INTRODUCTION

  1.  This is a memorandum from Transport 2000 the independent national body concerned with sustainable transport. We look for solutions to transport problems and aim to reduce the environmental and social impact of transport by encouraging less use of cars and more use of public transport, walking and cycling.

  2.  We apologise for the fact that these views will be submitted several days after the closing date. Our attention was drawn to the inquiry, and we were asked to provide our views, only after that date had already passed.

  3.  This memorandum will necessarily be brief and will be confined to some transport aspects of planning for sustainable housing and communities.

THE FORM OF SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

  4.  The pattern of residential and other development necessary to ensure sustainability in transport terms (but also to reduce land and other resource use and foster communities) has been much discussed and is now widely agreed.

  5.  The essential feature of this pattern is reducing the need or the obligation, but not the option, to travel by providing homes, employment and amenities in close proximity so that most journeys can be made on foot, by bicycle or by local public transport. Requirements for longer distance travel should be met by locating such communities on a larger public transport network.

  6.  Sustainable communities may be described as well designed, higher density, mixed use developments located in or around town and local centres where a range of employment, essential and leisure facilities, and public transport is available. An object of such communities should be to provide local facilities for local people not large centralised facilities which depend on a wide catchment area and require long journeys. Integrated transport and land use planning should facilitate short journeys and discourage long ones.

  7.  Planning policy guidance has recognised transport, land take, rural and urban greenfield protection, energy use and other reasons for this approach. Guidance has increasingly recommended more compact urban forms since at least the publication of revised PPG 13 in 1992. Locational policies, sequential tests, parking and density standards have been adopted or amended to discourage the dispersed development patterns common throughout much of the Twentieth Century.

  8.  However the realisation of sustainable communities continues to be impeded by a number of factors to which we wish to draw the Committee's attention.

OBSTACLES OR NECESSARY ENCOURAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

  9.  A number of changes are needed to ensure that residential and other development is located, as much as possible, in existing towns and cities where public transport and other amenities already exist or can be most easily provided. Such changes could include amended planning guidance to discourage further the use of greenfield land and encourage the re-use of urban brownfield sites, improved incentives for brownfield development and increasing the compulsory purchase powers of local authorities to enable site assembly.

  10.  The Social Exclusion Unit's interim report on transport and social exclusion has recommended the use of "audits of accessibility", perhaps carried out as part of the transport plan process, to assess the local availability of work, learning, health care, food shops and other key amenities. Any deficiencies could be made good through the identification of suitable sites in local development frameworks and other means. Transport 2000 would welcome the use of such audits both on social exclusion and sustainability grounds.

  11.  The promotion of sustainable communities cannot remain the province of only a couple of government departments; many need to be involved. The Departments of Health and Education and Skills for example should be required to assess the transport implications of their policies and of any decisions made about the location of facilities. The maintenance of local facilities which can be reached without use of a car and by people who do not have use of a car must be an objective. Again there are social exclusion as well as sustainability reasons for such an approach.

  12.  The pattern of transport spending will be a critical influence on travel patterns in new developments. As the Government's multi-modal studies have shown, it is much easier to plan and build new or widened roads and by-passes than improvements to public transport: trunk roads in particular have a straightforward planning, building and funding regime. The easy option is not however the best; new roads will attract and promote out of town and dispersed car dependent development and work against compact urban land use patterns, especially since controls on out of town development are still too lax.

  13.  Instead, the planning of major new development schemes must be accompanied by adequate public transport planning so that the transport impact of such schemes is minimised from the outset. Too often the provision of new public transport, and almost always the minimisation of the need to travel, are missing elements in major development proposals. New public transport should be in place before developments come on stream.

  14.  However, current public transport planning makes this very difficult. The Strategic Rail Authority has no brief to support sustainable housing and communities, and its planning and appraisal criteria do not allow for loss-leading new services to support compact new development. This, combined with the general inflation of costs on the railway since privatisation, has already led to the SRA casting doubt on all or most of the new rail services and schemes, including the East West Rail route, that have been recommended by the multi-modal studies. We would like the Committee to recommend that the SRA's objectives and guidance from the Secretary of State be altered to include specific reference to promoting compact development and sustainable housing and communities.

  15.  The funding and provision of local public transport for new communities and development is also difficult. Bus services outside London are deregulated and local authorities have no ring-fenced funding to subsidise them, so it is impossible for planning authorities to guarantee bus services for new developments, unless developers fund them. Light rail schemes face major funding and planning hurdles, though some current schemes, such as Liverpool, are designed to support new housing developments. To address these problems, we would like to see new development areas covered by a new simplified transport planning regime, to be called "transport improvement zones", whereby public transport could be planned and provided in phase with new development, and funded by it.

  16.  A proper balance of housing and employment, necessary for mixed and sustainable communities, is still not being achieved. The draft London Plan, for example, proposes that most new jobs will be located in central London where there are few homes and most new homes will be built in outer London where there will be few jobs. More and longer commuter journeys will result. Major public transport projects will be needed to meet the demand but some additional journeys will be also be made by car. Transport 2000 would like to see additional guidance to regional agencies and others on the location of homes and jobs in order to reduce the need to travel. An obviously suitable sustainability indicator would be the total amount of travel in a given area; this should be reduced, or at least held constant, despite any population or employment growth. The object in other words should be to uncouple growth in travel from economic growth.

  17.  Parking standards are not sufficiently rigorous. New superstores, leisure, workplace and other developments dependent on a large catchment area and a predominantly car-borne clientele are still being approved. The amount of parking in a development may be considered an indicator of the size of its catchment area and whether it conforms to sustainable development norms.

  18.  It is now widely recognised that retail and other facilities with large amounts of car parking have undermined local facilities, which people can access without cars and people without cars can access, and damaged local town and other centres (consider, for instance, the effect of Meadowhall on Sheffield's retail district). This works against the health and sustainability of local communities. Car parking is also a wasteful use of land. According to Transport for London in 1999-2000 there were 6.8 million parking spaces in London alone. There is perhaps a discernable trend to develop car parks. Inducements are needed to encourage this trend.

  19.  This should be taken further. Single storey, car dependent, retail parks are themselves a bad use of land and because their customers are drawn from a wide not a local area work against sustainable local communities. This type of development, always open to criticism, is now firmly discredited. Inducements should be offered for the re-use of such sites.

  20.  Maximum residential parking standards may now be widespread, but even new residential developments which conform to current standards can have significant local traffic impacts. With a parking ratio of one space per dwelling (and higher ratios are still permitted even in some urban locations), a residential scheme of several hundred homes can bring a damaging increase in traffic levels on local or other roads. Implementation of planning permissions for major residential developments should be made conditional on the prior provision of public transport and other amenities to serve the site. With this condition in place parking standards could again be reviewed and reductions made in maximum parking standards.

CONCLUSION

  21.  Transport 2000 hopes that these comments will be helpful. We would be pleased to provide further information on any of these points or to explain them in person to the Select Committee.