Local Transport Today issue 800

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POLICY | PLANNING | FINANCE | DEVELOPMENT

CCTV powers for mandatory cycle lanes

CYCLING

LOCAL AUTHORITIES in England are being given new powers to use CCTV cameras to enforce against drivers who park or load illegally in mandatory cycle lanes.

The new powers will come

into force on 22 June, allowing councils with civil parking enforcement powers to use CCTV and issue penalty change notices.

The announcement represents a shift in Government thinking from the days of communities and local government secretary

Eric Pickles who introduced tight restrictions on what councils could use CCTV camera enforcement for.

Announcing the policy change this week, cycling minister Chris Heaton-Harris said: “Giving local authorities more powers to stop cycle lanes from becoming

blocked will make it safer for cyclists.”

The new powers will not apply to moving traffic offences such as driving in a cycle lane. That is covered by separate legislation. >> READ MORE? Temporary traffic schemes

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E-scooters are dangerous and will harm active travel – PACTS

E-SCOOTERS

by Andrew Forster

E-scooter: features such as small wheels “inherently unsafe”

public transport, is there evidence of significant transfer from car to e-scooter (>30%). Such conditions are not relevant to the UK. “E-scooters are not active travel. They involve no physical exertion and provide no health benefit to the user. Because escooters largely replace walk, cycle and public transport trips, all of which involve physical activity and have the associated health benefits, e-scooters will tend to reduce active travel.”

They are dangerous for users, says PACTS. “E-scooters, as widely sold and promoted by hire companies, have features which are inherently unsafe. With wheel sizes typically 8-10 inches (often less but rarely more), they are incapable of safely negotiating the ruts, potholes, uneven surfaces of many urban streets.

“It is very difficult for e-scooters riders to see vehicles approaching from behind or to give signals. E-scooters are not fitted with rear-facing mirrors or indicators. They have narrow handlebars and very responsive (‘twitchy’) steering due to the small wheels.

“The e-scooter rider will be in

a standing position. They (and any passenger) are liable to be thrown forward more quickly and with a greater force than a pedal cyclist.

“As a result, e-scooter riders suffer much higher rates of head injury than pedal cyclists. The Danish Transport Authority recently concluded, on the basis of experience in Denmark, that the rate was eight times higher.”

It says the Danish transport minister announced in February that helmets are to be made mandatory for e-scooters riders.

Helmets will not be mandatory for UK schemes.

“The claim, made by some, that e-scooters should be permitted because they are less dangerous than cars is simplistic, open to challenge and an inadequate basis for decision-making.” says PACTS. “There has been a high incidence of first-time users suffering falls, sometimes with serious injury. Experience has shown that e-scooters may attract users who have consumed alcohol or drugs.

This has been a problem with clubbers in Berlin.

PACTS cites comments by

Adam Snow of Liverpool John Moores University, who has studied e-scooter safety. “The Centre for Disease Control in Texas found in 2018 that the rate of killed or serious injuries for these modes is 22 per 100,000 miles (in the UK it’s about 0.5 per 100,000 for cars), “ said Snow.

“On the face of it they are far more dangerous than current modes of travel.”

E-scooters are also a hazard to pedestrians, says PACTS. “The Metropolitan Police was informed of four injury collisions involving e-scooters in 2018 and 32 in 2019, including one fatality; one-third involved injury to pedestrians.

“Regardless of the law, if escooters are legalised for use in the UK, some people will use them on footways, for convenience or personal safety. The police will be largely unable to prevent this – they do not have the resources and they have enough other priorities.

Dockless e-scooter rental schemes will also result in escooters littering streets.

“Montreal announced in February that it would ban ‘free-floating’ scooter rental schemes.”

PACTS believes the presence of e-scooters will deter some people from walking, “particularly the more vulnerable (elderly, partially sighted etc).” >> READ MORE?

E-scooters – consultation responses

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E-scooters – cool, but what are the benefits is available at https://tinyurl.com/y8nu6atm

4-7 Funding challenges for transport post-Covid

12-13 The bus industry and Covid

15 Mandatory face coverings

22 Cambs transport tensions grow 25 Richard Dilks

TOP10

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Park Lane: traffic lanes cut from three to one

Country’s battery electric car strategy is ‘doomed to failure’

Covid-19 leaves programme of Clean Air Zones up in the air

Government hid HS2 problems to keep it on the rails, say MPs

Reprieve for Pacers could help solve train shortage – WYCA

Government leads review into TfL’s finances and structure

Rethink Mids and North rail plans – Greengauge Operators struggle to commit funds to electric bus town bids

Grand Central revises S Wales plan

10. New £254m grant to restore bus services back to normal most read LTT stories on

29 May - 11 June 2020

THE GOVERNMENT’S decision to fast-track rental e-scooter trials across the UK will undermine active travel and may increase road casualties, says the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS).

The first trials of e-scooter rental are due to begin later this month. Ministers say they will give people another alternative to using public transport during Covid-19 restrictions (LTT 15 May).

But PACTS says there is clear evidence that e-scooters will undermine the Government’s active travel objectives and that they are dangerous.

“From evidence and experience around the world, it is now very clear that the public benefits [of e-scooters] are illusory and the disbenefits substantial, at least in a European context,” says the organisation in a new policy paper. “As such, e-scooters will work against many of the Government’s objectives. PACTS therefore opposes the trials and wider legalisation of e-scooters.”

Evidence from European countries “is that very few car trips transfer to e-scooters”, it says.

“E-scooter trips are predominantly trips made previously on foot, or by cycle or public transport; or new trips (often for leisure). Lime and Dott hire schemes in Paris reported 8-10 per cent transfer from car/taxi trips to e-scooters. Only in North American cities, which are highly car-dependent and have low levels of walking, cycling or

PROVIDING INDEPENDENT NEWS & ANALYSIS SINCE 1989

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2 ADVERTORIAL

Reopen, Recover, Reimagine: lessons

from lockdown

W

e have all been part of an unparalleled social experiment, and like any experiment, there is an opportunity to learn – particularly from the recent changes in our travel behaviour.

A new form of economic shock requires a new form of economic recovery

The economists are unanimous: the lockdowns across the globe have created an economic crisis like no other. The effects of this cut across most sectors, and national and global supply chains have seen significant disruption. Some sectors have been able to adapt, for example via homeworking, but still face enormous challenges.

A few sectors have benefited, including online services and home deliveries; though concerns about long-term capacity and the wider impact on the economy remain.

We elected the Government on an agenda of levelling-up the regions of the UK, transforming productivity and improving living standards across the whole country. The

We have liberated streets for more walking and cycling, children playing and socially distanced conversations between neighbours. Air pollution has considerably reduced, with some city centres experiencing 40% reductions in NOx emissions

In the first of our Reopen, Recover, Reimagine series, we discussed the critical issues facing transport during the COVID-19 crisis. We highlighted the importance of maintaining our focus on decarbonising the transport system and tackling the inequalities in our society as we emerge from lockdown. This second piece provides summarises the lessons from lockdown – valuable insights to help chart our future journey. writes Jonathan Foster-Clark, senior transport strategy adviser at Atkins

current economic shock risks derailing this agenda, with far greater impacts in the more vulnerable parts of the Midlands and North.

A sharp ‘V’ shaped recovery is now unlikely, and the shock could continue with the most severe recession in a lifetime.

In response, the government must work to create an alternative form of economic recovery. A new collaborative approach is required between national, regional and local leaders to offer coherent support to re-skill the workforce, financial support for new businesses and rebalance infrastructure investment to unlock fresh growth. We will need to understand what types of travel will be critical to our economic recovery, together with the implications for how we plan the transport system.

We’re all in this together – but are people being left behind?

The deep social challenges facing this country have extenuated the impact, from a lack of a national social care strategy to poor housing conditions. People living in crowded flats in inner cities have seen disproportionate effects – both from the virus and the lockdown – compared to those with access to the outdoors.

Many pupils have lost two entire months of educational progression, particularly in homes where they compete for access to a digital device, or where parents are less able to offer support.

Our vulnerability to COVID-19 itself exposes the starkest challenges. Whilst older people are particularly vulnerable, hard questions are being raised about obesity, chronic health conditions and the impact on ethnic minorities.

We can also see the strong correlation between Coronavirus deaths and poor air quality: pollution damages people’s hearts and lungs, reducing the chances of survival.

We already knew that up to 36,000 deaths each year in the UK occur because of poor air quality, but Coronavirus has highlighted a

stark new reality of the impact on health of pollution. The cleaner air we have all enjoyed during lockdown is not a ‘nice to have’, it is helping to reduce further deaths.

We must recognise the vast gulf in our society, both the issues that were always there and fresh problems unmasked by the lockdown. It is our job as professionals to understand the underlying causes, including how transport affects people’s wellbeing, and to find solutions to these problems.

Quieter and cleaner, but we still have a climate and biodiversity emergency

There have been some positives in the lockdown period. We have liberated streets for more walking and cycling, children playing and socially distanced conversations between neighbours. Air pollution has considerably reduced, with some city centres experiencing 40% reductions in NOx emissions.

Carbon emissions from transport fell dramatically, although we are unlikely to sustain this faltering step on our future carbon pathway as traffic returns. As we work with the Department for Transport over the next year on the Transport Decarbonisation Plan, we need to embed lessons learned in how we can reduce the need to travel and refocus on active travel in our local communities.

This could be the opportunity to address our biodiversity emergency. Birds and animals are exploring places that people have left behind, with goats in Llandudno, deer in London and loud birdsong just a few examples. People have become more aware of the wildlife and open spaces in their own neighbourhoods as they take exercise locally.

The lesson is clear: this period has shown what is possible and allowed us a taste of the benefits of reduced traffic and letting nature take back some control. We need to sustain and build on these positives and must take responsibility for active environmental stewardship.

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ADVERTORIAL 3

There have been some positives in the lockdown period, such as reductions in car travel

The tipping point for digital transformation?

The potential has been around for years, but this crisis has pushed the large-scale adoption of digital technologies.

Organisations have had to move to digital platforms to survive, speeding up several years of progress into a matter of weeks.

Retailers moved to 100% online shopping, food and drink outlets evolved to home delivery, and businesses embraced Teams and Zoom. We have seen a surge of internet traffic since lockdown, with ISPs enhancing download speeds and preparing for homebased activity from video calls to Netflix.

Within Atkins, over 95% of our people are working from home, with full digital capability and the ability to meet client needs.

Consumer behaviours have changed: there was a spike in ‘delivery’ as a keyword for internet searches at the end of March, which has continued through the lockdown period.

New tech operators are entering the market, including using AI to personalise food and drink recommendations for home delivery.

LGVs were already the fastest-growing class of traffic: the step-change in bringing goods and services to people (instead of people travelling for goods and services) will accelerate this trend.

There will be downsides to this digital shift, particularly for groups of people suffering from social exclusion caused by the digital divide. Should we now treat digital connectivity as an essential social need to access services and support? If we can tackle this, we can begin to question if we will need as many physical journeys: ‘connectivity’ will become more useful than travel.

Lockdown has caused profound changes in the ways we travel

The transport reports in the daily government briefings provided a rich source of data on lockdown behaviour. Road traffic and patronage on the rail, tube and bus networks fell immediately and dramatically. Car traffic dropped by up to 75%, remaining at low levels through April but creeping back as we ease restrictions. Some motorists have taken advantage, with reports of record high speeds on some roads.

Light goods traffic initially dropped but rose more strongly as the economy adapted with more home deliveries. Heavy goods traffic fell by only around 25% as we continued to move essential supplies around the country. There was an impressive resilience to the supply

chain, with supermarkets acting as the country’s ‘National Food Service’ and the logistics industry adapting swiftly to the new paradigm.

The changes for public transport have been severe. Demand for National Rail and the Tube dropped by over 90% and has remained low throughout the lockdown, with home-working and digital meetings driving this dramatic fall. Bus demand has dropped by over 80%. We are now all acutely aware of the challenges in the safe use public transport in the era of social distancing: a long journey lies ahead in recovering public transport markets, particularly in helping to control the re-emergence of traffic in our towns and cities.

The other big story has been the reemergence of active travel. Whilst they have not captured walking and cycling in the DfT monitoring data, there is clear evidence of their popularity. There are visibly more people walking and cycling around local streets as part of their daily exercise regimes. Many new cyclists have enjoyed quieter roads but there will be fresh challenges when car traffic rises and there is more competition for road space.

The biggest ‘loser’ has been air travel, where the economic viability of many airlines is now uncertain. The government will need to make tough decisions on which airlines they will save, based on their roles in providing the connectivity needed in our globalised economy. It will also profoundly affect airports, both by the reconfiguration of airline operations and social distancing requirements as they restart operations.

The crisis has highlighted the shortcomings of assuming uninterrupted growth in travel demand. Whilst the government had flagged

The lesson is clear: this period has shown what is possible and allowed us a taste of the benefits of reduced traffic and letting nature take back some control

the potential for a global pandemic in the UK’s National Risk Register, they had not considered the implications for the transport system. We will need to be much more adept at scenario planning, both for the short-term as we reopen for business, and in the longterm as we reimagine our future society.

Emerging with blinking eyes from the lockdown… with a sense of optimism?

Hopefully, we will all soon be emerging safely from the lockdown, but with major changes to our society and economy. We are facing challenges that we could not have imagined six months ago, and we are not yet clear on how the situation will evolve. The crisis also has underlined the weaknesses that were already there: chronic health conditions for many people, weaknesses in the economies of some of our towns and cities and failing to tackle the climate emergency.

But with every crisis, there is an opportunity. This has pointed to alternative ways of thinking: a proactive Government response to an economic crisis, social and community activism, new ways of working and a heightened awareness of sustainability.

And there has been a paradigm shift in the ways we view travel. Travel is a derived demand: our society has begun to be rewired and this will result in fundamentally different travel patterns. The time has come to reimagine how we travel and shape the future of transport. n Atkins are the headline sponsor of the SWHA Highway to Zero Carbon conference STEAM, Swindon – 15 September 2020

Limited delegate places remain available

To book visit: www.highwaytozerocarbon.co.uk

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4 News

In Brief

TfL imposes bus capacity limits Transport for London has set passenger capacity limits on bus services to facilitate social distancing. Double-decker buses will be able to carry 20 passengers and single-decker buses between six and ten, depending on the size of the bus. Bus drivers will have discretion to allow more customers on board if they are travelling in households or groups.

Front door boarding reinstated Transport for London is reinstating front door boarding to bus services following safety improvements to the screens that separate the drivers from passengers.

Middle door entry was introduced in April to reduce the risk of Covid19 transmission from passengers to drivers. This had the effect of making bus travel free because the card readers are located near the driver on most buses (LTT 01 May). TfL has added a film layer to the screens and has sealed off gaps around the screen to reduce the risk of transmission.

‘Stay six steps apart on escalators’ Travellers on the London Underground are being advised to stay six steps apart on escalators in order to ensure social distancing.

Time restriction for Freedom Pass Temporary time restrictions on the use of London’s Older Person’s Freedom Pass, the 60+Oyster photocard, and English National Concessionary Travel Scheme passes in the capital will be introduced by Transport for London on Monday 15 June. The changes prevent the passes being used between 04.30 and 09.00 Mondays to Fridays to ensure that the limited social-distanced capacity on public transport services is available for commuters. The policy is part of the funding agreement for Transport for London agreed by the Government and the mayor.

The new poilcy does not apply to holders of a disabled persons Freedom Pass.

TfWM reinstates 9.30am concession The West Midlands Combined Authority has withdrawn the ability for concessionary passholders to use their passes before 9.30 on Mondays to Fridays. The time restriction was removed during lockdown to allow passholders to access supermarkets during the hours when opening was reserved for the elderly only. The concession was terminated in the West Midlands on 1 June to ease capacity pressures on peak time services.

Khan lifts lid on No10’s role in suspending free youth travel LONDON

by Andrew Forster

THE GOVERNMENT’S plan to suspend free youth travel on Transport for London services will place a new funding burden on London boroughs, t h e c a p i t a l ’s m a y o r h a s warned.

The suspension was included as part of the Covid19 financial aid package for Tr a n s p o r t f o r L o n d o n announced by the Government last month (LTT 29 May).

A DfT spokeswoman this week confirmed to LTT that the suspension would be temporary but did not say when it would begin or end. “The decision regarding under-18 travel is a temporary measure to help reduce the risk of overcrowding on the transport network to tackle the spread of the virus. As part of the deal, the concession for children eligible under national legislation for free home to school travel will continue.

“We look forward to seeing TfL’s operational plan by 10 June.”

In his letter to the mayor confirming the TfL rescue package, transport secretary Grant Shapps told Khan the suspension of free youth travel was “subject to discussions about how it is to be operationalised”.

Khan wrote back to Shapps on 29 M ay urging him to rethink the policy and warning that the suspension

Sadiq Khan says the policy was “crowbarred” into the deal by Number 10 without involving transport secretary Grant Shapps

would place a new cost burden on London boroughs. Local authorities are under a statutory obligation to provide free home to school travel where children meet a range of criteria such as on age, distance from school and income.

“This obligation falls on local authorities rather than Trans port for London, although it is TfL that has historically provided and paid for under-18s conces s ionary travel,” said Khan.

“We believe that around 30 per cent of children who currently travel to school by bus are eligible statutorily for free travel, which means costs to boroughs would be significant.

“It is abundantly clear that losing free travel would hit the poorest Londoners hardest at a time w hen finances are stretched more than ever.”

Khan also warned of the “bureaucratic and technical complexity involved in remov-

ing existing concessions while continuing to meet statutory obligations”.

Shapps wrote back to Khan on 3 J une, reiter ating the intention to withdraw the free travel. Khan replied on 8 June.

City Hall supplied LTT with a copy of his letter this week, w hich gives interes ting insights into how the policy emerged at the 11th hour of negotiations over the funding package.

“The first point at which anyone from the Government raised this issue with me, my deputy mayor [Heidi Alexander], or TfL officials was late on Monday 11 May, when a draft agreement was shared by DfT officials with TfL – two days before the negotiations had to be concluded.

“The insertion of this condition came as a total surprise to us after six weeks of discussions where the subject of free travel for children and young

people was not mentioned.

“You have never mentioned this issue to me in person, nor did you raise it in your 25minute call with my deputy mayor on Sunday 10 May. Instead it was crowbarred into the agreement at the last minute by Number 10 officials – I have to assume acting on the wishes of the Prime Minister personally.”

Khan has told TfL officials to provide Shapps “with a summary of the technical constraints with regard to how quickly any changes could be implemented, and to work with local authorities about how a system to verify eligibility or free school travel might be set up”.

He tells Shapps: “As this initiative is your proposal alone, however, it will be for you to set out the following: • your proposed fare structure for different age groups • your proposed criteria for free travel • your proposed date of implementation • your assessment of the equality impacts of your proposals.”

A DfT spokeswoman told LTT: “We reject the claim that identifying those children eligible for free home-to-school travel creates an unacceptable administrative burden, since all councils outside London already do it (and those within London already do it for children who need free Tube or rail travel to school).”

Covid-19 spells more delay for Crossrail

FUNDING

THE OPENING of the central London tunnelled section of Crossrail has been hit by a further delay, this time because of Covid-19.

The central section between Paddington and Abbey Wood of London’s new east-west railway had been due to open in December 2018. The date has since slipped to summer 2021.

Transport for London board members were told of a further unquantified delay last week.

“Crossrail Ltd has indicated that Covid-19 will have an impact on the programme but at this stage it is too early to say how that impact will be felt,” said Andy Lord, TfL’s managing director

for London Underground and TfL engineering.

Construction work was suspended in March but subsequently restarted, though with social distancing policies in place. Intensive operational testing through the tunnels, known as trial running, has yet to begin.

Any delay is likely to further push up costs. The project’s estimated cost rose from £14.8bn to £17.6bn in December 2018.

Crossrail Ltd reported late last year that a further £400m to £650m was needed (LTT 22 Nov 19). In March it emerged the funding request could be even greater (LTT 20 Mar).

TfL is in talks with the Government about how the identified

funding shortfall will be filled.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps last month outlined the current state of play to London mayor Sadiq Khan in the letter detailing TfL’s Covid-19 emergency funding package.

“In advance of the end of the support period [17 October], an additional funding package for Crossrail will need to have been identified and presented to the project sponsors [TfL and DfT], which achieves the agreed ‘London Pays’ principle,” said Shapps. “Options to achieve this will be considered alongside the Government-led review of TfL’s future financial position and future financial structure.”

The new Crossrail trains (Class 345) are already operating

out of Liverpool Street and Paddington stations. From 18 May, all services to and from Reading are being operated with full-length trains (nine carriages).

The seven-car trains have been transferred to the Liverpool Street to Shenfield line, allowing more 30-year-old Class 315 electric trains to be scrapped.

In a bit of good news for the project, the Office of Rail and Road last month authorised fulllength Crossrail trains to operate in the tunnels to Heathrow Airport using the European Train Control System Level 2 signalling system.

