Specialist warns against using ‘eco towns’ to justify new roads

16 April 2008

The transport specialist charged by the Government with improving the sustainability of ‘eco town’ proposals is to warn against the developments being used to justify new roads.

The eco town ‘challenge panel’ has been established by housing minister, Caroline Flint, in order to ‘challenge developers to go further’ and ‘improve their vision’, in terms of the proposals’ environmental credentials.

Stephen Joseph, the Campaign for Better Transport executive director, will be the panel member providing advice on how to improve the sustainability of the 15 new towns in transport terms.

Joseph was ‘worried’ that the standard assumptions on about how much traffic new development generates would be used by highway authorities proposing additional road capacity.

‘The argument will be put “you can’t stop people owning cars,”’ he said. For the Oxfordshire proposal, an upgrade of junction 9 of the M40 has been proposed, as well as a new rail link (Surveyor, 10 April).

But Joseph wanted developers to reduce the need to travel by providing local facilities ‘within pram-pushing distance’. The towns’ size would also be considered, he said.

The Planning Officers Society has warned that new towns of around 5,000 homes would be commuter towns. But the panel will be unable to advise that the proposed new towns should be relocated, it will be restricted to making the existing sites work.

This would be difficult in some cases, predicted Huw Jones, of the County Surveyors’ Society strategic planning committee. While the proposal in his county of Bedfordshire was well located and big enough to be self-sufficient, this was not the case with many of the eco towns.

It was ‘far from clear’ that providing thousands of new homes away from jobs near ‘heavily constrained’ roads was the best way of meeting housing need, he warned. The panel will be meeting developers over the next few months, and publish final recommendations in July. The Government plans to announce the finalised eco towns short-list later this year.

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Specialist warns against using ‘eco towns’ to justify new roads

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