It may be yet another mirage but the Holy Grail of UK transport; a national plan, or at least the potential to develop one, is starting to come into view.
Integrated regional plans are well underway between groups like Transport for the North and Midlands Connect and recently we have seen further developments in areas that could help lay the foundations for a national framework for investment.
Outside of specific schemes, Transport Network looks at the key elements that need to align to make this dream a reality.
A link between housing and infrastructure
In the long-awaited Housing White Paper ministers pledged to align strategic infrastructure spending with house building by targeting the £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) at areas with the greatest housing need.
The document suggests a 'standardised approach' to assessing housing need could form the basis of future infrastructure funding decisions, with this change reflected in planned reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
The white paper also states that the HIF will provide funds over the next four years ‘to fund a variety of infrastructure projects (including transport and utilities) where these will unlock the delivery of new homes’ and that the Government will fund bids ‘that unlock the most homes in the areas of greatest housing need’.
However, it does not make clear what the criteria will be use for assessing such need and the new assessment process is unlikely to be in place until 2018/19. The Government is also not proposing to make it mandatory.
Ministers will consult 'on options for introducing a standardised approach to assessing housing requirements' and will publish a consultation 'at the earliest opportunity’ this year.
In the meantime, the white paper states that funding decisions are ‘likely to factor in whether authorities intend to apply the new standardised approach to assessing housing requirements’.
A spokesman for communities department DCLG told Transport Network that details of how the fund will be allocated would be published ‘in due course’, when it opens to bids later this year.
Council directors called for clarity over the pledge. Peter Geraghty, chair of the Planning, Housing and Regeneration Board of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT), told Transport Network: 'Lack of infrastructure is often one of the key issues that inhibits development coming forward and the £2.3bn HIF will help address this.
‘There is likely to be considerable demand once this capital grant programme is opened to bids in 2017, but there is an imperative to set out as soon as possible the qualifying criteria to ensure that the process for bidding is streamlined so that the money can flow to those sites and projects that need it without delay.’
The paper also calls on councils to make the most of forthcoming transport schemes like HS2, as they try to boost the supply of new homes and reiterates the Government’s existing approach of ‘maximising the contribution from brownfield’ and ‘maintaining existing strong protections for the green belt’.
Other pledges include holding local authorities to account through a new housing delivery test and ‘supporting housing associations and local authorities to build more homes’.
Spatial and social transport appraisals
The Department for Transport’s (DfT) WebTAG guidance, which provides the central evidence base for understanding and valuing the impacts of transport investments, has come under severe criticism from some sections of the profession.
At the end of last year the DfT closed its consultation on plans for ‘a major update and restructuring of the guidance to improve the analysis and communication of wider economic impacts and ensure that the full range of material impacts are captured’.
Major changes include:
- A new requirement for scheme promoters to produce a context specific economic narrative that sets out the transmissions mechanisms through which transport investment will impact the economy and achieve the stated economic objectives
- Greater clarity on the relationship between the measures of benefits used in appraisal (welfare) and economic metrics such as GDP or GVA and employment
- A stronger focus on additionality and displacement in the analysis and reporting of economic impacts
- Greater flexibility to use new modelling and valuation approaches to supplement standard appraisal methods. This may include methods and tools that are not explicitly defined in WebTAG
- Regeneration impacts have been integrated into the assessment of wider economic impacts.
The document adds that: ‘Greater clarity about how the analysis of wider economic impacts will be used to inform assessments of value for money by understanding the appropriate "level of analysis". The level of analysis is informed by the degree to which the scheme will produce structural economic impacts and change land-use.’
The consultation offered experts the opportunity to express concerns about the WebTAG system and key figures called for an overhaul.
In response, David Metz, honorary professor at the Centre for Transport Studies, University College London and former chief scientist to the DfT, said: ‘What is needed for decision-making is an evidence-based approach to transport investment appraisal, rather than a methodology based on theoretical welfare economics.
‘It would be desirable to adopt a more principles-based approach, in place of the very detailed requirements of WebTAG.’
He called the guidance ‘exceptionally prescriptive’ and an outlier across government departments.
‘An evidence-based approach starts by identifying the outcomes of completed schemes with an open mind and not constrained by the intentions of the investment.’
He stressed the importance of land use change and value uplift, and spatial economics, to help secure the benefits of transport investment.
In its response to the National Infrastructure Commission’s (NIC) call for evidence on the UK's needs over a 30-year time horizon, the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (TAG) went even further on WebTAG.
It stated that while modelling travel behaviour is an essential part in the development of most infrastructure, the ‘cost benefit analysis presently carried out gives decision makers a totally flawed value of the likely benefits to society’.
‘It needs to be remembered that the guiding principle of socio cost benefit analysis is the value society as a whole would ascribe to perceived or calculated benefits whether these are time savings travellers, improvements to life expectancy from medical treatments, road safety, clean water, flooding etc.’
TAG noted that the popular road safety policy of reducing speeds to 20mph in urban areas would likely result in a negative score on the basis of cost benefit analysis calculations according to government advice.
Jill Adam, director strategic roads economics and statistics at the DfT, told Transport Network: ‘We have been very honest about the fact that it does not necessarily capture ever benefit and that it is harder to capture genuinely transformation transport investment than it is to capture an improvement in links between existing places.
'You saw this when the DfT was making the case for HS2 and it is something we have grappled with if I am honest on the work we are doing in investments like the Trans-Pennine Tunnel.
‘We are working very hard with Transport for the North on that project to make sure we have developing our models to capture that wider and transformation opportunity.’
She added that the department is working hard with stakeholders and having open conversations about how to improve the methodology, which she hopes would happen over this parliament.
Demand management and maintenance
Council directors and technical experts have agreed that meeting the nation’s long-term infrastructure needs will mean making best use of existing resources through demand management and new thinking around road maintenance funding.
In its submission to the NIC, TAG also argued that ‘demand management is essential for much of the infrastructure and particularly national and urban roads.’
TAG questioned the basis for ‘adding significant capacity where demand exceeds supply’, citing the findings of the 2006 Eddington Study.
The group stated: ‘We do not believe significant further strategic infrastructure is required now or in the period up to 2050, so hopefully poor environments caused by strategic roads will not cause further damage to places people need to live and work.’
In its submission, ADEPT argued that the reduction of peak demand provides the greatest immediate opportunity to reduce peak loading in the transport, energy and water sectors, with a significant role for the ‘smoothing of demand through market segmentation and crucially informed customers making appropriate choices (with incentives)’.
ADEPT suggested: ‘With the rise of connected vehicles it can only be a matter time as to when a mileage and time based approach to managing demand for road space is implemented.’
Council directors also noted ‘the significant backlog in road maintenance and deficiencies in renewal of bus fleets and train rolling stock’ while stressing the contribution of new infrastructure to ‘rebalancing the economy’.
However, while ADEPT argued that new capacity from rail lines such as HS2 and ‘HS3’ and ‘certain road connections’ could ‘bring about wider ambition and change’ it pointed out that ‘major new inter urban road capacity…is recognised as having been … shown to consistently fill up with generated trips and increased mobility’.
On the issue of road maintenance funding, ADEPT argued that ‘even when funding exists over a 5-10 year period new or different thinking is required to provide immediate investment leveraged against future funding beyond a narrow local council time scale’.
It suggested that: ‘A 10-year leveraged approach with front loaded funded would provide greater immediate impact and would be efficient within the new approach to asset management planning.’
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