Long-awaited draft guidance on transport impact assessments was released last week, after a five-year wait. The guidance on transport assessment finally gave the Department for Transport view on how developers should identify the transport – as opposed to merely the traffic – implications of significant-sized developments. The document advises that developers should prepare and submit transport assessments with a planning application for a proposal ‘likely to have significant transport implications’. The submissions should list all possible measures the developers intend to take to deal with the transport impacts their project may create, and this should ideally include the promotion of alternatives to the car. A ‘key issue’ is the need to investigate the most sustainable solution for a particular development, making it important to identify spare capacity on buses, trains and trams in order to establish the ability of the network to deal with any increase associated with a proposed development. ‘Where possible, the presumption should be to give preference to solutions other than the construction of new roads,’ it stresses. Options to be considered by developers should include improving the layout of the development site to promote walking and cycling, and accessibility to public transport, and improvements to walking and cycling provision in the vicinity of the development. The draft guidance comes after Transport for London published its own version this summer, prepared by Steer Davis Gleave, which calls on developers to assess pedestrian and cyclist flows, as well as traffic volumes, and stresses the importance of pedestrian user-comfort. Transport 2000 welcomed the DfT guidance, in particular the approach of integrating transport and planning. Meera Rambissoon, public transport campaigner, said: ‘This guidance might be worth the wait if its approach of managing demand for travel and promoting sustainable modes of travel before planning new infrastructure is carried out. ‘Tradition has long been the other way round – build first, plan transport later, so this is most refreshing.’ • Guidance on Transport Assessment : www.surveyormagazine. com/ index.cfm?fuseaction=archive.featuredetail&IsPaper=true&articleID=3202