Hickman, R

English

UCL Discovery

364   Town & Country Planning November/December 2020off the railsRobin Hickman examines recent DfT policy papers and finds little change from a predict and providepolicy for the road network, and a reliance on clean vehicles to solve the climate change problemInspired by the last issue of Town & Country Planningand some of the critical commentary on the PlanningWhite Paper,1 I consider in this article the latestgovernment policy papers on transport planning.Here, we have two recent intriguing documents:Road Investment Strategy 2, 2020-2025 (RIS2)2 andDecarbonising Transport.3We can all see that the UK Government is takingincompetence to new levels across multipledimensions. A prime example is the Planning WhitePaper – a vacuous assault on the planning system,driven largely by ignorance of the rationale andpotential for urban planning. It involves a simplisticideological drive to reduce public intervention (seeTim Marshall’s article in the September/Octoberissue of Town & Country Planning 4), a favouring ofprivate financial interests over public, and a brazenmisunderstanding of the operation of alternativeapproaches to planning development, such as zoning(see Richard Wakeford’s article in the same issue5).All of this wrapped up as making the systemsimpler, faster, and more predictable – ‘cutting redtape, not standards’ – and giving us more housing.I would like to consider the transport elements ofthe Planning White Paper and write a critical riposte– however, transport does not even get a mention,apart from a commitment to revise the Manual forStreets (on page 46). It is as if the originators of thePlanning White Paper do not realise that urban andtransport planning are integrally intertwined. If wehave no transport strategy, and do not locate urbandevelopment in areas of good public transportaccessibility, then even internally well designeddevelopment will be car-dependent. I will overlookthe wider machinations of Brexit, the response tothe Coronavirus epidemic and even the supposed‘Levelling up’ agenda, as if these are incidental.Instead, let’s initially consider RIS2. The first wordsof the Ministerial foreword from Grant Shapps MPand Baroness Vere of Norbiton suggest, promisingly,that ‘This Road Investment Strategy is not a blueprintfor pouring concrete, laying tarmac or welding steel.’But the strategy then goes on to give details on theexpansion of highway capacity to be ‘future ready’,with a planned £27.4 billion investment in motorways,A-roads, and major local routes. RIS2 is a five-yearprogramme for highway investment, including suchluminous projects as the Lower Thames Crossingand multiple route widenings and junction upgrades.Schemes to be developed ‘in the pipeline’ include aTrans-Pennine Tunnel and the Oxford to CambridgeExpressway. OMG – some of these have beencontinuously rejected for decades, and others willhopefully remain mere pipe-dreams.The strategy states that the value of individualjourneys on the network:‘combine to deliver extensive benefits, withoutwhich life in the UK would be fundamentallypoorer, for example:● Facilitating economic growth and internationaltrade …● Helping people to choose where they want tolive and work, in both rural and urban areas,giving […] a greater chance of enjoying afulfilling life with friends and family.’A failing network that lacks capacity will apparently‘limit what people can achieve’. Hence HighwaysEngland has really got its act together, making thecase for huge investment, associating road capacitywith much positive phraseology – with very littleevidence for the associations being made. I do notget any of this from my trips on the M25.The strategy suggests that ‘not all the issuesfacing the [strategic road network] can be solved inany single RIS’. Indeed, RIS2 follows RIS1, whichinvested £17 billion on highway schemes from 2015to 2020. Hence there is an ongoing programmeplanned: receipts from vehicle excise duty are beingdiverted into a National Roads Fund, and this allowsinvestment to continue over decades. Traffic growthis projected to rise in Road Traffic Forecasts 2018,6which is seen as ‘strong and positive in all scenarios’,in which traffic growth on the strategic road networkranges between 29% and 59% by 2050. This isdriving (literally) the demand for new road capacity.The commentary in RIS2 on electric, and evenautonomous, vehicles is also carefully crafted. Newtechnologies may change the composition of theare we really still justpredicting and providing?Town & Country Planning November/December 2020 365off the railsfleet, but not the increasing demand for vehicles.Hence Highways England is saved – we will needmore road capacity as vehicle numbers increase; it’s just that the vehicles will be clean. The numberof people killed or seriously injured on the strategicroad network is reported favourably to have fallen by 6% from 2015 to 2018, and now there are ‘only’2,000 