Stopping services between Paddington and Heathrow will start using the new trains in the next few weeks.

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News 5

TfL won’t return to pre-Covid spending levels anytime soon FUNDING

by Andrew Forster

TRANSPORT INVESTMENT in London is likely to fall significantly over the next few years, as Transport for London grapples with the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Public transport demand has plummeted, wrecking TfL’s financial plans, including the business plan for 2020/21-2024/25 published last December.

“It is unlikely, even with significant external support, that we will return to any similar plan or levels of investment in the medium-term,” Simon Kilonback, TfL’s chief finance officer, told the board last week.

TfL expects the collapse in travel demand to result in an overall income loss of more than £4bn this year.

Public transport revenues may not recover to pre-virus levels for years. TfL is also vulnerable to reduced income from business rates, which now provide it with much of its non-fare income. Kilonback described this as a “key income risk”.

Outgoing London transport commissioner Mike Brown told the board last week that TfL had been making good progress to reduce its operating deficit.

“Prior to the effect of coronavirus on our finances, the net cost of operations – our net deficit after taking into account financing and capital renewals costs – was on track to be almost £220m better than last year.”

Covid-19 cost TfL about £220m in the final weeks of the financial year up to 31 March – £183m from lost passenger income, and £28m of additional costs. This pushed TfL’s net cost of operations up to £423m.

TfL expects passenger revenues to be as much as £3.5bn lower than budget during 2020/21 because of Covid-19 and Kilonback told the board that the overall full-year income

TfL is studying how charges could reflect distance driven, emissions, time and road danger

loss was “anticipated to be over £4.0bn”.

He said TfL had drawn up an emergency budget for 2020/21 “that assumes nearly £1bn of cost reduction/deferral over the period, and assumes we utilise around £1bn of our cash resources, leaving a funding gap of £1.9bn in the first half of the year and a full-year funding gap of £3.2bn”.

Last month the Government provided TfL with access to a £1.6bn extraordinary funding and financing package for the period up to 17 October (see below). A follow-on mediumterm support package will then be put in place.

The initial support package comprises £1.095bn of grant and a loan facility of £505m from the Public Works Loan Board. The support can be increased by a further £300m of grant and loan if revenue losses are higher than forecast for this period.

TfL has taken steps to reduce costs, putting more than 7,000 workers onto the Government’s furlough scheme and releasing around 770 of non-permanent staff

What Shapps told TfL Transport for London has released transport secretary Grant Shapps’ letter to London mayor Sadiq Khan, confirming the £1.6bn Covid-19 funding and financing package for TfL. TfL’s emergency budget submitted to the Government predicted a shortfall for the period 1 April 2020 to 17 October 2020 of £1.9bn.

“Given the uncertainties in predicting demand this funding agreement assumes a shortfall for this period of £1.6bn,” said Shapps.

The transport secretary attached a number of conditions to the package, requiring TfL to: • push forward “an ambitious active travel plan to promote cycling and walking, including new segregated cycle lanes, closures of roads to through traffic, and pavement extensions, utilising at least the £55m allocated in the support period. The detail of the plan will be agreed and overseen by a dedicated oversight group comprising TfL and Her Majesty’s Government” • temporarily suspend free travel for Freedom Pass and 60 plus card holders during the morning peak and suspending free travel for under 18s, the latter “subject to discussions about how it is to be operationalised” • place card readers by the operating entrance doors on all buses as soon as practicable, and immediately require passengers to use the approximately 2,000 readers that are already so placed

Nevertheless, Kilonback said: “Despite having already taken a significant amount of cost out of the organisation, it is still costing TfL around £600m a month to run its network.”

The emergency budget assumed that Tube and bus services operate at 50 per cent and 80 per cent of normal levels respectively until the end of June. TfL has since agreed to increase service levels to near pre-Covid-19 levels as soon as possible as part of the funding agreement with Government.

TfL has now begun work on a revised emergency budget that will inform the negotiations with the Government over the financial support for the second half of the year. Board approval for the revised budget will be sought next month.

The original emergency budget includes “significant deferral of capital expenditure in order to reduce costs in the short-term”.

Projects that are still proceeding include: • the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) up to the north and south circular roads; • bus electrification; • the ongoing road user charging strategic options study. This is looking at whether distance driven, emissions, time and road danger can be incorporated into charges • the mayor’s air quality fund programme; • a temporary bridge for walking and cycling at Hammersmith to relieve Hammersmith Bridge; • the Surface Intelligent Transport System (SITS) programme; • ongoing work on rail devolution (at the DfT’s request), including Great Northern; • increasing train frequencies on the East London Line to 18 trains per hour; and • major projects including the Northern Line extension, Bank station capacity upgrade, the Silvertown Crossing and the Barking Riverside rail line.

• immediately reintroduce the central London congestion charge, the ultra-low emission zone and the low emission zone and “urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges” • accept that two Government-appointed special representatives will attend all TfL board meetings, being able to raise questions at the board, request additional information as reasonably required and report back to the secretary of state.

One special representative will also be able to attend all meetings, formal and informal, of the finance committee and the programmes and investment committee.

“There will be an immediate and broad ranging governmentled review of TfL's future financial position and future financial structure,” added Shapps. This will explore: • options for revenue maximisation, including fares policy and revenue yield choices over time • opportunities to deliver further efficiencies in the short and medium term in relation to operating costs • the approach to capital spending, both in terms of asset maintenance and enhancement • the balance sheet and financing structure, including financing policy, of TfL • current fiscal devolution arrangements • potential for raising more non-fare based revenue and commercial income The review will include the undertaking of international and cross-modal benchmarks. It will be completed by the end of August.

LIP grant halted but streets cash flows

FUNDING

TRANSPORT FOR London has suspended the local implementation plan (LIP) and liveable neighbourhoods funding streams to boroughs because of the financial pressures from Covid-19.

Paul Chadwick, Wandsworth’s director of environment and community services, told councillors: “As a result of the confirmed withdrawal of LIP funding in 2020/21, a number of committed key capital schemes have a funding gap.

“There is considerable uncertainty regarding TfL funding to boroughs going forward. Officers are working to identify and prioritise opportunities to meet the key gaps in funding from the Neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy and Section 106 monies.”

A TfL spokesman told LTT LIPs and liveable neighbourhoods funding had been “paused” and replaced

by Streetspace for London funding for the first half of the financial year 2020/21.

“TfL is working closely with the DfT on its Streetspace for London programme. Funding for borough schemes will be agreed between the boroughs and TfL. So far, £9.3m has been awarded to 12 boroughs and TfL will continue to work with the boroughs to agree further funding for projects that support walking and cycling. £45m has been allocated for the borough elements of the Streetspace for London programme in total over the first half of 2020/21.”

TfL has issued boroughs guidance on bidding for the funding.

Sam Monck, TfL’s head of investment delivery planning for healthy streets, said: “TfL’s financial situation and the need to prioritise London’s recovery has meant that the design, development and funding of pre-existing projects has been paused, including borough schemes funded by us.

“Many of these will be brought forward and accelerated under the Streetspace for London programme, whereas other schemes may be delivered later than planned.”

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News 7

Covid poses risk to Metrolink funding model, says GMCA

FUNDING

by Andrew Forster

TRANSPORT FOR Greater Manchester’s funding plan for Metrolink could be undermined if passengers fail to return to the light rail network in sufficient numbers after Covid-19.

In a report discussing the financial impact of the virus across the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, treasurer Steve Wilson told councillors Covid-19 could have a legacy of home working, “which will impact the challenging growth assumptions on which the Metrolink funding plan is based”.

Metrolink fare revenues are used to cover operating costs and the borrowing that was used to expand the system in recent years. TfGM’s financing costs were £9.35m in 2018/19.

TfGM takes the revenue risk on the network, which is operated

by KeolisAmey.

Passenger demand on Metrolink fell 95 per cent at the height of the lockdown.

TfGM took steps to reduce costs. Service frequencies were cut from every six minutes to 12 on 23 March and to every 20 minutes on 6 April. They were restored to every 12 minutes on Mondays to Saturdays on 26 May, with services every 20 minutes on Sundays.

“TfGM has been working closely with KeolisAmey to mitigate revenue losses as far as possible,” Wilson reported. “The reduction of service frequencies has resulted in reductions in operating costs of £1.2m per month through reduced variable costs such as electricity, mileage-driven maintenance, as well as KeolisAmey furloughing around 320 employees through the [Government’s] Covid job retention scheme.”

The Government has paid

Metrolink: fares pay off borrowing

GMCA two emergency tranches of funding to support Metrolink operations. The first, covering the period from mid-March to 8 June, was worth £11.6m, or circa £970,000 a week. TfGM says this covered about 73 per cent of the net weekly £1.33m deficit.

The Government has since provided Greater Manchester with a further £13.3m to cover expected losses between 12 May and 3 August as service frequencies increase.

Wilson said there uncertainty about how Metrolink passenger numbers would recover. “Our current sensitivity analysis projects that we can expect to experience net losses of between £40m to £50m (or potentially higher) for the remainder of the

financial year (from early June 2020 to 31 March 2021) in addition to the circa £4m of unfunded losses in the period from midMarch to 8 June.

“This is before any additional costs that may be incurred in order to manage social distancing protocols. These costs could potentially be in the order of £30m for the remainder of this financial year.”

Turning to the conurbation’s bus network, Wilson noted that the Government’s funding package for the bus industry included “urging” local authorities to continue paying reimbursement to operators for concessionary travel and subsidised bus services at ‘pre-Covid’ levels of activity.

TfGM has paid operators at circa 85 per cent of pre-Covid levels. All reimbursement is based on pre-Covid 19 activity levels with the exception of the ‘Our Pass’ concession for 16-18 year olds, “which is in a pilot phase, [and] where reimbursement is being made based on actual usage”, Wilson explained.

The Our Pass was introduced in September last year and entitles holders to free bus travel. Our Pass payments to operators were circa £70,000 a month in April and May compared to an average

month’s budget of circa £1.3m.

Said Wilson: “It is estimated that of the circa £6m per month paid to bus operators in both April and May, circa £1m relates to tendered services not provided; and £3.2m relates to concessionary journeys not made i.e. an ‘overpayment’ of circa £4.2m per month.”

TfGM is experiencing significant reductions in other non-grant income. “Should this remain the case this will significantly impact the budget for the current year and further savings would be required, which would very likely impact service levels,” said Wilson. The following income streams are currently running significantly below budget: • farebox income on services TfGM provides, primarily schools’ services (the budget was £0.5m a month); • bus station departure charges (budget was £0.3m a month); and • rental income, advertising, ticket sales commissions, income from issuing travel passes, and other specific service charges (budget was £0.5m a month).

An initial high-level assessment of TfGM’s capital programme for 2020/21 indicates a reduced spend of between £11m to £32m in 2020/21 because of Covid-19.

Councils predict £400m shortfall The ten Greater Manchester district councils are predicting a funding shortfall in excess of £400m this year because of Covid-19.

The councils estimate the full cost of the virus to them will be £574m, comprising £169m of additional costs and £405m of lost income.

They have received £168m from the Government’s £3.2bn coronavirus fund for councils, leaving a shortfall of £406m.

The above estimates are based on the May returns made by councils to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Authorities were instructed to assume Covid-19

restrictions remain in place until the end of July and then everything returns to normal (LTT 29 May).

One contributory factor to the size of the Greater Manchester councils’ losses is the likely loss of a dividend payment from Manchester Airport Group, in which the districts own 64.5 per cent of the shares. Airports have seen passenger numbers plummet because of international travel restrictions.

Manchester City Council owns 35.5 per cent of the shares and had expected to receive a dividend of £62m in 2020/21 (LTT 15 May).

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Virus threatens TfWM’s Metro spending

LIGHT RAIL

THE FUNDING plan for expanding the West Midlands Metro light rail network may have to be rethought if Covid-19 has a long-term impact on ridership levels, Transport for the West Midlands (TfWM) has said.

Metro currently connects Wolverhampton with Birmingham but TfWM is planning a big expansion of the network

over the next few years. It took Metro operations in-house in 2018 with the express purpose of capturing passenger revenues to plough into funding network extensions. The intention is for the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to undertake prudential borrowing, which would be repaid from fare revenues.

Discussing the impact of Covid-19, Mike Waters, TfWM’s

director of policy, strategy and innovation, told councillors: “There are potentially challenges for us in terms of how we fund existing and new infrastructure, e.g. Metro extensions.

“The implications at this time are not fully quantifiable due to uncertainties on future demand and the speed of return towards a ‘new normal’.”

Prudential borrowing is planned to provide £139.1m of

the £449.5m cost of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension that is due to open in 2023 (LTT 15 Mar 19).

In February, the WMCA announced plans to use prudential borrowing of £56.5m to fill a funding gap in the £227.2m cost of the one-mile Birmingham Eastside Metro extension from the city centre (LTT 07 Feb).

Opening of this route is expected in 2025.

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LTT800 12 June - 25 June 2020

8 News

Roadspace reallocation gathers pace LTT rounds up some of the latest actions and proposals to reallocate roadspace under Government-backed Covid-19 active travel programmes across the UK

STREETS

GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL plans to temporarily reallocate 25km of kerbside traffic lanes in the city centre to walking and cycling using some of its £3.5m award from the Scottish Government’s ‘Spaces for People’ fund. In most cases this will necessitate the removal of on-street parking.

Other measures being considered are: • implementing the George Square Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO) (LTT 07 Feb).

• changing waiting and loading restrictions • selective road closures • making narrow footways with limited space one-way for pedestrians • increasing the green man time at junctions or reducing traffic signal cycle times • changing pedestrian crossings to be automatically set at the green man, requiring vehicle, rather than pedestrian, activation.

Transport for London has been piloting ‘green man authority’ (LTT 12 Apr) Glasgow is exploring trialling e-scooter rental in the city centre, taking advantage of the UK Government’s promise to authorise trials, and increasing the number of bikes and electric bikes available in its bike hire scheme operated by Nextbike.

Kerbside parking could also be removed in neighbourhood shopping areas outside the city centre. This is being piloted in Partick.

Discussing the materials with which schemes will be implemented, George Gillespie, Glasgow’s executive director of neighbourhoods and sustainability, told councillors: “Where possible, delineation of road space converted to walking and cycling space will be done as unobtrusively as possible using signing and lining.

However, in most cases physical barriers will be required to provide an element of safety and to ensure motorists do not enter an area set aside for pedestrians and cyclists.

“Options for these barriers include pedestrian barriers, planters, concrete blocks or rubber kerbs (orcas). The pros and cons of each are being considered.”

The City of London Corporation is delivering a big programme of temporary measures in three phases, the first tranche of which were due to be implemented last week. Phases one and two will concentrate on Tier 1 streets, the through streets in the Square Mile, with phase three looking at local access (Tier 2) streets.

As well as roadspace reallocation, measures will include timed closures to motor vehicles and point closures to make streets one-way. Streets will have an advisory 15mph speed limit – the current limit is 20mph. The City is separately finalising its request to the DfT to allow mandatory 15mph limits to be introduced (LTT 06 Mar).

The City is to convert some on-street parking bays to cycle parking and dockless cycle hire, with additional dockless cycle parking capacity permitting more operators

Glasgow’s city centre: social distancing measures will be installed on the green and yellow streets

The City of London is proposing advisory 15mph limits

to have bikes in the Square Mile.

The London Borough of Wandsworth is making Putney High Street a pilot for temporary measures, which are due to be put in place by the middle of this month.

Neath and Port Talbot Council is to install a new bus stop on a street in Neath town centre for alighting passengers. This will ensure that passengers alighting and boarding don’t mix in the town’s bus station.

Bus operator Transdev has called on Manchester City Council to rethink a ban on buses in the heart of the city centre. The council introduced the blockade on a section of Deansgate, between Blackfriars Street and King Street West, on 16 May. Transdev says its services have been forced to take a lengthy diversion – denying direct access to bus stops on Deansgate.

Transdev chief executive Alex Hornby said: “Manchester City Council says that although the closure of this key section of Deansgate has been brought forward on a temporary basis, its aspiration is to make it permanent. That has serious implications for our customers who now face great difficulties in getting to the area, as not everyone can walk long distances to and from relocated bus stops.”

Cambridgeshire and the combined authority have plans for ‘pop-up’ cycle lanes for Cambridge city and other areas across the county. The initial schemes will be on Shelford Road, Trumpington Road, Chesterton Road, Milton High Street,

Girton Road and Kings Hedges Road.

One-way operation in Mill Road, Cambridge, is also proposed.

Campaign group Smarter Cambridge Transport criticised the painted advisory cycle lane introduced on Milton High Street. “This is not a ‘pop-up’ cylce lane in the sense that other local authorities are meaning,” it said. “It is a dangerously narrow advisory on-road cycle lane that provides no protection or incentive for people to start cycling. It is not what the Government asked for. It is worse than useless.”

Cambridgeshire plans to remove a bus lane on the Shelford Road to make room for a wider cycle lane and replace a bus lane on Trumpington Road with a cycle lane.

Entries, exits and circulatory areas of major roundabouts in Cambridge could be reduced to improve safety, particularly for cyclists. White line centre markings are being removed from some roads to allow cycle lanes to be added.

Birmingham City Council is finalising its plans. Waseem Zaffar, Birmingham’s cabinet member for transport and the environment, said: “We cannot go back to the volume of car traffic we had previously in our city – this would be bad for our communities, bad for the environment, and bad for the economy.”

The council is to audit dual carriageways to establish their potential for new cycle and/or bus priority lanes. Wide footways with low levels of pedestrian use could be converted to shared footway/cycle tracks.

Birmingham is also to review the design major investment schemes to maximise the potential for active travel and public transport.

In Northern Ireland, infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon has announced pop-up cycle lanes for Belfast on the Dublin Road and Grosvenor Road.

Schemes to widen footways and pedestrianise streets have already commenced.

West Sussex County Council has proposed 13 miles of temporary cycleways in areas heavily reliant on public transport.

The seven schemes would involve a combination of temporary traffic management, such as cones and signing, light segregation using ‘traffic wands’, planters, water-filled barriers, road markings and temporary 20mph speed limits. Subject to DfT approval, the schemes would be in introduced in Adur, Bognor Regis, Chichester, Crawley East Grinstead, and Worthing.

Kirklees Council is making changes in Huddersfield and Dewsbury town centres.

A number of streets in Huddersfield will be restricted to cyclists and pedestrians only.

An e-scooter hire facility is being explored for St George’s Square.

In Dewsbury, the council is planning to make the nearside lane of the Dewsbury Ring Road between A635 Leeds Road and A638 Bradford Road/Northgate for cyclists only. Halifax Road between Northgate and Dewsbury Ring Road will be closed to motor vehicles.

Footway blow for restaurants Restaurants and bars in the City of London could be prevented from reopening outside seating areas because the space is needed to allow pedestrians to social distance.

In all, 138 bars and restaurants in the Square Mile have a licence for tables and chairs to be provided on-street.

Bruce McVean, acting assistant director – city transportation, and Leah Coburn, major projects and programmes group manager, told members: “Many of the streets in the City are narrow with footways that only allow 2.2 metres (the standard minimum requirement) remaining once tables and chairs are in place. In these locations, officers would not recommend that the tables and chairs licence is re-instated while social distancing requirements are in place.”

Opportunities to reallocate carriageway space to provide temporary public seating near food and beverage outlets will be explored in due course.

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News 9

Driving licence requirement for e-scooters ‘excludes key users’ THE GOVERNMENT’S requirement that e-scooter riders must possess a driving licence will limit their appeal to a key audience of young people and should not be retained beyond the upcoming trials, the Urban Transport Group has said.

Participants in the trials of rental e-scooters will have to possess a full or provisional licence to use them.

The DfT said this week that the trials are still on course to be launched this month, even though legislation needs to be amended to allow them to go ahead. “We’ll be doing this very soon,” said a spokesman. “And we’re still on track to begin the first trials by the end of June.”

Announcing the plan to fasttrack e-scooter rental trials last month, the DfT said e-scooters would “help encourage more people off public transport and onto greener alternatives” during Covid-19 restrictions.

A rapidly arranged DfT consultation on the trials closed last week. The DfT proposed that escooters should have a maximum speed of 12.5mph, two wheels (one front and one rear), weigh less than 35 kilograms, and have handlebars. It also asked for views on increasing their speed limit to 15.5mph, which is the speed limit for electrically assisted pedal cycles.

E-scooters will continue to be classed as motor vehicles during the trials. Users will therefore have to have a full or provisional driving licence. They will also need insurance (provided via the rental companies) but will not have to wear a helmet.

The e-scooters will be permitted to be used on the road and in cycle lanes and tracks but not on footpaths. E-scooters will be exempt from vehicle registration and licensing, and also from type approval requirements.

