Councils’ processes for prioritising local transport plan schemes have sometimes been ‘too complex and unwieldy’, and based on ‘spurious scoring mechanisms,’ according to government advice.

The Department for Transport’s guidance on prioritising LTP schemes costing less than £250,000, drawn up by consultant Atkins, recommends a ‘reality check’ before transportation departments devise ‘theoretically excellent’ methodology that is too time consuming to use.

Prioritisation should not be ‘a purely scientific and numerical exercise’, because this is ‘simply not technically possible or cost-effective’.

By contrast, there is a need for extra information on the impact schemes have had, according to the document, warning of ‘a serious danger that significant sums of money could be wasted on schemes which just do not deliver what people assume’.

‘Targeted’ post-implementation monitoring of LTP projects’ effects was ‘a vital tool’.

Jane Robinson, project manager at Atkins, said previous research for the department ‘has shown that robust scheme assessment and prioritisation is an area where many LTP practitioners struggle to achieve successful outcomes’.

There was an increasing need for scheme prioritisation, given, for example, the need to assess which transport investments would best meet Local Area Agreement targets. •

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