people killed or seriously injured in each year.As we build more road capacity to support increasedmobility, the premise is that we will overlook thestill horrendous casualty figures and the adverseimpact of vehicles on urban areas.RIS2 is the ‘largest ever’ roads programme,according to Chancellor Rishi Sunak. I assume thathe thinks this is a positive feature – lots of money +roadbuilding = good; and the more the better: if wecan spend more than previous generations or othercountries, then we really are leading the world.These plans surpass even those set out in Roadsfor Prosperity,7 the infamous 1989 White Paperfrom the Thatcher government, billed as the largestroadbuilding programme for the UK since theRomans – with 500 road schemes at a cost of£23 billion. The programme included schemes suchas the M25 and M1 widenings, the M3 TwyfordDown extension, and the Newbury bypass. Many of these projects were hugely controversial amongenvironmental activists and local communities, butmost were still built, even if subject to delays.Subsequent debates on induced traffic, disappearingtraffic and the need for more balanced, integratedtransport strategies, including investment in publictransport, have been forgotten. Again, the governmentis pursuing a massive roads strategy. It is aiming fora ‘smoother, smarter, sustainable’ strategic roadnetwork, and few seem to have noticed.The problem is that, at the same time, we have aclimate crisis – and transport is the one sector notcontributing to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.The government recognises this, of course, and ispreparing a ‘Transport Decarbonisation Plan’, due to bepublished sometime in the remainder of 2020. Thiswas preceded by the publication of DecarbonisingTransport: Setting the Challenge,3 which consultedon the context and challenges being faced. In hisforeword to this document, Transport SecretaryGrant Shapps says that ‘public transport and activetravel will be the natural first choice for our dailyactivities. We will use our cars less …’. Most tellingly,he says that ‘from motorcycles to HGVs, all roadvehicles will be zero emission’ – and ‘we will leadthe development of sustainable biofuels, hybrid andelectric aircraft to lessen and remove the impact ofaviation [and shipping] on the environment by 2050’.There are six strategic priorities, which are largelyas you might imagine. They cover mode shift,decarbonising freight, decarbonising road vehicles,place-based solutions, technology, and internationalair and shipping. But, really, the strategy is reliant on cleaning the vehicle fleet, while doing little tochange travel behaviours. Again, the government issaying that we can maintain our mobility patterns,as long as we travel in cleaner ways – this will solvethe climate problem.The planned investment in public transport,walking and cycling and urban planning is much toounambitious – some new zero-emission buses,£350 million for cycling, and little else. The UK is putforward as a global leader in low-emission vehicles,with more than 750,000 electric or hybrid vehicles.8But the document fails to mention that there areover 40 million vehicles in Great Britain, includingover 20 million petrol-fuelled cars.9 The rate of take-up of low-emission vehicles is much too slow, andthe number in use is, as yet, fairly insignificant.Carbon dioxide emissions from vehicular travel areactually rising as people are buying larger vehicles.Much of the document is therefore (ironically) littlemore than hot air, and certainly inconsistent with verysignificant road-building plans. There is a tendencyKathy @zenitarka / UnsplashThe governmentis pursuing amassive roadsinvestmentstrategy as afundamentalelement of itstransport policy366   Town & Country Planning November/December 2020off the railsto adopt the rhetoric of sustainable mobility, but thensimply invest in highway infrastructure and overlookthe other modes. The responsibility for reducingcarbon dioxide emissions is pushed towardsindividual behaviours and supposed choice – ignoringthe more fundamental role that governments canplay. There are societal structures in place that meanpeople cannot yet choose to use public transport,walking or cycling in most locations across the UK.There is no effective rail or light rail in most urbanareas, and even less so in the surrounding regions;the bus system has been consistently eroded overdecades through privatisation; there are few high-quality, segregated cycle networks; and urbandevelopment is dispersed to locations where publictransport accessibility is poor.The public are not involved in the decision-makingprocess, and indeed often are not prepared tosupport sustainable travel options and restrictionson traffic, such is the lack of awareness and debate.There is a huge task here if we are to achievesustainable travel behaviours, and we are not evennear starting on it. The Transport DecarbonisationPlan is unlikely