LTT has read the responses of the Urban Transport Group and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), as well as a report published this week by the London Cycling Campaign (see panel). The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation did not submit a consultation response. “We prepared a response but held off [submitting it] as we wanted to get a broader perspective from our members before submitting,” Andrew Hugill, the CIHT’s director of

David Davies

E-SCOOTERS

Rental e-scooters on a Stockholm street

policy and technical affairs, told LTT this week.

Discussing the DfT’s proposed specification for permissable e-scooters, the Urban Transport Group suggests the addition of a minimum wheel size (and associated ground clearance) to help riders navigate uneven road surfaces.

“Most models of e-scooters have a wheel size of 8-10 inches, these small wheels make it difficult to safely travel over bumps and potholes,” says the UTG. “Safely accommodating these kinds of vehicles would require a significant increase in highway maintenance standards, something that transport authorities will find difficult to deliver given the ongoing backlog in road maintenance and the associated funding gap.

“Larger wheels may help in reducing the likelihood of riders falling off when travelling over uneven road surfaces. They are also easier to control at speed.”

The UTG also wants other minimum safety requirements, including front and back lights; front and back lever brakes; indicator lights; and a bell. It opposes the 15.5mph limit.

The UTG and the PACTS

both recommend a maximum power rating of 250W rather than 350 that the DfT has proposed.

Says PACTS: “The maximum motor power affects the acceleration ability of e-scooters and is as much a safety concern as the maximum speed limit. Rapid acceleration combined with the high manoeuvrability of e-scooters increases the risk to the rider and other road users nearby. A higher motor power will also make it easier to carry a passenger on an e-scooter. This may be unlawful in the trial but it will happen.”

The UTG questions whether the requirement for users to have a driving licence is a sustainable policy.

“For the trials (if possible) and certainly in the longer term, to open up access to more people it may be preferable to introduce mandatory training for e-scooters (in person and in a safe environment), rather than require users to be full licence holders.

“Requiring a driving licence is likely to exclude many younger people (17-30s), a key target market for e-scooters and a demographic who are increasingly choosing not to learn to

drive.”

The UTG says evidence from elsewhere suggests that requirements for users to hold a licence will prove impossible to enforce anyway.

“A study of injuries to escooter users in Los Angeles and Santa Monica found that ten per cent of injured riders were under 18 years old despite the fact that scooter-renters had to prove that they were over 18 with a licence,” it says.

As for helmet wearing, the UTG says use of a cycle helmet should be “at the very least recommended, and ideally, mandated”.

The UTG and PACTS both believe that the DfT’s plan to restrict e-scooter trials to rental schemes will prove impossible to enforce.

“Whilst trials of hire schemes might seem a way to ‘test the water’, in reality they will let the genie out of the bottle,” says PACTS. “Once e-scooter hire trials go-ahead, it will be taken as a green light for individuals to purchase and use their own escooters on public roads and elsewhere.

“Many e-scooters owners will not realise – or will simply choose to ignore – any legal distinction. The police will be placed in an impossible situation and be unable to enforce the law.”

Says the UTG: “Without clear messaging, existing [e-scooter] owners may think they can now use their e-scooters on public roads and the wider public may assume e-scooters are allowed and purchase their own. The situation could quickly become unmanageable and the police may lack the resources to keep illegal e-scooters off the road.”

Cyclists welcome e-scooter trials The London Cycling Campaign has endorsed the introduction of e-scooters onto UK roads.

It believes their authorisation will create a stronger lobby for more segregated lanes for use by e-scooters, bicycles and cargo-bikes.

The LCC’s report, Micromobility and Active Travel in the UK, says e-scooters offer a cleaner, low carbon alternative to cars, and buses with space restrictions, for those who can’t or don’t want to cycle. This will help clean up London’s air and tackle climate change.

“Increased use of cycle tracks by e-scooter users could increase the pressure on transport authorities to provide appropriate protected space for micromobility users including those

cycling,” says the LCC. “A coalition of personal users of micromobility, in the wider sense, and commercial e-cargo freight users, could be a strong force lobbying for wider lanes to suit all users.”

Based on data from across the world, the LCC says that 36 per cent of e-scooter riders transfer from private vehicles, 37 per cent from walking, 13 per cent from public transport and 9 per cent from cycling. In European cities the shift from public transport is higher.

The paper was drafted by the LCC’s policy forum, led by Pearl Ahrens and Megan Sharkey. l Micromobility and active travel in the UK is available at https://tinyurl.com/yaod3zaz

Webinar for new active travel tool guidance

ACTIVE TRAVEL

THE DFT has released new user guidance for its updated active mode appraisal toolkit (AMAT), that is used to predict the impacts of active travel schemes, ranging from capital investments to behaviour change programmes.

AMAT quantifies a range of potential benefits from active travel including: • health improvements from increased levels of physical activity • transport decarbonisation impacts • air quality and climate benefits associated with modal shift Jeremy Clarke, the DfT’s economic advisor for active and accessible travel, said: “I’m confident this will really help local stakeholders to make the case for future spending on active travel.”

A webinar to launch the guidance, developed by consultant WSP, is being held on Wednesday 24 June from 10.30-11.45. l To register for the event, visit: https://tinyurl.com/ya93bmtc

In Brief

Capital’s cycle hire sets May record London’s Santander Cycles scheme recorded 1.12 million hires in May, the highest number for that month in the scheme’s ten year history. Hire rates fell about 26 per cent following the introduction of Covid-19 travel restrictions in March. Fourteen new docking stations and more than 1,700 new bikes will be delivered to help keep up with demand.

Three new docking stations will be built around Clapham Common, four alongside the Cycleway 4 route, which will connect Tower Bridge Road with Rotherhithe, and one at nearby Canada Water. A further six docking stations will be built by the end of the year at undisclosed locations. The additional 1,700 bikes will increase the fleet to more than 14,000. The increase of nearly 15 per cent represents the largest single increase in bikes for the scheme since 2013.

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News 11

Gtr Manchester CAZ delayed, as Covid-19 impact assessed

AIR QUALITY

by Andrew Forster

IMPLEMENTATION OF a clean air zone (CAZ) across the Greater Manchester conurbation has been delayed until 2022 because of Covid-19. The councils are currently assessing how the virus may affect their clean air plan.

Implementation of a conurbation-wide CAZ had been planned for summer 2021. A proposed consultation on the plan due to take place this summer has been put on hold because of the virus (in the last issue we incorrectly stated the project as a whole was on hold, which is incorrect – sincere apologies).

Covid-19 has changed traffic volumes and pollution levels, raising questions about the relevance of the modelling underpinning the clean air plan.

In a report to last week’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority meeting, councillor Andrew Western, the leader of Trafford Council and the Greater Manchester portfolio lead for a ‘green city’, said: “The Government’s joint air quality unit [JAQU, of DfT and Defra officials] confirmed on 1 May that authorities should continue to develop measures and packages to tackle the exceedances predicted from modelling to date, subject to further emissions factor toolkit analysis to be provided by JAQU shortly.

“Furthermore, there should be no revised economic analysis undertaken without JAQU consent, on the basis that the outcomes of Covid-19 are not yet understood, and that, for now, authorities should proceed on the basis of their current proposals.”

He added: “To understand the wider impacts of the Covid-19 outbreak the Greater Manchester clean air plan team will make an assessment of the possible impacts of Covid19 to inform a technical briefing note for decision-makers.

“This assessment will include: • whether the assumptions underpinning the GM clean air plan are still valid; • whether Greater Manchester will remain in exceedance of legal nitrogen dioxide limits under the proposals as they currently stand; • the measures proposed in the package for consultation, and whether the proposed support package will be sufficient.”

The councils had originally proposed the scheme apply to heavy goods vehicles, buses, coaches, taxis and private hire vehicles from

Gtr Manchester: 600 buses are too old to be retrofitted

summer 2021, (making it a Class B CAZ), with vans added in 2023 (making it then a Class C scheme). The councils said this would give time for the second hand market in compliant vans to develop.

The Government at first rejected this suggestion, saying vans should be part of the scheme from 2021.

In March, however, the Government told the councils that it would accept the delay to vans until 2023.

Daily charges for non-compliant vehicles will be set at £7.50 for taxis, private hire vehicles and light goods vehicles, and £100 for HGVs, buses and coaches.

The councils originally asked the Government for a £59m clean freight fund to help upgrade light and heavy goods vehicles, minibuses and coaches. Based on further discussions with the affected sectors, the councils increased their request to £98m, with funding targeted at small local businesses, sole traders and the voluntary sector.

The councils also asked the Government for a further circa £10m hardship fund to support the most vulnerable individuals, companies and organisations for whom the standard grants on offer will not be enough.

Environment minister Rebecca Pow told the councils in March that the Government would provide an initial £41m support package, of which £15.4m is for bus retrofit, £10.7m for private hire vehicles, £8m for HGVs, £4.6m for coaches, and £2.1m for minibuses. This is on top of the £36m awarded to the councils last year to help set

up the CAZ. Pow said the Government expected implementation of the CAZ in 2021 and for compliance with the EU nitrogen dioxide limit values to be reached by 2024.

Councillor Western wrote back to Pow in April. Reflecting on the economic damage being caused by Covid-19, he said: “The groups most affected by our clean air plan may need even further assistance than we had anticipated at the time of our previous submission to Government.”

He asked the Government to ensure a clear funding position for hackney carriages and light goods vehicles. A recent assessment by the councils suggested that as many as 90,000 vans could be non-compliant with the CAZ if it came into operation at the end of 2021 (LTT 07 Feb).

Western said the £15.4m buses funding would “provide the basis for developing a model to retrofit the circa 1,000 buses in Greater Manchester that are capable of being converted”.

“However, there remain a further 600+ vehicles for which there are no accredited retrofit options.” The Prime Minister’s announcement of a £5bn five-year fund for buses and cycling, that would include funding of 4,000 zero emission buses, is seen as a possible funding route (LTT 21 Feb).

The councils had planned to consult on minimum licensing standards for the taxi and private hire vehicle trade in parallel with the clean air plan consultation.

Western said councils were “very aware that the impact of pandemic management policies are being felt very strongly within the taxi trade”.

The licensing proposals will feature a basic and common minimum in key areas, while allowing districts to exceed these minima if they want.

The proposed vehicle emission standards include: diesel – Euro 6 and above; petrol – Euro 4 and above; vehicle ages (under five years at first licensing, none older than ten years); vehicle colour (black for Taxi/Hackney, white for PHV); vehicle livery (common GM design with council logo incorporated); accessibility (all taxis to be wheelchair accessible).

From 2025 all newly licensed vehicles will need to be zero emission capable (ZEC).

From 2028 all vehicles will need to be ZEC.

Motoring groups unite to fight traffic plans

ROAD TRAFFIC

THREE MOTORING groups are teaming up to campaign against local authority and Government policies to restrict vehicle use.

The initiative brings together Fair Fuel UK, the Alliance of British Drivers, and the Motorcycle Action Group, as well as representatives from the road haulage industry. ABD environment spokesman Paul Biggs

mentions the plan in a letter to LTT this week (see page 28).

Fair Fuel UK claims credit for stopping fuel duty increases. It is run by the TV motoring journalist Quentin Wilson and campaign founder Howard Cox. Cox has also served as secretary to the AllParty Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair fuel for UK motorists and UK hauliers. It does not currently appear to be active.

FFUK says big reductions in emissions can be achieved by using fuel catalysts rather than taxes and charges.

Law firm The Black Antelope Group, FFUK, and the ABD have just issued a pre-legal action protocol letter to London mayor Sadiq Khan and Transport for London concerning the lack of consultation on this month’s increase to the central London congestion charge.

The charge will rise from £11.50 to £15 from 22 June and the operating hours will lengthen, from the current 07.00 to 18.00 to 07.00 to 22.00. The charge will also operate seven days a week rather than just on weekdays.

Khan has said the increase and extended hours are temporary measures “to support the transformation of London’s streets” as Covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased (LTT 29 May).

NO2 & PM follow different paths

AIR QUALITY

THE BIG reduction in nitrogen dioxide concentrations seen in towns and cities during the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions has not been mirrored by fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations.

Transport for London has reported 20 monitoring sites in London where average daily NO2 concentrations fell by more than 23 per cent after travel restrictions were introduced in March.

Concentrations at the Marylebone Road site fell 48 per cent fall and on Oxford Street by 47 per cent. On the Strand concentrations dropped 42 per cent.

In its interim guidance to boroughs on the Streetspace for London programme, TfL said the drop on Oxford Street has “strengthened the case for pedestrianisation”.

Officers told the West Midlands Combined Authority’s transport delivery committee this week that NO2 concentrations in Birmingham were 42 per cent down in April compared against the five-year average.

Reading and West Yorkshire Combined Authority have also reported sharp drops (LTT 29 May).

The NO2 reductions are associated with the steep fall in traffic volumes.

Jake Thrush, associate policy advisor at Transport for the West Midlands, said the fall in PM2.5 concentrations had not been as marked.

“This reflects the many sources of fine particulates, not just motor vehicle emissions – potentially including garden waste burning, agricultural muck spreading, and industrial and other emissions blowing over from continental Europe, which occurred to an unusual extent in spring 2020.”

A West Yorkshire Combined Authority officer report said last month: “PM emissions have been static, a consequence, potentially, of the use of domestic wood burners (during a cold snap) and an increase in domestic bonfires (possibly linked to council refuse tips and waste recycling centres being temporarily closed due to Covid-19).”

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LTT Online Reader Discussion Report

Bus operators restores routes but ask: what happens if the money runs out?

Last week’s LT-TV discussing put the spotlight on the bus industry to hear how it’s coping with Covid-19, and what the industry might look like in the aftermath of the pandemic. It proved to be a lively 90 minutes of chat. Andrew Forster summarises some of the talking points THE PANEL discussion to kick-off the session included two bus managers who explained what life was like on the frontline: James Freeman, managing director of First West of England, and Alex Hornby, chief executive officer of Transdev Blazefield, which operates in Lancashire, North and West Yorkshire, and Greater Manchester.

“The first thing to say is I now know what it’s like to work in the cigarette production industry,” quipped Freeman, pointing out that politicians from the Prime Minister down had repeatedly stated the dangers of using public transport because of Covid-19. “People have really taken him [Boris Johnson] at his word, we’ve noticed the effect of that.”

Patronage on First West of England services dropped to 9 per cent of normal levels at the low point during the lockdown. The operator has set capacity limits for each vehicle type using twometre social distancing. A typical double decker has capacity for 20 passengers.

There is speculation the Government will reduce the recommended social distancing to 1.5 or one metre. But Freeman said such changes would achieve next to nothing on buses. Reducing social distancing to one metre would allow only one extra passenger on a double decker, he said. “So that’s a waste of time.”

First has developed an app that lets passengers waiting at stops know how many spare seats the approaching bus has. “That’s been incredibly well received locally,” said Freeman. “The feedback has been really stunning.”

James Freeman: Reducing social distancing to one metre will do little to increase bus capacity

Service levels are now being increased as lockdown restrictions ease. But Freeman said it wasn’t just a matter of reinstating the old timetables – resources were being concentrated on the busiest corridors.

“In order to make best use of our available buses and, more importantly drivers, we’ve had to concentrate our efforts where the people are. So there are bits of my network that haven’t seen a bus since March.

“And actually, I’m not at all sure I know how they’re ever going to see another bus until somebody comes up with a new idea.” These were areas where the pre-Covid services were very marginally commercial, he said.

“The people who use them, as is always the way, for them it’s really

Alex Hornby: cleanliness now customers’ number one priority for bus travel

important but in terms of the mass market, we have simply been driven to run where people need us most. But that’s defining the network and the network already looks smaller.”

Alex Hornby agreed with Freeman that the bus had been “demonised” but he had an upbeat message, explaining how his business was working flatout to change customer perceptions.

Customer surveys showed that cleanliness was now people’s number one concern for bus travel. “It’s the first time I think punctuality has ever been overtaken, but as we all know, punctuality isn’t an issue at the moment because we have congestion-free streets.”

He explained the steps Transdev Blazefield was taking to keep its vehicles and restore passenger confidence.

Passenger numbers were slowly showing signs of recovery, said Hornby.

“We threw a party the other day, because we were 23 per cent of our normal levels, which was a shocking five per cent movement. And to be fair, now that the rain’s arrived, it’s come back down to around 90 per cent of normal levels.”

Freeman’s big concern was about how long the Government would be prepared to continue providing emergency funding to the industry. “It’s clear that to keep the public transport business running, it’s going to cost lots of money. And I do find myself wondering what’s going to happen when the money runs out. Or somebody says, ‘um, is it worth all that money?’”

Roger French, the retired managing director of Go-Ahead’s Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company, emphasised the low cost of keeping the bus industry running through Covid-19 compared with the railways.

The Government has given the bus industry in England outside London an initial £167m for 12 weeks and a subsequent £254m for 12 weeks (overlapping). French contrasted this with the railways, which were carrying far fewer passengers than buses and yet were, he said, receiving about £180m of support a week.

Amid all the uncertainty about how many passengers would return to buses, French voiced optimism that young people would return quite quickly because they were likely to have less fears about the health dangers.

Be bold or Covid will dictate industry’s future, says Bray THE GREEN agenda could be key to the bus industry’s recovery after Covid-19 recedes, said Jonathan Bray, director of the Urban Transport Group, which represents the city-region transport authorities in England.

“So where we are now? Well, as we all know, we’ve got rid of most of the passengers. The industry is now nearly entirely public funded in our areas, mostly by local government.”

Bray shared operators’ concerns that the messaging from Government may have lasting damage for public perceptions of bus travel. “We’re in danger of demonising the mode in a way that sticks in people’s minds that might be hard to [change] later,” he said.

“I think during the restart and recovery phase, the industry is probably going to

Jonathan Bray: buses must grasp the green agenda for recovery

have to super-demonstrate on hygiene.

And when I say the industry, I think public transport as a whole. There’s obviously some very good practice, but are we in a

space where we need a guarantee?”

Turning to the way the bus industry was currently being supported, Bray said: “I think we need to reorganise the funding in a way that recognises the reality. At the moment local government is being asked to reimburse for concessionary passengers that aren’t travelling and for supported services that aren’t running.

“There is a better way of doing this by routing the funding via the city regions.

That also enables you to better plan public transport as a whole.”

The UTG has so far failed to persuade the Government to adopt this approach.

Looking to the future of the bus industry, Bray said: “I think moving on to the future is going to be tough. It wasn’t looking too great for the bus in many ways before Covid-19 in terms of what was hap-

pening on travel trends.

“So if we carry on doing what we did before, we start from a much lower base, and it’s not hard to see what the consequences of that might be.

“I think most politicians are saying that they want the economic revival to be a green economic revival. And central to that, I believe, is greening the grid and electrification. And that includes greening the bus and having a consistent strategy for that rather than finding the money to do it when it’s available.

“I think the final thing I would say is, if we can’t be bold now, then when are we going to do it?

“And if we don’t think big and we don’t think bold, then the legacy of Covid-19 will determine our future rather than us determining that future.”

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LTT Online Reader Discussion Report

Bus operators have answered Covid’s call to action

Two bus operators described how they’d been responding to the Covid-19 challenges at last week’s

It was great for LTT to provide the opportunity for two senior bus industry representatives to join the panel at last week’s online discussion and bring the local transport professional community up to date on what’s been, to say the least, an interesting three months for bus companies.

Faced with passenger demand falling off a cliff virtually overnight when the Covid-19 lockdown began on 23 March, operators immediately introduced reduced timetables to around 40 per cent of normal service levels necessitating the compilation of revised schedules that normally take weeks, rather than days, to compile and refine to implement. This was all achieved despite no immediate guarantee of funding for the journeys which continued almost empty, but enabling essential workers to access employment and food shops.

As well as demonstrating trust that the Government would provide funding, operators have shown welcome further flexibility by changing timetables with added journeys in response to feedback from those needing to travel, and cooperating with other bus companies to accept tickets and coordinate bus times where sensible in response to the easing of competition regulations.

All this has hopefully demonstrated that there is a strong commitment to the public service ethos, despite most of the industry being operated on a commercial basis, and often criticised for putting its finances first. In fact, at the moment, the financial equation is a worrying one, and survival of many companies – large and small – has depended upon a series of government support initiatives, which have been discussed and negotiated literally on a week-by-week basis.

The trust, cooperation and responsible approach that has been needed to get through this crisis throughout the period of lockdown has now extended to the latest phase when reverting timetables towards more normal levels, despite, once again funding streams being uncertain for some time and passenger levels still really well down on pre-Covid levels.

Bus companies have also demonstrated that they can be adroit and innovative in communicating with passengers about how services are being modified and, in particular, offering reassurance of enhanced cleaning regimes and measures introduced to ensure safe travelling.

LTT online discussion. They both belong to the Ten Per Cent Club of bus industry innovators, and its

All this in a situation where the official Government advice has been highly negative towards public transport use with a virtual instruction to people not to use buses if they can conceivably avoid it. Both the bus company speakers at the LTT online event showed excellent video clips demonstrating measures being taken and ensuring passengers feel welcome to travel by bus. A 700-strong survey reported by Alex Hornby, chief executive at Transdev Blazefield showed that, for what must be the first time ever, cleanliness has overtaken punctuality as the customer’s number one demand.

