel
within the sub-region: the benefits of which include relief of
congestion, improvements to the local environment, urban regeneration
and stimulus to economic development.
19. The four councils are concerned therefore
that measures to reduce road traffic growth may follow some time
after additional motorway capacity has been provided. The result
may include additional, induced, local traffic using the motorway
network, which will add to urban and local road congestion at
its origins and destinations, and may weaken the case for public
transport improvements. There was a strong feeling that measures
to manage the motorway network should be tried before additional
capacity is added. Measures to reduce traffic growth, including
area charging should also have received more attention.
20. A specific problem for the Greater Bristol
Area—and the reason for needing a further strategic transport
study—was the failure of SWARMMS to consider fully the relationships
between local and strategic movement: the resulting problems and
their solutions. As this area is at a gateway to the South West
region, there are conflicts between local and long-distance traffic
on the road and rail networks. In peak hours, some 60 per cent
of road traffic on the motorway network has an origin and destination
within the Greater Bristol area. Measures to increase rail capacity
for long-distance travel are already leading to problems in improving
or even maintaining local services, which are of critical importance
for relief of urban road congestion, environmental protection,
economic growth and urban regeneration in various parts of the
area.
21. The failure of SWARMMS to address these
issues is associated with its focus on all-day, average traffic
flows rather than the peak hour conditions when conflicts between
local and long-distance journeys are most severe. These conflicts
disadvantage both the Greater Bristol Area, which "has a
key role for economic growth regionally and nationally" (RPG
10) and the wider South West Region that relies on access through
this area.
22. Some of the failures of SWARMMS may
have been due to the way the consultation programme was handled.
A substantial expenditure of effort and money went into this programme,
although it was spread over a wide area and issues raised in the
consultation programme (such as alternative land-use scenarios
and the roles of "principal urban areas" identified
in RPG 10) were not carried forward into the final report.
23. The need to co-ordinate implementation
as well as planning appears to have been neglected in the multi-modal
studies and this constitutes a serious flaw in the process. The
four councils are now working closely with the Government Office
and the Highways Agency to ensure that they are involved more
fully in the follow-up strategic transport study. They are also
working with these and other agencies, including the Regional
Assembly, to tackle the barriers to effective implementation of
transport investment: to achieve an inter-agency, multi-modal
approach to transport investment.
October 2002
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