to offer the range of public transport,walking and cycling infrastructure and trafficdemand management measures required – and the Planning White Paper will not help in shaping a compact, polycentric built environment.Grant Shapps gloats that the UK is the first majorglobal economy to adopt ‘net-zero’ greenhouse gasemissions by 2050. But there is no plan to achievethis aim. The government is showing a headymixture of ideology and ignorance – a sophomoricstrategy that will not help to achieve sustainableurban mobility.To take a very different approach, beyond thejingoism, we have been preparing an online courseon sustainable urban mobility, developed by UCL(University College London) and the TransformativeUrban Mobility Initiative at Deutsche Gesellschaftfür Technischer Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Thisexamines global, progressive good practice insustainable urban mobility, in an attempt to learnfrom the implementation of sustainable transportprojects and think through a better decision-makingprocess for transport planning. Our intended audienceis transport practitioners and wider interested actorsin the Global South, so that knowledge can bedisseminated and learnt from elsewhere moreeasily. We explore many innovative urban transportprojects (in locations shown in the map above).There is much to be learnt from this fascinatingpractice abroad – ranging from cycling and urbandevelopment in Utrecht and Freiburg, through trafficdemand management in Rio de Janeiro, bus rapidtransit in Bogotá and Guangzhou, electric buses inShenzhen and Medellín, to participatory planning inMadrid. All offer lessons for more progressivepractice in the UK – many of these cities are takingaway road capacity and investing massively in publicGlobal case studies in sustainable urban mobility – what can we learn from them?Town & Country Planning November/December 2020 367off the railstransport, walking, and cycling. In comparison, theUK’s transport systems are woefully inadequate – ittakes years to build even average projects. We donot usually allow effective participation in developingprojects. If we do, the public struggle to engage asthey are not aware of the public policy challengesthat we face, or at least they do not relate these totheir own lives.We should be developing a process forparticipatory and deliberative transport planning,alongside a strengthened urban planning regime –this is what we learn from the progressive transportplanning under way internationally.● Robin Hickman is Professor at the Bartlett School ofPlanning, University College London. He is Director of theMSc in Transport & City Planning. e: r.hickman@ucl.ac.uk. The views expressed are personal. Thanks are due to the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (seewww.transformative-mobility.org) and Deutsche Gesellschaftfür Technischer Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (the German overseasfunding agency) for funding the e-learning course on sustainableurban mobility – part I ran from Monday 2 November 2020 andpart 2, ‘Components of transport planning for sustainable cities’,starts on 11 January 2021 (see www.futurelearn.com/courses/introducing-sustainable-urban-mobility).Notes1 Planning for the Future. White Paper. Ministry ofHousing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020.www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-for-the-future2 Road Investment Strategy 2: 2020-2025. Policy Paper.Department for Transport, Mar. 2020.www.gov.uk/government/publications/road-investment-strategy-2-ris2-2020-to-20253 Decarbonising Transport: Setting the Challenge.Department for Transport, Mar. 2020.www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-the-transport-decarbonisation-plan4 T Marshall: ‘The White Paper’s ideological core’. Town & Country Planning, 2020, Vol. 89, Sept./Oct., 304-065 R Wakeford: ‘To zone, or not to zone; is that thequestion?’. Town & Country Planning, 2020, Vol. 89,Sept./Oct., 320-236 Road Traffic Forecasts 2018. Department for Transport,Sept. 2018. www.gov.uk/government/publications/road-traffic-forecasts-20187 Roads for Prosperity. Cm 693. White Paper. Departmentof Transport, May 19898 ‘Vehicle ownership in the UK surpasses 40 million, with many still on the roads supporting nationwidecoronavirus response’. SMMT News, 21 Apr. 2020.www.smmt.co.uk/2020/04/vehicle-ownership-in-the-uk-surpasses-40-million-with-many-still-on-the-roads-supporting-nationwide-coronavirus-response/9 T Shale-Hester: ‘UK vehicle ownership passes 40million mark’. Auto Express, 21 Apr. 2020.www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/352086/uk-vehicle-ownership-passes-40-million-mark

Are we really still just predicting and providing?

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10113722/1/RH_RIS2%20article_Nov2020FINAL.pdf

Are we really still just predicting and providing?

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