Overall the bus industry has demonstrated its professionalism, flexibility, cost effectiveness and fleetness of foot, by quickly adapting to unprecedented challenges and it can be trusted to provide a service for passengers in the most extreme of circumstances with minimal call on public funding.

The future is still unclear, and it will take a joint effort by the operators, the Government and local authorities to rebuild patronage and adjust services further, as new patterns of travel are demonstrated in the post-pandemic period.

A particular challenge is providing capacity under the social distancing regime that has dramatically cut the numbers who can be carried onboard individual vehicles. Both vehicle and driver availability are now at their limits, as James Freeman, managing director at First West of England explained.

I know my colleagues in the industry are keen to collaborate and work together to get things back on track with their fellow professionals in the transport authorities, and the relevant parts of government and its agencies.

The bus carries many many more people than the rail system in Britain, and that is even the case now with trains virtually running empty outside of commuter land. The Government has committed large sums to support the continuation of rail operations, and made changes to the commitments of franchisees to remove all business risk. We’d like to think that there’ll be a time for serious discussion about a more level playing field on future funding between buses and trains.

We’d also hope that the Government will remember that announcing new policy rules like the wearing of face covering and social

secretary Roger French adds his own assessment here. distancing requirements at short notice is a huge challenge for the industry, and greater notice is needed, certainly more than three days, and at least a week.

Likewise, proper consultation by local authorities on the obviously necessary subject of street and road changes to reflect post-pandemic traffic patterns and the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, but recognising where proposals potentially disadvantage buses and their customers, and add to costs.

One reward for all the effort put in by operators to rise to the challenge of the circumstances has been the generous kindness and serious recognition in the community of bus workers, now often held up to a similar plateau of respect to our remarkable NHS staff.

Bus operators and their drivers cannot be policemen, so they can simply do their best to support passengers by information and encouragement on matters like face mask wearing and social distancing and how people should use the limited seating capacity. But they are committed to making the experience of bus travel as comfortable as they can in very difficult circumstances. New digital technology is being deployed to help with service information including the ability to check how many seats are available on a bus as it approaches a stop.

We do hope that it won’t be too long before the Government can step back from the blanket and unhelpful advice of “avoiding public transport”.

Our eyes must remain on the prize of how the bus can remain a key part of the solution to the ultimately bigger threat of climate change. We want to remain inside the active travel discussion – indeed, cycling and walking can help buses overcome congestion and be the best first/last mile solution – and how together we can be the key to our towns and cities moving freely, easily and sustainably.

Roger French is secretary of the Ten Per Cent Club, a forum for bus industry professionals. ,

Temporary traffic changes: a mixed bag for operators SOME LOCAL authorities are engaging better with bus operators than others about temporary roadspace reallocation measures to promote active travel during social distancing.

The Government and the devolved administrations are encouraging and funding councils across Britain to install temporary measures such as cycle lanes and road closures to promote active travel as Covid-19 movement restrictions are gradually eased.

FirstBus strategy director John Dowie told the meeting that council engage-

ment with bus operators varied widely.

“I think it’s proving what we already know that it’s so variable in terms of local areas, and the strength of the partnership.

“I was part of a conversation in one major English city where it could not have been more collaborative, looking at how not just walking, cycling but also bus could benefit and thinking ahead about locking-in [benefits] beyond Covid. So a brilliant two-way discussion.”

But he cited another city, which he did not name, where bus routes had

been severed by traffic management changes, without any engagement between the council and operators.

“The irony is that the pavements that are now unusable for bus passengers are actually quite socially distanced.

And our bus passengers are being sent to very pokey pavements.

“I could have guessed which authority would do what beforehand,” said Dowie. In the city where there had been no engagement, there was “a history of not engaging with the operator, and taking very short-term actions without really a strategy being

present”.

Jonathan Bray, director of the Urban Transport Group, said: “Personally and as an organisation, I think it's great that we are seeing and encouraging more people to walk and cycle.

“But we need to ensure that isn’t done in a way that jeopardises the recovery of the bus and we don’t end up with, you know, active travel, kind of circling the corpse of the bus.

“We’re doing our best to use our channels to do that, we’ll continue to seek to do that, to try and square these circles about road space reallocation.”

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14 News

In Brief

Covid-19 light rail payments The DfT has announced the distribution of the £29m to help light rail operators cope with the cost of Covid-19. The largest slice has been allocated to Greater Manchester for Metrolink – £13.3m. The Tyne and Wear Metro receives £7.6m, Nottingham Express Transit £3.5m, South Yorkshire Supertram £2.6m, and the West Midlands Metro £1.6m. The funding covers the 12-week period 12 May to 3 August, and includes review points.

Leics puts bus route reviews on hold Leicestershire County Council has paused its programme of supported bus route reviews because of the uncertainty created by Covid-19. The review programme was to cover 33 individual contracts and was intended to deliver £400,000 of annual savings. Sixteen reviews have been completed.

Announcing a pause to the programme, Ann Carruthers, Leicestershire’s director of environment and transport, said: “It would be inadvisable to review passenger data at this time, as it will not be possible to arrive at reasoned and logical conclusions for future service provision.” She said it may be possible to continue the review process in due course and deliver further savings but “much will depend on market conditions and the public’s attitude towards bus travel in the medium to longterm once social distancing restrictions are eased”.

More councils signal major budget problems from virus FUNDING

by Andrew Forster

MORE COUNCILS have warned of financial hardship from Covid-19 unless the Government provides further financial assistance.

Councillors on Hertfordshire County Council have received a report summarising the financial effects authorities belonging to the Society of County Treasurers (SCT).

Scott Crudgington, Hertfordshire County Council’s director of resources, said that, based on submissions to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s survey in May, the SCT estimated its members faced a net financial cost of £2.6bn in 2020/21 – £1.4bn more than what the Government has allocated them in emergency support.

The estimate is based on the MHCLG’s instruction that, for their May returns, councils assume that restrictions remained unchanged until the end of July and the situation then reverted entirely back to the pre-Covid-19 situation (LTT 29 May).

The SCT says the £2.6bn estimate reflects additional costs of £1.5bn and lost income of £1.068bn, the latter including lost business rates and council tax.

Hertfordshire’s own estimate

Highlands: huge cost and long-term impact

for the cost of Covid-19 has risen to £64m and exceeds the grant it has received by £17m. The estimate excludes the county’s proportion of losses from business rates and council tax, as these are collected by district councils.

“Hertfordshire’s total pressure remains lower than average in comparison to other county councils,” said Crudgington. “Recent discussions across the sector have identified the losses in council tax and business rates are potentially the most detrimental to the medium-term finances of the council, and the wider sector.”

He said a five per cent reduction in council tax and business rates would produce an annual financial budget deficit in the region of £40m.

East Sussex County Council told the MHCLG it faces additional pressures of around £49m this year. It has received £26m of grant.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea estimates that Covid-19 will cost it £44.5m this year, comprising £11.1m of extra spending and £33.4m of lost income. The latter includes £14.3m of lost parking revenues.

Kensington & Chelsea has received £10.2m of Government grant.

The council was already seeking savings of £17m in 2021/22 and £8m in 2022/23.

Chief executive Barry Quirk said: “The savings required will almost certainly now be higher. Some costs and income losses will continue into future years and we will receive less council tax and business rates.”

Edward Foster, Highland Council’s head of corporate finance, explained the outcome of two different potential scenarios.

In the ‘mid-case’ scenario a budget gap of £65.7m is projected, whereas in the most severe scenario the gap is £96.9m. The

council has not reported the results of the best case scenario.

The mid-case scenario assumes lockdown ends in June but is reinstated from October to December. The worst case assumes lockdown applies throughout the year.

Highland had budgeted for fee and charge income of £55m this year but many of these streams had “dropped to near zero overnight”, said Foster.

He said the impact on the wider Highland economy was expected to be large as businesses fold and jobs are lost. “The longterm impacts of these factors will be felt by the council, both in terms of reduced income generation and increasing demand for services over many years to come.”

The council’s general fund reserve stands at only £15.5m.

The Scottish Government is providing councils with £45m through the Scottish Welfare Fund and holding £50m centrally to be allocated if required. Ministers have also confirmed that £155m of funding through Barnett consequentials, arising as a result of the UK government providing additional funding for local authorities, will be allocated in full to councils. Highland expects to receive about £7m of this.

‘Time to reunite track West Mids e-scooter trial plans and train’ – expert FUNDING

RAIL

THE GOVERNMENT should use the upheaval of Covid-19 as an opportunity to bring rail infrastructure and operations back together in one organisation, says a report by the Rail Reform Group.

Report author David Prescott says integration is needed because of looming changes to railway signalling. “At privatisation the network/train operator interface largely revolved around the wheel/rail interface... and for some the electric traction power provision. Signalling was a managed activity relying largely on passive equipment and a human interface (drivers).

“Whilst these interfaces still apply, a totally new interface in the form of ‘cab signalling’ has arrived, which substantially increases the involvement of the network operator in physical train

operation. As this is seen as the new future for signalling, there is a huge programme of new signalling works fast approaching that will require very detailed, complex and safety critical working between operators and Network Rail.”

Prescott says the industry’s fragmentation means “linkages between costs and benefits, so fundamental to the operation of an efficient industry, have been completely lost and with it all natural pressures on cost control”.

With all the franchises currently under state control and an urgent need to reduce costs, the opportunity for integration exists “before the massive, complex and costly provision of network-wide in-cab signalling starts”.

The elephant on the line – has the time come for vertical integration is available at https://tinyurl.com/y7k5otqh

TRANSPORT FOR the West Midlands has set out e-scooter rental scheme trials are likely to operate in the conurbation.

The Government hopes to have trials launched across the UK later this month. It says escooters will provide the public with a new mode of transport at a time when the public is being advised not to use public transport because of Covid-19.

Mike Waters, Transport for the West Midlands’ director of policy, strategy and innovation, told the combined authority’s board last week that the intention was for a “regionally coordinated programme of escooter trials” that would be a “close partnership between local highway authorities and Transport for the West Midlands”.

“Local highway authorities would lead the zone identification [for trials], road safety and traffic management issues, with TfWM supporting through

coordination, resourcing and facilitating,” he said.

Birmingham City Council has volunteered to act as lead authority to provide a coordinating perspective for all the involved highway authorities, supported by an officer project group. TfWM will provide a single point of contact to other national trial zones and the DfT. The West Midlands trials could explore matters such as: • targeting several operators to maximise learning about the user response to different service models and charging regimes • integration / interaction with pre-existing initiatives such as bike hire and Swift [TfWM’s smart ticketing] • assessing mode share impacts • exploring vehicle performance and data sharing standards • testing e-scooters in different environments such as campuses, transport interchanges, parkand-ride, local centres, city centre locations, urban corridors

and more rural settings • investigating safety, interaction with other vulnerable road users, social inclusion and accessibility impacts, cultural and physical barriers, enforcement and vehicle performance issues.

Discussing the interplay between the e-scooter trials and the conurbation’s bike hire scheme on which procurement began last autumn, Waters said: “The e-scooter trials will be required to be limited in physical scope and duration, and as such will not have an immediate direct material commercial implication for the bike hire contract.”

Any wider roll-out post-trial of e-scooters would have to ensure they were “compatible with and don’t undermine the bike hire arrangements”, he said. Conversely, it would be important to ensure the bike hire contract “doesn’t fetter the ability to exploit the learning from the [e-scooter] trials”.

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News 15

Rail & bus industries welcome mandatory face coverings

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

by Andrew Forster

PASSENGERS MUST wear face coverings on all public transport in England from Monday 15 June. The new policy, designed to limit Covid-19 transmission, caught many in the public transport industry by surprise.

Until now, face coverings have been encouraged in England.

Elsewhere, the Scottish Government says passengers are “expected” to wear face coverings. The Welsh Government encourages their use. The Northern Ireland Executive is reviewing its policy.

The Government’s decision to make masks mandatory in England has been welcomed by the rail industry and London mayor Sadiq Khan. Both had lobbied for the mandatory requirement. Kahn said the Gov-

Face coverings: no choice

ernment had “finally seen sense”.

Briefing journalists this week, Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines said the rail industry had been lobbying for mandatory face coverings for weeks.

Explaining the industry’s position, he said that, if there was to

be a return to mass public transport use, there had to be a recognition that the recommended social distancing of two metres at all times was impossible. Face coverings would improve public confidence in such circumstances, he said.

Barry White, chief executive of Transport for the North, said: “We are acutely aware that, as lockdown measures continue to evolve and public transport usage increases, there are likely to be occasions were social distancing is either difficult or, at times not possible. Measures such as the use of face coverings clearly make sense.”

The bus industry welcomed the initiative. Confederation of Passenger Transport chief executive Graham Vidler said it would give passengers “the confidence to travel”.

Anthony Smith, chief execu-

tive of user watchdog Transport Focus, said: “People thinking of returning to public transport have told us they want face coverings to be used by all passengers.”

The RMT trade union, representing many public transport workers, raised concerns. General secretary Mick Cash expressed concern about how the policy would be enforced. “It’s clear that the Government and industry bosses are expecting our members to police this policy.

That will put over-stretched rail workers right in the front line once again and will leave them at risk of being abused, assaulted and spat at by aggressive passengers refusing to comply.”

Face coverings are thought unlikely to prevent someone catching coronavirus but it is thought they may help prevent someone carrying the virus from infecting others.

Coach sector calls for Covid ‘changes bus emergency funding landscape forever’

COACHES

COACH OPERATORS are urging the Government to give their sector emergency financial support to prevent businesses going bust because of Covid-19.

The pandemic and lockdown restrictions have led coach bookings to collapse. One high profile casualty has been Shearings whose parent company recently went into administration (LTT 29 May).

More than 550 operators have signed a letter to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak warning that more firms will go bust without Government assistance. The letter is backed by the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

“Currently, only two per cent of coaches that are normally involved in a wide range of services are being used and bookings across the sector are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until summer 2021,” say the operators.

“Unlike other parts of the leisure and tourism sector, adapting our businesses to social distancing is extremely difficult and, in many cases, will be impractical.”

Operators have cut costs by mothballing vehicles and placing staff on furlough but say they still face costs averaging £1,900 a day.

They say the costs have been

compounded by the failure to classify coach operators as a leisure business, making operators ineligible for a Covid-19 business rates holiday and grant, forcing them to rely on local authority discretion.

Operators want the Government to make a £65m a month cash injection into the industry, with the grant tapering off as bookings increase.

They request a flexible job retention scheme (furlough) to allow staff to remain on furlough until business returns to normal, which will be beyond the scheme’s current October end date.

They also ask for “confirmation that coach tour operators are to be treated as leisure businesses for the purposes of Covid-19 support”.

“Without support, over 40,000 jobs within the sector and many more that rely on it to deliver visitors are under threat as attractions see reduced footfall as customers, many of whom rely on coach to travel, face fewer choices and difficulties in reaching destinations.

“With the phased reopening of schools now underway there is also the real possibility that without support there will be insufficient capacity within remaining operators to provide a full home-to-school network when it is required.”

BUSES

LOCAL AUTHORITIES and bus operators will need to forge a new relationship in the aftermath of Covid-19, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

The CILT’s bus and coach policy group says Covid-19 could inflict huge damage on the industry through factors such as rising unemployment; more home working; fewer trips by elderly people; a decline in retail activity; and the belief that travelling in private cars is safer.

But the CILT says the “climate emergency has not been cancelled” and buses “remain central to decarbonising transport”.

It wants a “campaign to promote the responsible use of public transport, aimed at reversing the stigma that messaging during the pandemic has given public transport”.

Buses could be redesigned to restore passenger confidence, it suggests, with greater spacing between seats and wider seats.

“Seat backs could be higher to reduce spread of all viruses from coughing and sneezing.”

Operator-council relationships must change. “There has to be a mature debate about the right market model to take forward the enormous task of recovering and preparing for net zero.

“Operators have to accept that greater public funding must come with greater public input to the design of and scrutiny of the product offer, whilst local authorities have to accept that franchising is not a panacea for all ills, because it does not of itself generate more funding into the system.”

The CILT proposes local transport boards who would help design local bus networks.

Many smaller operators will quit the market and new ones are unlikely to enter. A new protocol will be required between the remaining operators, and between them and local authorities and user representatives.

The 1985 Transport Act should be amended to “suspend oversight by the Competition and Markets Authority during the recovery and rebuild phase, and to consider its proper remit in the longer term”.

Bus service registrations should transfer from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to councils. Traffic Commissioners’ role in registrations should be limited to arbitrating disputes between councils and operators.

Rebuilding the bus market to meet the decarbonising challenge in a post-Covid world is available at https://tinyurl.com/ydc5zya5

Passenger counts for buses

BUSES

ELECTRONIC TICKET machine manufacturer Ticketer has launched a passenger counting feature onn its machines to help drivers ensure social distancing capacity limits are observed.

The technology keeps a running count of passengers, measured against the capacity thresholds, which operators can set on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis via the Ticketer portal.

Ticketer says the system “removes any pressure on the driver to decide if it is safe for passengers to board”.

Live capacity data can be made available to operator apps, ensuring that passengers waiting at stops also have access to the information.

The technology has been developed in partnership with First Bus, and has now been rolled out to other operators.

Alex Hornby, chief executive officer for Transdev Blazefield, said: “The ability to record customers on board is something that our drivers have found incredibly helpful and reassuring.” The ability to transmit the data to customer apps would be a useful lasting legacy of the virus, he added.

In Brief

Operator guide for disability & Covid The Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland (MACS) has published guidance for transport operators to ensure that changes to public transport services during Covid-19 take into account disabled people’s needs. The guidance emphasises that the 2010 Equality Act continues to apply and so the impacts on disabled people of any changes must be considered as a result of transport transition plans. “New and replacement concessionary travel permits are not currently being issued; you should allow passengers who do not have an National Entitlement Card but claim entitlement to travel free without one,” it says. Transport transition plans – guidance to operators on assisting disabled passengers is available at https://tinyurl.com/y74wf84q

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News 17

Recognise synergies between major rail projects, says TfN

RAIL

TRANSPORT FOR the North has calling for changes to the major rail investment proposals in the region to ensure they support rather than contradict one another.

The sub-national transport body sets out its initial thinking on investment priorities in a submission to the National Infrastructure Commission’s call for evidence on the rail priorities for the Midlands and the North (LTT 17 Apr). The NIC’s final report will inform the Government’s rail plan for these areas.

TfN will submit more evidence to the NIC this summer. Chief executive Barry White said this week: “In the summer we will bring forward an initial sequencing of work built around the emerging evidence from Northern Powerhouse Rail and agree a set of priorities with Midlands Connect for connecting the key economic centres in both regions.”

TfN’s submission to the NIC this month states: “The outcome needs to be a continuous pipeline of investment from now to 2040, starting immediately with focus

on Manchester and Leeds hubs.”

TfN says the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU), Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) and HS2 are all currently being treated as separate programmes, and synergies are being missed.

“For example, the HS2 routes into Leeds and Manchester have been designed around terminating stations, which presents significant operational challenges for NPR and TRU, which focus mainly on through services.”

It voices frustration with the different governance structures for the projects. TfN and the DfT are co-clients for NPR but the DfT has sole responsibility for HS2 and TRU. On these, TfN is merely a stakeholder.

TRU will upgrade the Manchester to York line via Huddersfield and Leeds and represents the “largest intervention within the next five year period”, says TfN. It says the TRU project could be improved with full rather than partial electrification, and gauge clearance to create an east-west corridor for container movements on conventional wagons to/from ports such as Liverpool and

Immingham.

Discussing other short-term priorities, TfN says the Castlefield corridor in Manchester (Deansgate to Piccadilly) “is the key place to begin unlocking growth potential across the North”.

“Other significant bottlenecks also need to be addressed urgently, including at Leeds, the East Coast Main Line route to Newcastle and the North East, the West Coast Main Line north of Crewe, the East Lancashire line, Stockport, and in the Sheffield City Region.”

Discussing NPR and HS2, TfN says: “NPR and HS2 should be treated as equally important, rather than NPR being designed around a fixed HS2 scheme.

“There is a particular issue at Manchester Piccadilly, with the station designed to focus on the needs of HS2, rather than the combined needs of HS2 and NPR.” It wants the Government to consider a new underground station at Piccadilly.

TfN emphasises the importance of currently unfunded parts of the HS2 project, such as the Manchester Airport station and touchpoints between HS2 and the

conventional network, including at Crewe North.

Boris Johnson has promised a new railway line between Manchester and Leeds, which would be an integral part of NPR. But TfN says the whole NPR programme to better connect the North’s cities must be delivered.

The strategic outline business case for NPR was submitted to the Government last March. This is being refined to inform a strategic outline case in 2021, which will set out a preferred network.

