Clarity and certainty of policy and funding
What are the key tenets of a successful, strategic long-term policy for the delivery of rail and urban transport networks, taking into account wider decarbonisation and transport integration goals?
Wales is a decade ahead of the rest of the UK because it has a Future Generations Act, so road schemes in Wales have a proper cumulative assessment of their carbon impacts
As a result it was decided not to upgrade the M4 but instead spend the money upgrading the parallel rail line and transforming rail connectivity across Cardiff and the surrounding valleys
Following the current High Court Challenge that the Government's road program broke the Climate Change Act, many UK proposed road schemes may have to be reassessed on carbon emissions
Money from these will become available for alternative transport schemes including Rail - which has the lowest GHG emissions
The UK has low productivity because its cities lack connectivity - Birmingham is less productive than European cities of the same size that have better public transport
To justify more frequent and better rail services requires more passengers
Public transport usage is largely determined by the size of population within short journey time of a station, frequency of service and choice of destinations. (For the many criteria and influences see Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook)
Increasing housing and development around existing and new stations will produce a step change in demand as more people have access to usable rail
The travel sector is the largest emitter of GHG
Within that sector journeys between 3km and 25km are the largest emitters, so these are the ones that most need to be shifted to rail
What reforms to current transport funding approaches would support the safeguarding and expansion of rail and urban transport networks and infrastructure? Does the Green Book allow for sufficient factors to be taken into consideration and what should any additional factors/considerations be regarding infrastructure?
The Urbed publication Planning Urban Transit for Rapid Recovery gives examples of land value sharing funding rail upgrades.
Changes in WebTag criteria have improved in recent years, but there is still a strong emphasis on saving business travel time. A distinction should be made between travel time on public transport, which new technology now enables passengers to use for work, and travel by driving where the time is less usable.
WebTag works well for road schemes, and the data needed is readily accessible. This is much less true for rail projects. An alteration to allow for the complexity of rail projects and ready access to all relevant datasets is required. In particular information on people’s propensity to travel by rail and how this is influenced by distance from a station is not readily available.
What mechanisms are available to facilitate effective public/private relationships and funding?
Land pooling – this occurs in eg. Hong Kong and is described in the World Bank publication Financing Transit-Oriented Development with Land Values
Integration of stations into their surrounding community – ensuring that the station is at the heart of the community it serves adds value to land owned by Network Rail adjacent to the station by linking it to development up to 1km away.
Making provision in such larger planning encourages employers to locate in close proximity to rail to satisfy employee demand.
What role does the maintenance of existing transport assets play in harnessing growth and how could the current approach be improved?
The upgrading of signalling and train control, such as implementation of ETCS on the Transpennine Upgrade, can be rolled out faster assisted by funding from land value uplift where new development occurs around stations.
The effects of land value increase from upgrading lines to form the London Overground are a good example. The improvements have a regenerative effect on the whole local economy by stimulating private investment and expenditure.