Cambridgeshire County Council’s public transport strategy has been labelled ‘world-class’ in a new study.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report – entitled Bridging the gap – lauded Cambridgeshire as a best practice example of delivering public transport.
It described the rural transportation scheme as delivering ‘closer integration of strategy, policy and delivery’. The report said the county council’s annual park-and-ride usage was now 1.3M, and 40% more rural parishes were served by regular public transport.
But, according to PwC, Northern Ireland’s investment in public transport was falling ‘well behind’ the rest of the UK.
The study revealed that England, Wales and the Republic of Ireland have invested twice as much on public transport per head of population over the course of the past decade. It added that Scotland currently invested five times more than Northern Ireland.
The researchers said this was unlikely to change over the course of the next 10 years – despite the Northern Ireland Executive planning to invest £3bn on the regional road network – because the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland had only earmarked £725M for public transport.
PwC transport analyst, Christopher Watt, said: ‘Northern Ireland’s historic approach to transportation policy is more aligned to the American, private-car model, than the European, public-transport model.
‘The result is traffic congestion which costs the local economy around £250M a year, while a growing dependence on road transport is increasing the region’s carbon footprint.’
The study also pointed towards an integrated transport scheme in the east Netherlands region of Achterhoek as a ‘driver for rural development’. The scheme’s key priority was to counter the negative effects of unrestrained car use by enhancing the quality of alternative modes of public transport.
This saw transport planning and budgets decentralised in the region, and bus, rail and taxi services were integrated under a single operator. This operator introduced new vehicles, a light-rail rolling stock, and a demand-responsive taxi scheme, which now carries 1,500 people a day and is growing by 15% a year.
‘It is a particularly successful example of Dutch transport policy, which encourages co-operation between central and regional government to enhance accessibility to transport and quality of life,’ the report said.
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