TfN says that, as evidence on NPR begins to emerge over the summer, it will provide the NIC with a “blueprint for a single, integrated pipeline of rail investment across the North”. This will focus on the following principles: • accelerating business case development on NPR and the early delivery of key HS2/NPR infrastructure • opportunities to align NPR, HS2 and TRU, particularly between the Liverpool and York, and extending to the North East and the East/West coast main lines • integration, including between major Northern/Midlands schemes.

Hopes rise for rail electrification spend

RAIL

NETWORK RAIL is hopeful the Government will authorise a programme of rail enhancements, including electrification schemes, as part of the country’s Covid-19 recovery planning.

NR chief executive Andrew Haines told a briefing for journalists this week that he was picking up “very promising” comments from Government about infrastructure investment as part of the recovery.

Network Rail was fielding lots of enquiries about electrification from the Government in the context of the decarbonisation agenda, he added. The Scottish Government was very keen on electrification too.

Haines said Network Rail had suggested a number of “no regrets” electrification schemes, including extending Midland Main Line electrification north from Market Harborough in Leicestershire, infill schemes on the Great Western, and electrifying from Didcot up to Coventry.

Network Rail was developing “fit for purpose” standards for electrification, which would reduce the costs of wiring in the

the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU) programme (see ‘NR finds savings on rail electrification’ LTT 15 May).

It is also looking at how to cut the time taken for enhancement projects to pass through the rail industry’s GRIP (Governance of Railway Investment Projects) procedures.

Covid-19, the subsequent lockdown restrictions, and Government messaging to avoid using public transport, have caused passenger numbers on the railways to plummet.

Haines said patronage was still less than ten per cent of normal.

The Government had given the railways a “really peculiar brief” to run services for little demand.

“We’re running a lot of very empty trains.”

Service levels in England were increased on 18 May. Haines said a further increase would take place on 6 July that will see services return to about 80-85 per cent of normal (In Scotland, ScotRail increased services from 47 to 60 per cent of the normal timetable from 15 June).

LTT asked if a suggestion that the Government was spending an extra £180m a week on the

railway was accurate. “That doesn’t sound a million miles off,” he said (the DfT could not give a figure when LTT asked this week).

Network Rail’s own income is largely unaffected by the pandemic because track access charges have been fixed through the five-year regulatory Control Period 6. All that has changed is the source of the income, with the funding coming from the Government rather than train operators.

Haines said Network Rail had continued with its programme of renewals and enhancements through the pandemic, spending about £1bn in April and May. As the risk from the virus diminishes, he said there would need to be a cross-industry campaign to restore confidence in using the railway.

Turning to the long-term implications of the pandemic, Haines thought the Government would have to introduce flexible ticketing on the railways to reflect the increase in home working, such as season tickets that are not priced on the assumption that users travel five times a week.

The industry would need to provide more space for cyclists at

stations, he added.

In March, the Government temporarily suspended rail franchises for at least six months, with franchise holders now running services for a management fee. Haines did not foresee many franchise holders wanting to reassume the revenue risk any time soon.

The industry had been braced for reform before Covid-19 struck, with the Government preparing a rail White Paper informed by the industry review chaired by former British Airways chief executive Keith Williams. Williams told MPs last autumn a new organisation was needed to act as the industry’s “guiding mind” (LTT 08 Nov 19).

Haines said Covid-19 meant the Government’s emphasis for rail was likely to be on doing things on the ground rather than getting bogged down in new legislation for three to four years.

He said Williams remains active in the industry and the two of them speak twice a week.

Williams is also chairman of the Royal Mail and was last month made its executive chairman after the company’s chief executive abruptly resigned.

Solution for Croydon bottleneck RAIL

NETWORK RAIL is consulting on a major investment to ease the bottleneck on the rail lines in and around East Croydon.

The East Croydon to Selhurst capacity scheme includes: • two additional platforms at a modernised East Croydon station, with a larger concourse • new railway flyovers and dive-unders to replace the congested junctions north of Croydon (the Selhurst triangle), where lines from the south coast, Sussex and Surrey meet those from London Victoria and London Bridge • rebuilding Lower Addiscombe Road/Windmill Bridge to accommodate three additional tracks below Network Rail will make a Transport and Works Act Order application for the works.

In Brief

Wales lobbies for four new rail stations The Welsh Government has proposed four rail stations to the third round of the UK Government’s New Stations Fund. The stations are: Deeside Parkway on the Borderlands line (Wrexham-Bidston); Carno on the Cambrian mainline between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth; St Clears in Carmarthenshire; and Ely Mill on the City Line in Cardiff. Welsh transport minister Ken Skates has also invited the DfT to discuss further priorities for rail investment, including new stations at Greenfield and Magor. The Welsh Government has put forward reopening the Amlwch branch in Anglesey to the ‘New Ideas’ stream of the Restoring your Railway fund, and suggested restoring services to Abertillery in South Wales to the ‘Accelerating Existing Proposals’ stream. It has also reiterated the case to reopen Aberystwyth to Carmarthen and Bangor to Caernarfon.

Severn Tunnel wiring energised Network Rail has completed the electrification of the Severn Tunnel, allowing electric trains to run all the way from Cardiff to London. The four-mile Severn Tunnel was wired long before electric trains to Cardiff commenced and the wires became coated in grime during three years without use. The damp conditions in the tunnel also corroded some components.

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Thirty years on – a long journey with many twists and turns, and plenty of mileage to do yet!

This is LTT’s 800th issue! Since the first issue came out in April 1989, the worlds of transport and publishing have been constantly changing, writes editorial director Peter Stonham

W

e’re pleased to present this special feature spread marking LTT’s 800th issue. It’s been a long journey since the first magazine came out in April 1989 – 31 years and two months ago, to be precise.

A look back through the archives reveals that over that time there have been 22 UK secretaries of state for transport, dozens of controversies and immediate crises in transport – most of which have come and gone – and countless transport policy documents and white papers.

There have been surges of them at particular times, things came thick and fast when Labour’s John Prescott was transport and environment secretary! More recently, governments have chosen to evolve their transport policies in less formal all-embracing statements, and preferring ones that address individual challenges such as the latest on decarbonisation a couple of months ago.

Through those 800 issues, we’ve reported on all the twists and turns of UK transport policy, the achievements of innovators and pioneers, the financial crises, the changes to the structure of the industry in terms of both operations and responsibilities at the local and regional level, and the regularly revised forecasts and analyses of movement and behavioural patterns and what they mean for the future. We’ve invited dozens of

expert contributors to comment on their particular areas of specialism and offer thoughts on where they think things will go next, published the responses of our readers through hundreds of letters, and given our own opinion on things every issue in our editorial column.

‘Predicting where things will go next’ is never the easiest task – and especially not at the moment as we grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of an almost total transport lockdown, and whether the dramatic changes of behaviour prompted by that will be enduring or temporary.

Here at LTT, we’re certainly up for change. We’ve been pleased to evolve significantly over the years, and we’re changing again right now. New elements have been added to the LTT mix beyond the original fortnightly print product. The TransportXtra portal carries all our published LTT archive and more. There are a whole host of opportunities for discussions and networking at conferences and events, including our annual Local Transport Summit introduced five years ago to provide an opportunity for the thinkers and decisionmakers to take stock each year of changes in the sector.

As a platform for the profession to express its views, we’ve been the first place to see many new ideas and concepts floated, the latest being the role of one of our

online discussions as the catalyst for a letter from a key group in the profession to the Secretary for State, offering support for his policy on roadspace re-allocation to reflect the Covid travel response.

We did think about trying to list all the people who have been involved with LTT in various ways over the years, but space simply does not permit! Needless to say, we’re indebted to everyone who has steered and supported LTT’s venture through the years – the editorial and commercial teams, readers and advertisers alike.

The LTT project – it’s no longer just a magazine – obviously wouldn’t exist without you all out there in the local transport community. We take great pride with your identification with us on our mission to provide a specialist focus on the vital area of local transport policy and practice.

The world is changing and so are we. In this feature spread we explore what the world was like when we began, and list a host of developments that were mostly not even under discussion then. In the next issue we will bring you more news of our next phase of development and some exciting new further steps that the LTT project will be introducing in the coming weeks.

Stay on board, you’re going to love the journey!

1989 – not a bad year to launch a transport magazine

There rarely seems to be a dull or insignificant period in transport development but 1989 was, in many ways, a seminal year, reflects Andrew Forster

O

n 18 May 1989, transport secretary Paul Channon signalled the Government’s intent to massively expand capacity on England’s motorways and trunk roads.

Roads for Prosperity, a roads White Paper, contained plans for 168 new schemes, taking the total number of projects in the programme to almost 500, and more than doubling its value, from £5bn to £12bn. The focus of the new schemes was almost entirely on relieving congestion on key inter-urban arteries. Among motorways to be widened to four lanes in each direction were the M1 between the M25 and the M18 in South Yorkshire; the M5 around Bristol; the M6 between the M1 and Manchester; and the M62 between Manchester and Huddersfield. Even London’s orbital motorway, the M25, was to be widened, despite it having opened less than three years earlier; the road had filled up with traffic from day one.

“We hope to have made very substantial progress indeed, if not completion, by the turn of the century with the schemes that are listed in this White Paper,” Channon told MPs. Yet, in practice, hardly any of the

programme has been delivered to this day.

The context for Roads for Prosperity was the extraordinarily high road traffic growth of the late 1980s generated by Britain’s booming economy. Since 1980 traffic had increased overall by 35%, nearly doubled on motorways and grown by half on trunk roads.

Business leaders and politicians of all parties were clamouring for road improvements. Lobby group the British Road Federation had been pressing the Department to review its 1984 traffic forecasts because traffic growth since 1986 had actually exceeded the upper end of the Department’s range. “It was clear that the Government’s traffic forecasts were woefully inadequate,” recalls Richard Diment, who was the BRF’s deputy director at the time. He remembers being involved in meetings where the Federation told the Department: “‘You are forecasting traffic levels to rise by something like 40% over the next 25 years but look, we’ve currently got traffic levels rising 6-7-8% per annum. How realistic are these forecasts? Do something more realistic!’”

The new National Road Traffic Forecasts for Great Britain, published alongside Roads for Prosperity, predicted growth of 83-142% between 1988 and 2025.

The figures focused minds but not in the way the road lobby had hoped. In November the Government’s new environment secretary, Chris Patten, branded the forecasts “unacceptable”. Peter Mackie, professor of transport studies at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, has since said the forecasts turned out to be “a suicide note for the road builders”.

But on that May day the trouble brewing wasn’t

really apparent. Instead, the road lobby was celebrating.

“Our view was that at long last we had a realistic programme for delivering a road system that would actually meet the needs of the country into the next century,” says Diment. The size of the programme even surprised the BRF. “There were things in Roads for Prosperity that we had never even thought of, or, I think, that we would ever have cast our minds in the direction of thinking of!”

Edmund King, now the president of the AA, was, at the time, secretary of the BRF’s regional group East Anglia Roads to Prosperity. “Every single scheme that we called for was included in the White Paper,” he recalls. “It was quite amazing. When I looked at my objectives for the campaign it was like, ‘Shit, well what do we do now?!’”

There were some dissenting voices. Campaign group Transport 2000’s newly appointed executive director Stephen Joseph pointed out that the programme appeared to be at odds with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s call for action to tackle the ‘greenhouse effect’.

British Rail’s senior economic analyst said the White Paper appeared, on the face of it, to represent a “huge threat to BR”. But, in a prescient comment, board members were reminded that there were huge uncertainties about “what will be built and when”. “The Government has merely promised to increase spending on roads, giving no guarantees on amounts or timing,” BR’s board was told.

BR itself would be gone by 1994, of course, under the Government’s rail privatisation programme.

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There are a few issues and things that were not really on the radar back then, but certainly are now... n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n

Climate change/decarbonisation Digital travel and transport information to users Big data Uber (started London 2012) and shared taxis Car sharing/car clubs Drones for deliveries (and maybe carrying people) Railtrack (1994) and Network Rail (2002) Virgin Trains (1997, ended 2019) Train operating companies and ATOC (1994) Eurostar (1994) HS1 (2007) HS2 (work in progress) Terminal 5 Heathrow (2008) and Third runway plans (ongoing) Smart phones (iPhone 2007) Smart motorways (M42 2006) Smart cities Google (1998) Extinction Rebellion (2019) Transport for London (2000) Mayor of London (2000) Local transport plans (2000) Traffic impact assessment The Transport Planning Society Webtag (preceded by COBA, NATA and now TAG) The Commission for Integrated Transport (1998, abolished in 2010) Travel shaming Mobility as a Service Traveline (2000) A massive growth in rail travel Peak car The Congestion Charge (2003) Local authority decriminalise parking enforcement (1993) The Highways Agency (1994, became Highways England 2015) Place-making and urban street management Alternative/electric fuels for cars (and buses) On-street e-charging Low emission zones (Greater London 2008) Ultra-low emission zone (2019)

n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n

Statutory sub-national transport bodies Speed cameras (M40 1991) Civil parking enforcement (1989) Elected city mayors (2012) Cycling commissioners E-bikes & adult scooters On-demand buses Red Routes (1989) 20mph zones School Streets and Play Streets Bus lane and moving traffic enforcement by local authorities ClientEarth 'Swampy' and organised road protests, including M3 Twyford Down (1992) The Cones Hotline (1992) ULTra PRT at Heathrow (2011) Nottingham Tramway (2004), Croydon Tramlink and other LRTs Cambridgeshire (2011) and Luton-Dunstable (2013) and other BRT projects Microsoft Outlook (1997) Hotmail – first general email service (1996, sold to Microsoft 1997) Mobile QR code ticketing on trains (2007) Dot Com boom (e.g. lastminute.com) (1998) Birmingham New Street station redevelopment (2015) Thameslink (1991) St Pancras International (2007) Crossrail (we’re still waiting) Boris bikes (2010) and London cycle networks (begun 2005) Oyster Card (2003) and contactless bank card subsequently (2014).

London overground (2007) The cycling boom London Riverbus Services (1999) Driverless cars (and test vehicles, Milton Keynes 2015) Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly (1997) And a viral pandemic, a national lockdown, millions of workers furloughed, social distancing, bus capacity reduced by 75 per cent, railway services running mostly empty, a requirement for face masks for all travel on public transport... (2020)

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RIS2 ‘is good value’

ROADS

THE SECOND Road Investment Strategy for England represents high value for money, says a DfT report published this week.

RIS2 covers the five-year period 2020/21 to 2024/25 during which Highways England will spend £27.4bn on the operation, maintenance, renewal and enhancement of its network.

The report says the overall package of spend offers high value for money (a benefit:cost ratio of between 2 and 4). The operations, maintenance and renewals expenditure represents very high value (a BCR of over 4), the enhancement schemes collectively are high, and the designated funds collectively are high/very high.

RIS analysis: overview is available at https://tinyurl.com/y74btd4s

In Brief

Roads plan legal challenge advances Lawyers acting for environmental transport campaign group the Transport Action Network (TAN) have started proceedings against the DfT’s £27bn Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS2), arguing that it breaches climate and air quality laws (LTT 01 May).

The DfT is required to respond to the campaigners’ arguments within 21 days. TAN said that, because of the case’s national significance, assuming the High Court grants permission, the legal challenge is expected to be heard by the autumn. TAN is being represented by Leigh Day solicitors, David Wolfe QC (Matrix chambers) and Pete Lockley (11 KBW), the same legal team that won the case against the Government’s Airports national policy statement in the Court of Appeal in February.

Green light for Coventry junction Transport secretary Grant Shapps has given consent to Highways England’s A46 Coventry Junctions scheme, at Binley, near Coventry. The £61m project includes building a flyover to separate traffic at the locally-known TGI island near Binley. Main construction work is scheduled to start later this year, with the junction expected to open in 2022.

Mayor’s mode shift goal hit by minister’s parking intervention PLANNING

by Andrew Forster

LONDON MAYOR Sadiq Khan’s efforts to reduce car use will be made more difficult by the Government’s rejection of his proposed new tougher car parking standards for new developments.

The mayor proposed tougher maximum parking standards for new residential development as part of the new draft London Plan (LTT 10 May 19). The most relaxed policy was in areas of outer London with Public Transport Accessibility Level (PTAL) scores of 0-1 – places with the worst public transport accessibility. For these locations, the draft plan permitted up to 1.5 parking spaces per dwelling.

Some outer London boroughs criticised the proposals as being too restrictive, a view shared by the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). It criticised the proposals in evidence submitted to the plan’s public examination last year.

The planning inspectors endorsed the parking policies but in March, communities secretary Robert Jenrick wrote to the mayor, directing him to revert to the current adopted 2016 London Plan parking standards. These give more flexibility to outer London boroughs with lower PTALs. Developers would be able to provide more than 1.5 parking spaces per dwelling for homes with three or more bedrooms in parts of outer London with PTAL scores of 0-1.

Robert Jenrick (left) overruled Sadiq Khan’s parking policies

The MHCLG said the draft plan’s residential parking policies were “inconsistent with national policy” and the mayor had not submitted “clear and compelling evidence that the policy from the 2016 Minor Alterations to the Local Plan should be changed”.

Reducing parking provision for homes risked residents “being forced to park on-street and causing congestion to London’s road network and adversely impacting on the cycleability of roads in outer London”.

“It also fails to reflect the need that future housing will have to provide electric charging points to meet the Government target of only electric vehicles being available from 2035.”

Discussing the Government’s parking directions this month, Andrea Kitzberger-Smith, the London Borough of Richmond’s planning policy and design team manager, told councillors: “This move is of course in conflict with the Government’s messages and other London Plan policies to encourage sustainable modes of transport as well as the council’s climate emergency strategy.”

The Government has also

directed the mayor to amend the policy of maximum parking standards for new retail development, again to give boroughs more flexibility. The MHCLG said the mayor’s proposed maximum standards should be followed “unless alternative standards have been implemented in a borough plan through the application of policy G below”.

The MHCLG’s new Policy G states: “Boroughs should consider alternative standards where there is clear evidence that the standards in Table 10.5 would result in: diversion of demand from town centres to out of town centres, undermining the ‘town centres first’ approach, and a significant reduction in the viability of mixed use redevelopment proposals in town centres.”

Explaining this change, the MHCLG said: “As was raised in a number of representations, local car ownership rates and accessibility in a number of town centre locations would see the result of Table 10.5’s implementation divert traffic to out-of-town locations and increase the length of trips. It was also raised... that the policies

could reduce the viability of mixed-use redevelopment.”

Supermarkets Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Lidl had all criticised these aspects of the mayor’s proposals (LTT 10 May).

Parking policy was just one of the items that Jenrick instructed Khan to change in a letter that was highly critical of the mayor’s record on housing delivery.

Jenrick said his directions would bring the new London Plan up to the “minimum level I would expect to deliver the homes to start serving Londoners in the way they deserve”.

“This must be the baseline and given this, I ask that you start considering the next London Plan immediately and how this will meet the higher level and broader housing needs of London.”

Khan is now pressing the Government to relent on some of the directions. LTT asked City Hall if this included those on parking but a spokesman said he could not go into detail.

In a letter sent to sent to Jenrick at the end of April, Khan said: “We must work together constructively to publish the London Plan as quickly as possible. I have asked my officials to start conversations with your officials about the directions, in line with your commitment to consider alternative policy changes in relation to these.

“I believe some amendments will be required to ensure the directions are workable in practice. We consider amendments are needed to the modifications in order to remove policy ambiguities and achieve the necessary outcomes.”

Luton Airport revamps expansion plans AIRPORTS

LUTON COUNCIL’S airport company London Luton Airport Ltd (LLAL) is reworking its environmental policies – including on public transport – to support an application for capacity expansion.

The additional work is partly the result of the Appeal Court’s ruling in February that quashed the Government’s airports National Policy Statement for failing to take account of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 (LTT 06 Mar).

Luton has now delayed its Development Consent Order application for powers to expand

capacity from 18 to 32 million passengers a year. It is now expected to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate during 2021, rather than this summer.

Councillor Andy Malcolm, the chair of the airport and Luton Council’s portfolio holder for finance, said: “Since the second public consultation on our expansion proposals late last year, we have been listening carefully to feedback and a clear message that people want us to go even further to mitigate environmental issues, including noise, air quality and particularly climate change, which has become significantly more important to people since our first consultation.”

He added: “We are confirming today that we want to set out a plan for how London Luton can build on its position as arguably the most socially conscious airport in the UK by also becoming its most sustainable. We are instructing our teams now to invest all the time they need to work up the proposals in detail.”

Graham Olver, the airport’s chief strategy officer, said: “Our task will involve both reimagining our proposals for expansion, and working closely with the support of our operator and other partners to look at how the airport and existing infrastructure in Luton operates today.”

The airport is considering how

expansion will meet the terms of both the Paris Agreement and recommendations of the Government’s Committee on Climate Change.

Said Olver: “Our work will be crucial to support Luton Council’s target to deliver a zerocarbon town by 2040, significantly ahead of the Government’s target for the UK as a whole.

“We know a key ingredient will be to work with many partners including the council, highways authorities and public transport providers on an integrated and sustainable public transport system serving the area around the airport.”

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Transport appraisal ‘at odds with decarbonising transport’ ENVIRONMENT

THE GOVERNMENT must reform transport appraisal to support the decarbonisation agenda, a consultant has said.

The case for change is put forward by independent consultant Keith Buchan, the director of skills at the Transport Planning Society, in a paper that has been submitted to the DfT. “Carbon emissions are pretty much irrelevant in the current system of transport appraisal,” he says. “Leaving to one side its valuation, the current measurement unit is wrong. We have a target date by which change must be achieved – 2050. CO2 persists in the atmosphere for about 100 years.

“We know that what counts is the total warming impact between now and 2050. The measurement should, therefore, not be tonnes

emitted (as now) but tonne years.

This would make the reduction of CO2 now much more important – as it should and must be.”

Buchan says the problem is exacerbated by how CO2 from new schemes is assessed, echoing comments made by Phil Goodwin in his LTT column of 03 April.

“If a road scheme is proposed, and time savings calculated and valued for the many thousands of drivers in future years, the carbon they produce in driving is not counted,” says Buchan. “What is counted is the marginal change in carbon they produce with and without the scheme.

“Either we include the cost of all the carbon as a disbenefit,” he says, “or accept that the current appraisal system is not fit for purpose.”

James Price, the chief executive of Transport for Wales,

expressed concern that transport appraisal methods were unsuited to assessing climate change last year (LTT 06 Dec 19).

Turning to appraisal more broadly, Buchan says Covid-19 has invalidated all current transport forecasts. “None of the forecasts we currently have for road, rail or air travel have any validity going forward.”

His paper appears in a compendium put together by environmental group the North West Transport Activists Roundtable, co-ordinated by Lillian Burns. She hopes the papers will influence the thinking of the DfT’s forthcoming transport decarbonisation plan.

Other contributors to the compendium are Lisa Hopkinson, Lynn Sloman, Alistair Kirkbride and John Whitelegg.

Hopkinson and Sloman worked together on the series of

transport decarbonisation briefings published by Friends of the Earth last year (LTT 15 Feb, 10 May & 07 Jun 19).

In his paper, environmental transport academic John Whitelegg says that, in the aftermath of Covid-19, there is a need to change decision-makers’ mindsets. “The challenge for all of us now, but especially for politicians still embedded in a 1960s world of big infrastructure (more roads, HS2, more airport capacity), is to transform mindsets and thinking so that we can capture the quieter roads and improved air quality we have seen in recent weeks.”

Calling for HS2 and the roads programme in England to be scrapped, he quips: “We have £107bn plus £27bn in the mobility transformation fund.” l To receive a copy of the compendium, email Lillian Burns at brllln@aol.com

Think tank backs hydrogen for transport HYDROGEN

THE GOVERNMENT should embrace hydrogen as a fuel for heavy forms of transport, such as buses, lorries and trains, says a new report by the right of centre think tank the Centre for Policy Studies.

“While the Government is right to focus on batteries as a key part of the solution, they cannot be depended on to fully decarbonise the transport sector,” says report author Eamonn Ives, a researcher at the think tank and member of the advisory panel for the House of Commons’ Climate Assembly UK. “Another solution will be needed for heavier forms of transport. And the most obvious contender – indeed, the only realistic one – is hydrogen.”

The report has been prepared with funding from Ryse Hydrogen, a company with ambitions to produce and supply hydrogen to the transport sector. Ryse’s executive chairman is Jo Bamford, who owns Northern Ireland bus manufacturer Wrightbus. He recently called on the Government to support a programme to build 3,000 hydrogen buses (LTT 01 May).

Ives says hydrogen fuel cells are typically lighter than equivalently-sized battery powertrains, and have much shorter refuelling times. “This makes fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) ideally suited to decarbonising HGVs, buses, shipping, trains (in the

absence of full electrification), and potentially some parts of aviation.”

Hydrogen also has advantages over battery electric vehicles in cold weather. “Anyone who has used a mobile phone in a cold climate will know that lower temperatures can impede battery performance. BEVs are no exception to this phenomenon – their battery packs perform less well in low temperatures, with one paper showing that a drop in temperature from 5°C to -5°C can shave nearly 50 kilometres of range off one of the best-selling BEVs, the Renault ZOE. Hydrogenpowered FCEVs are not impacted in the same way.”

Echoing Bamford’s argument that the UK could become a world leader in hydrogen fuel.

“Battery technology is now dominated by China,” says Ives.

Hydrogen “is relatively unclaimed economic terrain” and the UK is “blessed with favourable conditions to make truly sustainable hydrogen”.

“Few other countries can rely on sites like the North Sea, which is not only very windy but is also relatively shallow. This makes it easy to install the turbines, which will eventually generate the electricity needed to electrolyse water into useful hydrogen.”

The heavy vehicle end of the transport sector can serve as a ‘bridgehead’ for a hydrogen rollout across the wider economy, he says. “Buses and HGVs, for instance, could do a lot of the heavy lifting involved in bringing costs down.” In 2019, Wrightbus sold 15 hydrogen-powered double decker buses at around £500,000 apiece to First Aberdeen. “New cost figures

which we have seen indicate they could now sell similar buses for around ten per cent less, and less still with additional volume.”

The report recommends that the Government sets a target for a zero-emission bus fleet by 2038.

To kickstart the market for hydrogen buses, Ives says the Government should reform Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) from a ‘fuel used’ model to a ‘distance travelled’ one, with incentives tilted towards low- or zero-carbon buses.

The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation should also be amended to better support the production of hydrogen fuel.

Driving change: how hydrogen can fuel a transport revolution is available at https://tinyurl.com/yapowq65

‘Electric buses trump hydrogen’ A company specialising in battery storage and electric bus funding has criticised claims that hydrogen is the best power source for the bus industry.

“Electric buses are presently the clear leader when it comes to environmental sustainability, especially for inner-city routes,” says Zenobe Energy director Steve Meersman in this week’s Viewpoint column.

He warns that a debate about the best technology could lead to greater uncertainty, even prompting operators to invest in more diesel buses.

In London, bus operator Abellio has just received the first five electric buses from an

order of 34. Zenobe will own and operate the batteries on the buses, run and maintain the charging infrastructure in the depot, and fund the buses, manufactured by Portuguese company CaetanoBus. The vehicles will be used on the C10 (Canada Water to Victoria Station) and P5 (Patmore Estate to Elephant and Castle).

Zenobe’s first charging project brought nine electric buses to Guildford, in partnership with Surrey County Council and Stagecoach. It has also delivered electric buses to Newport and will launch electric buses in Leeds in the coming months. l Viewpoint – page 26

£6k grant for EV purchase?

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

THE GOVERNMENT may double the grant for purchasing an electric car to £6,000, The Daily Telegraph has reported.

The paper said the incentive could be part of the plan for a post-Covid-19 economic recovery, which may be revealed by the Prime Minister in a speech next month.

The Government’s Plug-in Evehicle grant currently gives up to £3,000 towards the purchase of an electric car.

AA president Edmund King welcomed the news that the grant could be raised. “Offering £6,000 to swap a petrol or diesel car for an electric car would be a fantastic move, and should it get the green light people should take up the deal.

“At the start of the year we said scrapping VAT on electric vehicles would be the most influential move to persuade drivers to go electric. A grant like this would be just as good and help both car manufacturers and air quality.

“In order to help aid the economic recovery to Covid-19, investment should also be made in gigafactories,” said King. “This would mean batteries could be developed, built and recycled in the UK to keep our carbon footprint down.”

In Brief

Competition to predict EV demand Electricity distribution network operator UK Power Networks has launched a competition open to all, to predict where and when the next generation of electric vehicle charging points should be located in its operating area. UK Power Networks manages the power lines and sub-stations across London, the South East and East of England. The competition challenges people to use its Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) data, combined with other open data sources, to identify locations that may require large numbers of concentrated electric vehicle chargepoints to be installed in the next two to five years. Participants should submit their reports by 20 July. Entries will be assessed based on methodology, use of other data sources, validity and creativity. The winning entrant will receive an iPad Air, and the opportunity to work with data experts to bring the entrant’s ideas and methodologies to fruition.

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22 News

Will Cambridgeshire’s transport power struggle end up in court?

A

The courts may be asked to resolve a dispute between the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and the Greater Cambridge Partnership over the planning of a busway. As Andrew Forster reports, the case centres on who has ultimate responsibility for making decisions about the area’s transport LONG-RUNNING transport power struggle in Cambridge may be heading to court. The legal path was suggested

by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority mayor James Palmer a fortnight ago, ahead of a meeting of the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) board on 25 June. Board members will be asked to proceed with the planning of a £160m busway between Cambourne and Cambridge, a scheme design that Palmer strongly opposes.

The GCP comprises Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, and the University of Cambridge. It was set up to deliver the Greater Cambridge City Deal struck with Government in 2014.

Included in the deal was up to £500m of Government funding for new transport infrastructure over 20 years, with the first £100m guaranteed and the remainder subject to five-yearly gateway reviews.

The GCP’s programme includes a number of bus-based corridor investments, including the busway between Cambridge and the market town of Cambourne, west of the city. The future of the programme was thrown into doubt in 2017 when Palmer was elected the Conservative mayor of the combined authority, which is the local transport authority for the area.

Palmer had pledged to deliver an underground Metro system for Cambridge and a light rail line between Cambourne and Cambridge.

The two contrasting visions of the mayor and GCP were eventually fused in the form of the Cambridgeshire Autonomous Metro (CAM) project, a network of new segregated public transport routes using rubber-tyred vehicles. The GCP’s bus priority/busway projects now form the inner parts of CAM, with Palmer leading the plan for tunnelled operations in the city centre and pursuing extensions of the GCP routes out into the wider county.

This odd arrangement seemed to be holding together until February when, on the eve of a GCP board meeting to approve the Cambourne to Cambridge route, Palmer wrote to the GCP requesting it cease work on the project (LTT 21 Feb).

The mayor said the scheme “as it is currently imagined must be immediately halted” and made some critical remarks about the GCP generally: “It has become clear to me that the GCP lacks the vision, strategic thinking, and the ability necessary to deliver any of the transport priorities for the Cambridge area. The combined authority will now take direct responsibility for delivery of additional public transport solutions for the Cambridge to Cambourne

The recommended route of the Cambourne to Cambridge busway runs off-road, with park-and-ride at Scotland Farm

corridor.”

The combined authority subsequently set about preparing a CAM sub-strategy to its local transport plan. This was published in May and said the GCP’s plans for Cambourne and Waterbeach CAM routes would both need revisiting (LTT 15 May).

Combined authority interim monitoring officer Dermot Pearson had written to GCP chairman Aidan Van de Weyer in March saying the preparation of the CAM substrategy was a “proportionate response” to the Government’s announcement that the East West Rail route between Bedford and Cambridge will run through Cambourne, and also to Palmer’s wider concerns that the GCP’s Cambourne route did not reflect his overall objectives for the CAM project (LTT 03 Apr).

“The announcement of the East West Rail alignment would of itself have required some reconsideration of the Cambourne to Cambridge route by the GCP regardless of the mayor’s letter to you,” said Pearson.

If the GCP were to proceed with its plan for the Cambourne to Cambridge route, Pearson said this would be in conflict with the new CAM sub-strategy. “If that conflict did arise then the combined authority’s view is that the altered local transport plan (LTP) would prevail and that the Cambourne to Cambridge project could not lawfully proceed in a manner contrary to the LTP.” Pearson added that the combined authority remained “committed to the content of its LTP and to the delivery of Cambourne to Cambridge [CAM] in collaboration with the GCP”.

Pressing on

Last month the Government informed the GCP that it had passed the first of its five-year gateway reviews for the city deal, unlocking up to a further £400m for its programme. The GCP has presented this as a

vote of confidence in its work. “By committing to further funding in Greater Cambridge, the Government has demonstrated its trust in and commitment to the work of the GCP,” Niamh Matthews, its head of strategy and programme, told a meeting of the GCP’s joint assembly last week.

In a separate report to the assembly, Peter Blake, the GCP’s director of transport, discussed the combined authority’s new CAM sub-strategy. Recounting events prior to Palmer’s intervention in the Cambourne project in February, Blake said GCP officers had worked with counterparts in the combined authority on the busway and this had “culminated in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority officers giving their support for the final GCP proposals for the C2C [Cambourne to Cambridge] scheme”.

Blake added: “The [CAM] sub-strategy does not change the local transport plan, including delivery by the GCP of the inner CAM corridors [Cambourne to Cambridge; Cambridge South East; Waterbeach; and the Eastern corridor], which are explicitly referenced in the substrategy. Indeed, the sub-strategy reaffirms the three elements of the CAM network: city tunnelled section; GCP corridors; and regional routes.”

Furthermore, he said the sub-strategy “provides no technical reason why the Cambourne to Cambridge (or Waterbeach scheme) is non-compliant”.

Blake said the GCP could choose to delay decisions about the inner corridors until the combined authority’s sub-strategy was finalised, but pointed out that the projects had already been delayed a number of times. “The progress of, in particular, the Cambourne to Cambridge (C2C) scheme has already been significantly delayed due to a number of interventions: firstly, the mayoral pause in 2018, which caused a nine-month delay; secondly, the need to cancel the December board meeting due to

the General Election; and finally, the current delay caused by the mayor’s withdrawal of support for the C2C scheme two days before the GCP board meeting in February.

“The impact of further delay is potentially significant. The success of the Bourn Airfield, West Cambourne and West Cambridge developments relies in full or part on the C2C scheme. Failure to deliver in a timely manner will impact both the individual schemes, but may also have implications on Greater Cambridge’s local housing trajectory and five-year housing supply and undermines the confidence in the development community that promised infrastructure will be delivered.

“A delay would also impact significantly upon the combined authority’s CAM programme timeline as Cambourne to Cambridge and Cambridge South East [in the A1307 corridor] are the only two elements of the CAM network deliverable by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s target 2024 date.”

Legal matters

Blake also addressed the legal argument about who is responsible for making decisions about the busway route. “The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA), the county council and the GCP collectively asked for further clarification on the respective powers of each authority and this work has been done by officers, including our respective legal monitoring officers, who have reached agreement on the applicable governance framework and each body’s legal powers and responsibilities.

“In terms of the respective roles of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) and GCP, work by the monitoring officers concluded: • the CPCA has responsibility for producing the local transport plan (LTP) and passenger transport services including con-

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News 23

In Brief cessionary travel • the county council [which is the highway authority] has delegated a range of powers to the GCP and this is sound legally and gives the GCP all the powers needed to deliver transport schemes provided those schemes are in conformity with the adopted LTP. “Furthermore,” said Blake, “in letters to the chair of the GCP, the combined authority’s interim monitoring officer confirmed that decisions on the route rightly sit with the GCP board as the delivery body.”

Blake also said there was “no formal process for the transport authority [i.e. the combined authority] to provide consent for a major scheme development”.

“It is entirely for the promoter [in this case the GCP] to demonstrate how it conforms with policy as it progresses through the statutory planning and approvals process.”

As for funding the projects, Blake said: “The GCP is charged with delivering the Greater Cambridge City Deal and has significant financial resources available, from both Government and local sources, to deliver its objectives. The funding available is assigned to approved schemes, which include the Cambridge South East Transport Scheme and Cambridge to Cambourne schemes.”

The mayor: feeling ignored

The GCP board meeting on the 25 June will be recommended to press ahead with the Cambourne route, albeit with some amendments, including changing the alignment in west Cambridge, after cyclist group CamCycle and residents complained about the plan to route buses down Adams Road.

Palmer has already had his say ahead of the meeting. “In these amended plans, it would appear the GCP has listened to the concerns of Cambridge residents but anyone outside the city has been ignored, including me. I believe that, as the directly elected leader of the transport authority, I should have some input into schemes that are purportedly a part of our local transport plan.

“The GCP have decided to proceed regardless, which risks significant delays and wasted public expenditure in contentious legal proceedings.”

Even with the proposed route change, the Cambourne to Cambridge busway remains

RAIL

controversial, with local people accusing the Liberal Democrats of doing a U-turn from their previous position of opposing the project.

The route will use an off-road alignment and serve a park-and-ride site at Scotland Farm. The busway will be served by three express services: • Cambourne to city centre at ten-minute intervals • Cambourne to the Biomedical Campus at 30-minute intervals • A428 park-and-ride site to Biomedical Campus at 30-minute intervals in peak periods.

Blake told the joint assembly that the busway and East West Rail (EWR) were “complementary”. The railway was focused “substantially on longer term growth beyond the Local Plan period and not the immediate and worsening issues of congestion and lack of connectivity for expanding communities west of Cambridge”.

The railway would offer “good connections for those in Cambourne travelling to destinations easily accessible from the Cambridge stations”. “However, any new rail station would not offer the same level of local service access to areas along the A428/A1303. Neither would it serve other housing and employment locations along the corridor such as Bourn Airfield and West Cambridge.

“Once a preferred alignment has been agreed for EWR and clarity established with regards to the location of a Cambourne station there will be a programme to ensure integration between EWR, the busway and the wider CAM network can be maximised.” Until this time, the busway scheme will run through Cambourne on existing routes rather than new segregated infrastructure.

The value for money of the busway project is strikingly poor, at least according to a conventional appraisal. The project has a benefit:cost ratio of just 0.43, which rises to 0.48 when taking into account the additional wider economic impacts (a level 2 analysis in DfT parlance).

The GCP says land value uplift turns the BCR positive. Assuming 50 per cent of the land value uplift is achieved, some £458m, the BCR rises to 1.22. If the full value is realised, then the BCR would rise to 1.95.

The current estimated capital cost of the project is £160.5m, of which £37.7m is antic-

ipated from Section 106 contributions from third parties such as the developers of the Bourn Airfield site and West Cambridge. The cost includes a 25 per cent risk allowance but does not include optimism bias (which is applied in the economic appraisal, at 44 per cent).

The GCP envisages making a Transport and Works Act Order application to build the busway early in 2021. If authority to construct is forthcoming in 2022, the busway could open in 2024.

The GCP board will also be asked to approve the development of the ‘brown route’ for the Cambridge South East Transport Scheme (CSETS) – another busway – to full business case stage. The route ends at a ‘travel hub’ (park-and-ride) site located to the southwest of the junction between the A1307 and A11, which could provide parking for up to 2,800 cars.

The preferred option has an adjusted BCR of 0.81. The adjusted total present value of benefits is £69.8m compared with a present value of costs of £85.7m.

“As there are currently no development sites that are dependent on Cambridge South East Transport, the adjusted BCR does not include Level 3 wider economic impacts associated with land-use changes,” reported Blake. “There are three residential sites and one employment site identified in the South Cambridgeshire Local Plan that are not dependent on the scheme but can be supported by it.”

The estimated capital cost for the project is £129.9m, including £26m of risk but no optimism bias. Funding is intended to be sourced primarily through the Greater Cambridge City Deal, though the GCP will seek to recover some costs from developer contributions. “Although no immediate opportunities to secure developer contributions to the scheme have been identified, significant development in the area in the pipeline is expected to result in a level of developer contributions to this scheme over time,” said Blake.

As with Cambourne to Cambridge, the power to construct the CSETS scheme is likely to require a Transport and Works Act Order. The planned opening for this route is again 2024.

Consultant Mott MacDonald is assisting the GCP on the busway schemes.

Business case for Wisbech rail reopening

THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE and Peterborough Combined Authority has published the full business case for reopening the Wisbech to March railway line.

The Wisbech branch closed to passengers in 1968 and to freight in 2000.

The combined authority wants to restore passenger services, ideally with two trains an hour from Wisbech to Cambridge. It believes there is currently only capacity on the existing network for one train an hour, with the second dependent on additional capacity provided by the Ely

area capacity enhancements project, including at Ely North junction.

In the interim, the second hourly service could therefore form a shuttle between March and Wisbech.

Wisbech town centre is the preferred location for a station.

The full business case, prepared by consultant Mott MacDonald, estimates the cost of reopening at £218.5m (2019 prices).

Of this, only £71.9m is for the restoration of the railway formation. A bigger cost – £75.6m – is for highway works – the Wisbech branch is crossed by 22 level crossings, and road closures and

diversions will be necessary.

The combined authority says the highway elements of the project will be peer reviewed.

“We are optimistic that efficiencies may be found here.”

A risk adjustment of 19 per cent – £34.9m – has been applied to all costs.

Design work on the project has reached Network Rail’s GRIP 3b stage.

Paul Raynes, the combined authority’s strategy and delivery director, said significant levels of national grant funding would be needed to deliver the project.

Combined authority mayor James Palmer has written to

the DfT suggesting that the scheme is an ideal candidate for the ‘accelerating existing proposals’ stream of the Government’s new Restoring your Railways Fund.

The business case recommends that the combined authority takes the lead in the sponsorship and delivery of the project, working closely with Network Rail.

“A hybrid approach is recommended within the commercial case with the combined authority retaining overall management control of delivery, while some of the rail packages should be procured and managed directly by Network Rail,” said Raynes.

Glasgow city region deal passes review The Glasgow city region deal has passed its first gateway review, unlocking a further £250m over five years (2020/21-2024/25). The Scottish and UK governments will each contribute £125m. The deal includes a number of major transport projects.

Evening parking charges for towns Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council is to consult on extending parking charges in Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge and West Vale from 18.00 until 20.00 and introducing charges on Sundays and Bank Holidays in Halifax town centre.

The council says the additional charges will help combat climate change, improve air quality and public health. “Whilst the current [Covid-19] crisis has had a profound effect, there is a need to future-proof town centres to ensure sufficient space is available to support increased commercial activity, as well as addressing these wider imperatives,” said a report by officers. The council estimates the charges will generate additional revenue of £143,000 a year.

Mace provides TfN support on NPR Transport for the North has appointed consultancy and construction company Mace to lead the programme support office for the £39bn Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) programme. Mace will be responsible for project controls and management, stakeholder management and commercial support.

Extra support for Welsh rail services The Welsh Government has announced a further £65m to keep rail services delivered through the Wales and Borders franchise running for the next six months as passenger levels remain depressed due to Covid19. The funding, announced on 31 May, is in addition to £40m announced in March.

£17m for Welsh roads resilience The Welsh Government has awarded £16.9m to 13 local authorities to support 18 road schemes that will add resilience, including nearly £5m for repairing roads in Caerphilly and Rhondda Cynon Taf damage caused by storms at the start of this year.

One award of £6 million will construct a further section of the Old Colwyn coastal defence scheme, which will protect the highway and active travel route from adverse weather.

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TfGM to tender bike hire

BIKE HIRE

TRANSPORT FOR Greater Manchester is about to commence procurement of a public bike hire scheme for the conurbation.

TfGM envisages that the scheme will be delivered in phases, with the first phase focused on the three councils in the regional centre: Manchester, Salford and Trafford. About 1,500 bikes are envisaged in phase one. They will be dock-based and a proportion will be e-bikes.

An officer report presented to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority last week

Greater Manchester’s new scheme will be dock-based after the failure of Mobike’s dockless scheme

said schemes with e-bikes “generally raise greater revenue income than mechanical-only schemes”.

TfGM is targeting an introduction date of spring 2021. It hopes to draw up a shortlist of at least three bidders, who will be expected to submit their final bids in August or September.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has allocated about £10m for the first phase of the bike hire scheme from his Mayor’s Challenge Fund for active travel investments.

“This allocated funding is currently considered to be sufficient to deliver the infrastructure and to manage the forecast net operating costs of phase one,” said officers.

Twenty jobs could be created in the first phase.

Chinese firm Mobike launched a dockless bike hire scheme in Greater Manchester in the summer of 2017 but withdrew in 2018 after hundreds of the bikes were vandalised or stolen.

Prioritise roads policing, says PACTS, ahead of policy review

ROAD SAFETY

by Andrew Forster

THE GOVERNMENT and police and crime commissioners should give roads policing a higher priority, in recognition of the 1,800 deaths and more than 25,000 serious injuries on UK roads each year, says the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety.

The PACTS report on roads policing comes ahead of a crossWhitehall review into the topic. A call for evidence from the DfT, Home Office and National Police Chiefs’ Council is anticipated shortly. The DfT has commissioned Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services to prepare a baseline report, which was due to be completed in early 2020.

Roads policing is not currently one of the national strategic policing priorities set by Government.

“Instead, it is for police and crime commissioners (PCCs) and chief

constables to decide the extent to which it should be a local (force area) priority, and the nature of operations and level of resources,” says report author Frank Norbury, a policy and research officer at PACTS. “This means that roads policing strategies and approaches to roads policing and road safety vary between force areas. For example, seven of the 43 police and crime plans (PCPs), written

by PCCs do not mention roads policing or road safety.”

PACTS calls on the UK Government and, where powers are devolved, the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to make roads policing a national priority in the strategic policing requirement.

The Government should also ensure that some of the additional 20,000 police officers promised by 2022 are dedicated to roads policing, it says.

Home Office statistics record the number of roads policing offi-

cers in England and Wales fell 18 per cent between 2015 and 2019, from 5,220 to 4,276. The Police Federation believes the figures actually overstate the number of roads police.

The Conservatives proposed a national infrastructure police force in their 2017 General Election manifesto, though the idea was never pursued. PACTS spoke to senior roads policing officers about the idea. It says there was a preference to retain the status quo though “some officers suggested a roads policing force based on the strategic road network would be a good middle ground”.

Speed limit enforcement has been largely unaffected by the decline in roads policing because the majority is automated using speed cameras.

The number of fixed penalty notices and National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS) courses issued for speeding offences rose from about 1.5 million in 2011 to more

than two million in 2018. About one million a year are people who chose to take an NDORS course.

Enforcement against drinkdriving, drug-driving, the failure to wear a seatbelt, and hand-held mobile phone use are all much more dependent on a police presence. The number of breathe tests has almost halved between 2010 and 2018, down from about 600,000 to just over 300,000.

Fixed penality notices issued to people for failing to wear a seat belt have fallen from just under 140,000 in 2011 to under 60,000 in 2018.

Fixed penalty notices issued for using a handheld phone while driving have fallen from around 162,000 in 2011 to 38,600 in 2018.

Roads policing and its contribution to road safety is available at https://tinyurl.com/ybhsxpey

Police cutbacks help Wandsworth presses explain casualty drop ahead with blanket 20

ROAD SAFETY

A BIG fall in reported slight injury road casualties in Leicestershire is partly explained by reduced police resources, says Leicestershire County Council.

Ann Carruthers, Leicestershire’s director of environment and transport, told councillors that a “statistically significant decline in the number of reported collisions has emerged in Leicestershire, specifically appearing to involve collisions with slight injuries”.

“During 2017 and 2018, the council received 30 per cent fewer reports compared with 2016. This appears to primarily be affecting collisions reported in Leicestershire, rather than the City of Leicester.”

She said Leicestershire Police believed just over half (17 per cent) of the reduction was the result of “resource-driven process changes”.

Councils only receive collision reports if the collision is attended by a police officer or reported to a police station.

“Police officers are typically no longer deployed to collisions where casualties have only suffered slight injuries, despite such collisions being part of the

STATS19 dataset,” said Carruthers. “It is therefore incumbent on the casualties involved to report such collisions to the everlessening number of police stations.”

In 2018, 1,207 reported casualties of all severities were reported, similar to the 1,193 reported in 2017, but “significantly lower than every year before this, and 48 per cent lower than the 20062010 average”.

Provisional statistics for 2019 show a 21 per cent fall in casualties of all severities, to 956.

“Should the final number of casualties of all severities and killed or seriously injured casualties remain significantly lower than previous years, this will be investigated with Leicestershire Police to establish whether it is a genuine reduction or a data quality issue,” said Carruthers.

She said Leicestershire was reviewing how it identifies accident cluster sites, given the concerns about data quality.

“Options include retaining the current approach, moving to an approach based on killed or seriously injured (KSI) collision statistics only, or a more formulaic hybrid where higher severities are weighted more highly.”

SPEED LIMITS

THE LONDON Borough of Wandsworth is to implement 20mph limits on all remaining borough 30mph roads and wants Transport for London to do the same on its roads.

Wandsworth recently implemented 20mph limits on all residential roads. The consultation for that exercise found that 64 per cent of residents supported A and B roads in the borough retaining 30mph limits.

But Paul Chadwick, Wandsworth’s director of environment and community services, told councillors this month that views may have changed because of the increased 20mph coverage on roads in neighbouring boroughs and on TfL roads.

“As part of the council’s proposed response relating to Covid-19, it is proposed to introduce a boroughwide 20mph trial on all classified roads maintained by the council via an Experimental Traffic Order [for up to 18 months] to support more walking and cycling,” said Chadwick.

“It is also proposed to ask the mayor of London to implement the same measure on the TLRN [Transport for London road network] so that the whole

borough benefits from a 20mph limit.”

The effect of this action appears likely to mean 20mph limits being introduced on roads where the mean speeds are far above 20, particularly at quieter times of day.

“All classified roads will be actively considered for suitability of a 20mph speed limit by using signing and lining only to help establish if the mean speed criteria of at or below 24mph can be met,” said Chadwick.

“At the end of the trial period, traffic data and consultation feedback will be fully considered before a final decision is made on whether the [20mph on] individual roads should be made permanent, dropped or amended.

Those requiring significant measures will be subject to further review and future funding opportunities.

“Not all existing 30mph classified roads will be suitable for a 20mph speed limit without substantial traffic calming measures if the mean speed is closer to or in excess of 31mph,” he said.

The council says roads with mean speeds of above 25mph after the signed only limits are introduced will require calming measures.

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Comment 25

MOBILITY MATTERS

Let’s hear it for e-scooters

Richard Dilks CoMoUK

N

ot all years are created equal, as we are finding out in 2020. One of the upsides of the Covid-19 upheavals is that some things that have spent years circling around at normal transport policy and planning speed suddenly find themselves catapulted out into reality.

With apologies for the anthropomorphising (too many children’s books recently) those temporary cycle lanes (that I, along with many others, are hoping are not temporary at all) must have been very surprised to find themselves whisked from drawing board to asphalt within weeks or even days.

Greater brains than I could perhaps come up with a formula once we are into more (new) normal times: is a 2020 month in transport equivalent to a year pre-Covid-19?

Another surprised entity is the escooter. For some time now the UK has been a developed country outlier in not having these as part of its sustainable transport arsenal. The DfT’s plan had been to have e-scooter rental trials as part of its future transport (mobility as was) zones. But this has now become an ambition to have nationwide e-scooter rental trials as soon as possible. Note that these trials are for rental scooters

only, on a time-limited basis and only in areas agreed by authorities, operators and the secretary of state.

While this throws up many challenges – not least disentangling haste from speed – I for one am enjoying working in an area that is moving at pace and keeping that pace up. For its part, CoMoUK is forming an escooter operator membership, just as it has in car and bike share. We are working with the DfT, having already hosted joint webinars. We are also working closely with local authorities via regular meetings and other engagements.

It is vitally important to minimise the reinvention of wheels to lower the resource drain on authorities and operators alike. It is also crucial to shape and communicate consensus among operators. And to build up the evidence bank on what is and is not working so that we are ready when we (hopefully) come to primary legislation.

I am hopeful that in this way we can all best understand the UK versions of key e-scooter topics such as safety; data; parking; viability; user experience and insight. To that we can add a new entrant due to Covid19 – what constitutes the ‘as low as reasonably practicable’ level of risk to people.

We will be striving to do that while avoiding some of the pitfalls that earlier-mover places have learned the hard way. Let’s not do a Paris in the sense of having a plethora of operators without a framework. Let’s not get stuck in a data stand-off as in Los Angeles. As these are trials, there is also the opportunity to try out different aspects, again to learn ahead of legislation.

Nothing in transport is perfect as a mode – apart from walking, but walking just does not cover all journey needs (although isn’t it refreshing how many more of them it can encompass now our travel to work and other journey patterns

have been so disrupted?).

So, although I know this will happen anyway, hopefully we can minimise the Unfairly High Bar Syndrome that seems to always apply to ‘new’ modes in transport (which, while I am being grumpy, are usually simply new to the UK).

It is absolutely right that shared transport is held up to scrutiny, and indeed it’s part of what we try to do at CoMoUK via our accreditation and work with local authorities and operators. But I confess to being sometimes irked at the out of kilter scale of judgment – particularly the deafening silence that often surrounds the private car. There are a few thousand shared cars in London; there are 2.7 million private cars in London. See what I mean?

I am hoping we can also embrace e-scooters’ popularity (as they have proven to be in other countries) while shaping where we want them to be (and not be), and how we want

well attested that journey need is not impervious to journey mode options: the convenience of platform-based private hire options has grown that market; car club use in the UK was at an all-time high before Covid-19, partly powered by the ease of remote unlocking and in-app booking.

So we need to bear that in mind.

Plus journey patterns are going to be a fascinating piece of study in the coming months and years. It’s not as if previous datasets and assumptions are going to be accurate guides.

The advent of trials for e-scooters will also hopefully renew focus on how we build our public realm and transport routes. Mobility hubs should be part of the mix here (I discussed the concept in LTT 08 Nov 19).

I am not pretending that I have got past my own bias in terms of my future predictions. And prediction has surely never been more of a mug’s game. There is a hopeful case

I think there is also something about using the pace of development on e-scooters in the UK and new mobilities more generally to look again at some things that very much need looking at again. The difficulties to users, authorities and operators caused by London being 33 different highway authorities, for example.

them to be used. Relating to my private car point, I sometimes also wonder if there is an inverse relationship between how popular something is as a transport mode and how much it is recognised and attended to.

I think there is also something about using the pace of development on e-scooters in the UK and new (to the UK) mobilities more generally to look again at some things that very much need looking at again. The difficulties to users, authorities and operators caused by London being 33 different highway authorities, for example.

Much to do with the trials will be determined by local authorities, and while there is a balance to be struck with being able to analyse and build insight centrally, hopefully the trials will also throw a new spotlight on the devolution of powers where appropriate.

What is also very desirable is understanding e-scooter use in the context of other shared transport modes and transport generally. It is

to be easily sketched for how the reduction in commuting in particular and travel generally has sensitised people to the charms of walking, cycling and potentially e-scooting and away from the charms of private car use (as I discussed in LTT 20 Mar). There is clearly a gloomy case to be as easily sketched whereby the already historically low real terms cost of private motoring sinks further, powered by the need to shift new cars already built, and the private car is seen as the safe bubble that takes you between bubbles.

Time will tell, but we can do some of the telling too, and my hope is that e-scooters can be part of the pivot to more sustainable transport we need to see and deserve to have.

Richard Dilks is chief executive of CoMoUK, the charity that promotes the social, environmental and economic benefits of shared transport. He was previously programme director for transport at the capital’s business lobby organisation, London First. Email: richard@como.org.uk

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26 Comment

VIEWPOINT

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Battery electric buses are going to be the workhorse in our zero emission future Steven Meersman Zenobe Energy

As local authorities and transport providers look to move away from fossil fuels, it is clear that there have never been more options on the market for low-carbon, environmentally friendly buses. So it’s important that local authorities carefully weigh up their options when selecting the type of bus that best suits their needs.

In the past year, the Department for Transport has developed a number of schemes designed to incentivise local authorities to switch to fossil fuelfree public transport. The most recent, announced in February, is the All-Electric Bus Town, inviting councils in England to bid for £50m to establish Britain’s first all-electric bus town or city.

In response to the scheme, a number of proponents of hydrogen-fuelled buses have written to the transport secretary Grant Shapps, accusing the Government of “deliberate” and “misjudged” bias against hydrogen buses. Spearheaded by Jacob Young MP, the chair of the Hydrogen All Party Parliamentary Group, and co-signed by energy giants Shell and Bosch, the letter argued that the All-Electric Bus Town scheme was a missed oppor-

While there is a place for hydrogen buses for long-distance and unpredictable routes, electric buses are presently the clear leader when it comes to environmental sustainability, especially for inner city routes.

In Passing

LTT editorial director Peter Stonham has been keen to get participation from the DfT at our fortnightly online discussions. It’s been a tough job, and even a direct approach to the secretary of state, Grant Shapps, inviting him to speak about street space reallocation in response to Covid-19 went unanswered. So for last week’s discussion on buses, Peter was delighted to see no less than four senior DfT officials present. The only problem was they were all no longer DfT people! Two former director generals responsible for local transport were there – Steve Gooding (now at the RAC Foundation) and John Dowie (now at FirstGroup). Plus Nic Cary, former head of digital transformation (now running his own consultancy Waysphere) and Richard Walker, former transport planning & strategy advisor, North & devolution, who is currently on a sabbatical working at the University of Leeds on decarbonisation, and on a project to support civic activism.

tunity to “trial clean, green, UK-made technology at a significant scale”.

It is clear that local councils need to think carefully about what options are right for them and the local community as they look to meet their net-zero commitments and improve air quality for commuters. While there is a place for hydrogen buses for long-distance and unpredictable routes, electric buses are presently the clear leader when it comes to environmental sustainability, especially for inner-city routes.

When using electric buses, operators don’t have to make drastic and expensive network changes, as required by hydrogen buses. Smart charging software and/or stationary batteries can be installed on-site to avoid costly grid upgrades, and fleets can be charged using existing technologies and infrastructure without the need for the expensive and environmentally detrimental duplication of creating a parallel hydrogen fuel network.

Electric buses are also highly adaptable to the needs of their operators. Smart chargers can be installed in a matter of weeks with little disruption to daily services and existing battery technology can also meet around 80 per cent of current route requirements for all intra-city routes.

Unlike hydrogen-powered buses, electric vehicles have a higher well-to-wheel efficiency than existing diesel buses, meaning they are much more efficient at turning energy into motion. Batterypowered buses are the most energy efficient option when it comes to charging: hydrogen vehicles can waste up to 75 per cent through its charging infrastructure while electric vehicles lose less than ten per cent.

Stationary batteries can also generate further savings by providing other power services when not being used to charge buses. Rather than being a burden on the grid, battery-powered buses can support the network at times of low electricity demand, helping the National Grid stabilise the network and allow more renewables on the grid.

This is even more critical during low-demand times such as the one we have at present.

In contrast to hydrogen-powered buses, the batteries on electric buses are highly recyclable – the concerns over batteries stacking up in landfills are absolutely unfounded. Up to 90 per cent of bus batteries are eligible for recycling and, before recycling, they can be re-used in a second life stationary application. Companies such as Zenobe and others are already coming up with ways that turn this ‘waste’ into a new resource. Such applications are highly varied and can include upgrading grid infrastructure or supporting onsite energy needs.

These second life uses greatly extend the working life of the battery thereby reducing its environmental impact, conserving resources, and lowering costs for transport and energy customers.

Plenty of councils in the UK have already put the wheels in motion for the electrification of their bus fleets. Councils and bus operators in areas such as Guildford, Newport, Leeds, London and elsewhere have already taken the first step in shifting to cleaner transportation, which is a key connector of our towns and cities as well as a lifeline to so many.

As we look to transition to net-zero, Government support is vital. Different industries need to ensure that they engage in a dialogue and do not create unnecessary fear and uncertainty, which can stifle progress and lead to inaction.

We cannot allow for local authorities to use the existing technology debate as an excuse to invest in more diesel, as transitioning to net-zero must be our priority. We need change that benefits us all and ushers in a cleaner future, now.

Steve Gooding even brought his chauffeur to the meeting. Or at least that’s what it seemed from the screen background image of the Bentley and liveried flunkey that appeared behind him in his Zoom picture… Until he explained it was a shot of the foyer of the Royal Automobile Club, where he’s fortunate to work when not locked down at home! But he did make us wonder if he might be in a position to send round a car to pick up the secretary of state to take part next time.

board last week: “On 14 May 2020, TfL reached an agreement with the Government on a funding and financing package of £1.6bn to cover the period 1 April 2020 to 17 October 2020, comprising: (i) an extraordinary support rant of £1.095bn...”

What’s the best word to describe relations between the Government and London mayor Sadiq Khan? Cool?

Frosty? Icy? Polar? Siberian? The recent correspondence between transport secretary Grant Shapps and Khan over the TfL bailout and the suspension of youth travel, certainly suggest things are ‘below zero’. And so too does communities secretary Robert Jenrick’s letter to the mayor about the London Plan. Was it therefore a freudian slip that prompted TfL officials to report the following to the

Steven Meersman is a director at Zenobe Energy, one of the largest independent owners and operators of battery storage in the UK, with 73MW of operational assets, serving around 20 per cent of the electric bus sector in the UK.

Lancashire County Council has reported a delay in issuing invitation to tender documents for road maintenance works “due to the developing situation with CORVID”. Which, as every twitcher knows, is the name for birds belonging to the crow family. Many of them like nothing better than a tasty piece of roadkill. Which begs the question, how have the scavengers been faring with less traffic on the roads? And, come to think of it, will 2020 mark an upturn in fortunes for the beleaguered hedgehog?

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The active travel inspectorate will have a lot on its plate

The announcement that there is to be an active travel inspectorate for England is welcome (‘Active travel inspectorate for England’ LTT 15 May). There will also be a national cycling commissioner.

To provide well for active travel and to aid its development for years ahead, there should be walking and cycling audits of all highway developments; arguably these are now more important than safety audits, with pollution killing more people than traffic accidents. But their need is largely ignored. This is just one argument for why there should be an inspectorate for highway authorities, to help keep them up to date, especially when their staff are depleted after years of austerity.

There is other work that the new inspectorate will need to be involved with, such as accident analysis.

Reporting of accidents also needs co-operation with the police. So one awaits to see how this inspectorate will work, and how it will relate to the work of the commissioner.

More immediately, the Government has ordered councils to develop quick plans for schemes to encourage active travel. The works may be temporary but, much better, could be made permanent. The budgets will be small, so there is a risk of doing something simple that could make later development more costly than necessary. As you reported in the editorial in LTT May 29, “As one contributor to LTT’s discussion on the topic said last week, once these schemes are in, it will be politically hard to take them out if they’re judged a success.”

One form of such a scheme is a main road having links designed for a cycle route and signalled junctions giving appropriate priority for using it, but not for cyclists wishing to make right turns to or from it.

This would be judged a success. But later it could be considered that the junctions should be redesigned to help cyclists make right turns to extend use of the route, or to cross the main road. Oxford Road in Manchester, which was designed before the advent of the Bee Lines network, is an example of this.

Roland Graham West Kirby Wirral CH48

When will The Royal Parks join in the cycling revolution?

The cycle lane on Park Lane has to be the least useful temporary measure that even Transport for London could dream up (‘London: Park Lane traffic lanes cut from three to one’ LTT 29 May). Yes, there is a perfectly adequate – not narrow – cycle path inside Hyde Park, well away from traffic fumes, which is a much more attractive option, especially for the inexperienced cyclists that temporary measures are aimed at.

Kensington High Street is the logical continuation of the key strategic east-west route, and then through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. That is where temporary (and permanent) cycle lanes are required. But guess what, the ‘new’ ten years overdue CS9 route will end at Olympia; not exactly a ‘workplace destination’.

Notting Hill Gate-Holland Park Avenue is also crying out for cycle lanes.

Well done Edinburgh for its sensible programme of roadspace reallocation measures reported in the last issue (‘Scotland: Edinburgh scoops £5m as budget grows’). That’s much more like it. Now, can English cities come up with similar plans?

In London, the DfT’s statutory guidance on network management in response to Covid-19 should also apply to The Royal Parks, which has yet to implement its movement strategy. The Royal Parks says it supports active travel but it is not proposing any new routes for cyclists through any parks. Surely

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

if it is keen to reduce cars in the parks it makes sense to provide more cycle routes, especially in those parks with few current routes (walking is rightly #1 but it has its limitations).

Limiting cycle access to just one or two designated paths means those few routes sometimes get overloaded. If the Royal Parks allowed cycling on other (wide) paths in Hyde Park then fewer people would use the existing perimeter path parallel to Park Lane.

Given diagonal routes across the park, why would anyone cycle on Park Lane itself?

The same is true for Kensington Gardens and Regent’s Park – there are plenty of other paths in both that could be designated for shared use, which would disperse users of existing routes. I know from firsthand experience that Regent’s Park paths have few users in the morning peak and not many walkers in the evenings. The north walk in Kensington Gardens is five metres wide, which is well wide enough for shared use.

Green Park would also benefit from a north side route rather than everyone having to use the south side. And Greenwich Park north walk is wide enough for shared use and is a safe alternative to the A206 where fatalities occur.

Where cycling is allowed almost everywhere, e.g.

Bushy Park, none of the paths become overloaded – and walkers there are much more accepting of shared use.

The City of London scrapped its ‘No Cycling’ restrictions in West Ham Park a few years ago and now allows open access on all its paths – they do not regret it.

Having said all that, the best thing the Royal Parks could do would be prevent through traffic by closures/filters – as the DfT and 78 per cent of respondents want the Royal Parks to do – which would reduce traffic in parks by more than 90 per cent, making park roads more attractive to cyclists.

It’s easy and cheap to close park roads e.g. Serpentine Bridge, which is what should have happened instead of Andrew Gilligan’s expensive over-engineered segregated tracks that are quite inappropriate in a park setting.

And the Royal Parks should stay open 24 hours a day for active travel. Instead they close at 4pm in winter!

Rik Andrew London SE6

Who thinks of the disabled in decisions about streets?

It’s interesting that Northern Ireland will allow ecycles to go up to 15.5mph and still not be treated as a motor vehicles (‘E-bikes cleared for NI’ LTT 29 May).

Meanwhile, mobility scooters are limited to 4mph on footways and above that they must use the roads.

Mobility scooters are also banned from cycle paths.

The Government’s encouragement to local authorities to implement temporary pop-up cycle lanes as a response to Covid-19 will take away roadspace, making roads even more dangerous for mobility scooters.

When will someone in authority do something about this dangerous discrimination against the disabled?

No one seems to care.

Vanessa Kovacevic Red Lodge Suffolk IP28

> MORE LETTERS ON P28

SEND letters to be considered for publication to: Local Transport Today, Apollo House, 359 Kennington Lane, London SE11 5QY Email: ed.ltt@landor.co.uk (Letters may be edited)

Comment 27

Change as a constant You’ll have hopefully noticed that this issue is LTT's 800th, and part of our short feature to mark the occasion includes a list of many significant things that were just a twinkle in the eye or not even on the radar when the magazine was launched in 1989. For all or any of its omissions, it's still a quite remarkable list when you think it’s just a 30-year period. Lenin once said, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. That’s certainly the case at the moment as we grapple with the Coronavirus pandemic and its consequences.

One conclusion from looking back is that we don't always register just how much has changed, once the new things have become commonplace. So setting a ‘before and after’ date seems a good way to understand that massive level of upheaval, and how so many things that were so new at the time are now taken for granted.

With the pandemic on top of everything else, the world and its human activity have been reshaped extraordinarily in less than a single lifetime, and arguably at an exponential pace.

Does the essence of human behaviour really change that much that fast? How many people comfortably embrace the pace of change that is the hallmark of modern society? Technology, engineering, electronics and even art are all developing at a rapid pace but are people and attitudes keeping up and matching themselves happily with our recreated world? Many are left behind or left confused. Strangely, the current 'lockdown' has created a potentially muchneeded pause, and chance to reflect and recalibrate. That might mean that once things restart and we are urged to get the economy moving again, a significant number of people may feel an even bigger disconnect.

Might there be a resistance to the brave new worlds of virtual and digital, the spread of Artificial Intelligence and to recharged consumerism – all very much on the transport agenda – and instead a greater appreciation of the value on time spent with friends and family or just enjoying a walk in the fresh air?

Who’d want to guess what might be on a similar list published in 30 years’ time? For sure, expecting ‘business as usual’ would be a fantasy, but might projecting forward the frenetic kind of change we’ve been used to miss a potential reset in our expectations too?

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28 Comment

Road building lacks public accountability in Wiltshire

Your report ‘Wiltshire creates team to lead M4-South Coast road upgrade’ (LTT 29 May) makes it sound as if Wiltshire Council is making real progress towards creating a fast road from the M4 to the dying port of Poole. Bearing in mind the hideous cost and difficulty of just getting the A350 round Westbury – never mind building a string of bypasses through Dorset – the A350 expressway still faces all the obstacles I set out in my Viewpoint article ‘Seaside blues – bypassing the facts on the fantasy road to the M4’ (LTT 28 Sep 18).

What the story does show, however, is Wiltshire Council’s mastery of the new corporate apparatus for transport planning. In practice this means central and local government collaborating to get roads built without strategic planning along corridors of economic growth. This opens up land for sprawling housing and trading estates often with a remarkable absence of popular support and democratic scrutiny.

Nowhere is this more striking than in Wiltshire Council’s plans for the open countryside and the Avon Valley to the east of Chippenham. With a contempt for public consultation that outraged local MP James Gray and all the parish councils through which the road would pass, the council obtained a £75m grant from the Housing Infrastructure Fund to build a 9.5 km spine road to open up land for 7,500 houses and a million sq ft of industrial estates.

Only a fragment of this project appears in your catalogue of A350 schemes: the A350-M4 junction 17 improvement will be needed to handle the extra traffic from this vast area of urbanised countryside now branded as ‘Future Chippenham’. Wiltshire Council wants to distinguish the project from its vision for the A350 growth corridor – even though the road would leave the A350 to the north and rejoins it to the south of town and would, the council says, reduce congestion in the town.

The council has embraced the role of property developer. A ‘Future Chippenham team’ will be “entirely separate and distinct from the council in its role as local planning authority”; future funding will be covered by borrowing £5.220m capital from reserves in the 2020/21 financial year. The council acknowledged (report to cabinet 24 March) that this budget is at risk if Homes England doesn’t finally sign off the £75m grant, the road is refused planning approval, or the new strategic housing and employment allocations do not make it into the next local plan.

A set of four new companies has been established to develop the council’s property assets – including the tenanted county farms lying along the route of the spine road. Councillors acting as directors of the new companies may be paid for duties beyond their normal roles. Officers will be granted an armoury of delegated powers.

While the schemes covered in your report on the A350 corridor are given a strategic planning gloss by approval from the Western Gateway shadow subnational transport body (STB), the Future Chippenham project seems to have an existence independent of local democratic structures, its normal funding partner (the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership), and the new Western Gateway STB. The White Horse Alliance and its member organisations in North and West Wiltshire are deeply disturbed by this new unaccountable corporatist approach to planning when the need has never been more urgent for sustainable transport and spatial planning to combat climate crisis and resource scarcity.

Patrick Kinnersly Secretary White Horse Alliance

Debate the climate policies, but leave the science alone

Alan Wenban-Smith and John Whitelegg took issue with your coverage of climate change (LTT 29 May). I agree with them that the evidence for the reality of global warming is entirely convincing. There is, though, continuing discussion of the future magnitude and timing of changes in temperature, weather phenomena, sea level rises and the like, which involves consideration of the climate models used to project the future. But no useful contribution to debate on these aspects will be delivered by a magazine for transport professionals.

The Paris Agreement of 2015, which has been ratified by 189 countries persuaded by the evidence, aims to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The UK Government has accordingly legislated to set a target of at least a 100 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (compared to 1990 levels) in the UK by 2050.

The columns of LTT would be a natural place for the practical aspects of transport decarbonisation to be reported and debated. You appropriately covered the report entitled Electrifying the UK by Professor Michael Kelly, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organisation that is sceptical of much analysis of climate change (“Country’s battery electric car strategy is ‘doomed to failure’” 29 May). The topic is relevant to the deployment of electric vehicles. Regrettably, Professor Kelly’s four-page report fails to consider analyses made by others with expertise, while dismissing the Committee on Climate Change.

When preparing the chapter on electric vehicles for my recent book, Driving Change, I reviewed the available analysis of electricity demand and supply, including studies by the National Grid, which is responsible for planning future supplies. The conclusion I reached was that if smart charging were employed to avoid the early evening peak, then the overall increase in demand would be manageable. Subsequently, the Committee on Climate Change published a 79-page study, which concluded that accelerated electrification of heating and transport would be feasible to meet the net zero emissions target.

There will be continuing debate about both the modelling and the practicalities of the transition to a zero carbon transport system, which I hope you will cover fully. This would be of practical interest to readers of LTT, in a way that debate about climate models would not.

David Metz Centre for Transport Studies University College London www.drivingchange.org.uk

Rational debate, and the seeds of a driver backlash

Alan Wenban-Smith doesn’t seem to like rational views being expressed in LTT (Letters 30 May). My letter to which he refers didn’t challenge any ‘science’, it referred to the Paris climate agreement, which has been shown by the former head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sir Robert Watson and the economist Bjorn Lomborg as not fit for its claimed purpose (LTT 15 May). The economics of climate policy are based on a cost-benefit analysis and the Paris Agreement fails miserably.

If Alan thinks those who campaign on behalf of drivers are aggressive then he clearly has never experienced the likes of Extinction Rebellion or some in the cycling lobby. All too often those promoting the political agenda of a climate emergency, crisis or catastrophe depart from the actual science – I’ve written a ‘primer’ on extreme weather and climate change for those who continue to misrepresent the known facts: https://tinyurl.com/yc9k2pn5 UK transport policy is now a ‘war on transport’.

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Covid-19 has become Covid-1984 with ‘new normal’ as ‘Newspeak’, justifying road closures and the removal of road space to disadvantage disabled drivers, taxis, emergency vehicles, delivery vehicles and inhibit the freedom of personal transport choice.

It seems an elite minority in the taxpayer-funded public sector has no interest in the economy, which is dependent on the wealth-creating private sector and motorised transport. The ‘walking and cycling’ soundbite does not represent a credible transport policy.

Ending on a more positive note, all of this is uniting groups including the Alliance of British Drivers, Fair Fuel UK, the Motorcycle Action Group and the road haulage industry under a soon to be launched ‘umbrella’ group. Enough is enough.

Paul Biggs Environment spokesman Alliance of British Drivers Tamworth, Staffs B77

Keeping down vehicle speeds at a time of less traffic

With less traffic on our roads, many have added a regular walk or bike ride to their daily routine; some for the first time. Yet worryingly, there is also evidence to suggest that speeding is on the increase. As a driving instructor – or driver trainer – I have a few thoughts on this, to say the least.

There is an urban myth that the Rotherhithe tunnel in London was consciously constructed with many bends to stop horses bolting for the daylight at the end. While a myth, in my daily training, I see the merit in the idea. As drivers enter emptier roads, many tend to accelerate to the maximum speed allowed and often go over the limit.

Given that we are generally experiencing lower traffic levels, it’s obvious to me that speeding will continue – and unfortunately our hard-pressed police force has next to no resources to combat it. The Green Party in Brighton & Hove has consistently asked the local Police and Crime Commissioner to prioritise and fund more speeding enforcement on the city’s roads, but to no avail.

The standard approach to reducing anti-social behaviour always begins with enforcement – but there are also proactive road safety measures councils can implement now. As cities worldwide change their transport policies to accommodate changes in vehicle use and respond to Covid-19, our own council has made a few steps in the right direction. The closure of Madeira Drive to traffic has been welcomed – and hopefully it won’t be a temporary measure, as we guide our wonderful city to lower toxic emissions – ‘carbon neutral’ – by 2030.

Another bold step has been the introduction of a temporary west-east cycle lane along the Old Shoreham Road, a move welcomed by our city’s huge cycling community and something that clearly, should be made permanent.

Building on the work of the local Greens to introduce a 20mph speed limit, a city-wide reduction in speed limits would be a key move. As a party our local councillors are making suggestions to the council at every opportunity, from the ‘school streets’ initiative to restrict car entry to our school gates, to our input on the city transport planning reports, calling for more space for cycling and walking. We aim to protect the vulnerable road user wherever possible. Nonetheless, we need to target problem behaviour; and the reality is that speeding needs to become as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving.

Crucially, it is in the hands of motorists to change their behaviour. As a driver trainer, as we become accustomed to our new world I ask each motorist driving through our city to do one thing. Imagine every pedestrian and cyclist was a member of your own family and see how that affects your view of other road users. Open roads should be an opportunity for all of us to enjoy outdoor space safely. And we must never forget: speed kills.

Councillor Steve Davis Green Party Brighton & Hove City Council

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (continued) Comment 29

Eighteen trains an hour on HS2 – whyever not?

A lot of nonsense has been spoken about the ability of a high-speed railway to handle 18 trains per hour (tph), and House of Commons transport committee chair Huw Merriman may be about to increase it (‘DfT still wants 18 trains on HS2’ LTT 29 May).

The scepticism goes back to a statement by a representative of French state operator SNCF to the House of Commons transport select committee in 2013, that their limit at that time was regarded as 12 to 13 tph. This has been parroted many times by august and unbiased bodies from the House of Lords economic affairs committee to Birmingham University, but no-one, ever, asked what SNCF thought actually set that limit. And the one thing that clearly does not set it is high speed!

A proper investigation of the issue needs to be taken in stages. Does HS2 have the technical capability to handle 18 trains per hour? If not, there need be no further argument. But if it does have the technical capability, is it realistic in practice to run at that frequency?

And, if it is realistic in one hour, is it wise to do it in continuously through every hour of the operating day?

So, technical capability first. Sure, as speed increases, so does braking distance, and therefore so does train separation. The time separation between trains is then increased by a variety of other factors such as system latency and safety allowances, so the relationship between speed and minimum headway is a J-shaped curve, in effect an inverted version of the speed : flow curve for roads that readers are no doubt familiar with.

However, both arithmetic and modelling show that with ETCS (European Train Control System) Level 2 signalling and some realistic assumptions as to block length, braking rates, etc., although the minimum headway is achieved at about 200kph, even at higher speeds the theoretical headway can be as low as 120 seconds. Although in practice local features such as overhead line neutral sections will increase this a little, the technical capability to operate 18tph at 360kph is not in doubt.

The binding constraint on train frequency proves not to be the headway at full speed on plain line. Rather, it arises in station areas, but here the issues are common to any other railway and are not specific to high speed.

The one constraint that stands out is likely to apply to any newly-built railway, arising from the likelihood that approaches to cities will have to be tunnelled, as is the case on HS2 into London and Manchester. These long tunnels will have ventilation shafts, and the requirement arising from fire precautions is to ensure that only one train can be between each pair of shafts, or between shaft and portal, at any one time.

This is enforced by aligning boundaries of signalling blocks with the shafts and portals. However, shafts both cost money and intrude on the built-up area on the surface, so spacings have been determined by potential rescue and evacuation needs, typically at intervals of 3.3km. This is about twice the length of a standard signalling block, so increases headways, but the effect only becomes material on the approach to a station where trains are on a braking curve to stop, so that the transit time of the last shaft-to-portal section escalates.

Even so, headways can be contained to a worst case of 150 seconds, so long as everything else about the design is perfect, such as having alternate platforms at the station so as to build the dwell time out of the headway, and turnouts approaching those platforms that do not constrain train speed any more than does the natural braking curve to the stop. And 150 seconds with 18tph equates precisely to the guideline maximum usage of 75 per cent of theoretical capacity set out in the International Union of Railways (UIC) Leaflet 406.

But that, albeit the only objective standard we have, is a guideline, so we need to be satisfied that it can plausibly apply to HS2 in practice. An 18tph timetable would have a train every three minutes, with a number of spare minutes spread around the hour to achieve clockface departures – for instance, trains leaving Euston at xx00, xx03, xx06, then xx10. So there is buffer time between each train of between 30 and 90 seconds to absorb small delays. But what about bigger ones? The key risk on a mixed use railway is when a late-running fast train gets

behind a stopping train, and can only trundle behind it for the rest of the journey. However, this risk does not arise on HS2 as all trains on the 18tph core route are running at the same speed. A train presenting out of order simply fits in, with the buffer time allowing consequent delay to decay over the next four or five trains. Of more significance is what happens to it on arriving at the terminus having missed its path across the station throat, but Euston as proposed in the Phase 1 hybrid Bill could be planned to leave one platform available for this and other contingencies. For more serious delays, HS2 will have a variety of service recovery strategies that the existing railway does not. For instance, a train handed over from the conventional network seriously late could be terminated short at Old Oak Common.

As to continuous operation of 18tph rather than that being simply a peak frequency, to some extent only time will tell. If necessary, an off-peak service of a lower frequency could be defined, but surely the logical approach is not to underuse the new infrastructure because we are afraid that the old infrastructure cannot present trains to it on time. Punctuality of trains is not absolute but is the outcome of choices that can be managed. If the effect is that the conventional railway receives further investment and other management action to allow the new railway to work to the full, than that is good for everyone and not just high-speed travellers.

All in all, the technical capability of HS2 to operate 18tph is not in doubt, and the capacity limit is not set by the maximum speed. Moreover, in practice it has buffer time and recovery options to enable reliable operation in practice. I would though plead with my engineering friends and colleagues, if designing another new railway with tunnels, not simply to slap ventilation shafts down at fixed intervals, but to space them equally in terms of transit time, closing up where train speed reduces. The Victorians knew very well that is how to space block posts under manual signalling!

William Barter Potcote Towcester NN12

You’ve read LTT – now join in our next online conversation!

The theme is: Every fortnight we bring you your LTT magazine with unrivalled news, comment and analysis about the local transport scene. And now every fortnight – in the week between LTT issues – we bring you a discussion online that helps our audience of professionals keep connected with the key issues and each other during this time of isolation in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.

THE FUTURE OF CAR TRAVEL: HAS COPING WITH CV-19 CHANGED THINGS?

We’ve so far had five highly successful online discussions, involving up to 100 LTT readers. Next Friday we will be holding our sixth conversation, chaired by editor Andrew Forster.

Panelists include:

2pm, Friday 19 June 2020

The format will be an informal and friendly gathering on Zoom. Following the introductory presentations on the above theme, participants will be invited to raise questions and give their comments.

If you didn’t make it last time, or for the earlier events, you can still view recordings of them on TransportXtra.

Please join us for this important opportunity in transport professional interaction!

To register your place email Tom Daldry at tom.daldry@landortravelpublications.com or visit TransportXtra.com/events.

Professor David Metz, UCL, author ‘Peak Car’

Professor Nick Reed, Founder of Reed Mobility, and Former Head of Mobility R&D at Bosch

Peter Stephens Head of UK External and Government at Nissan

Olga Anapryenka Senior Consultant, New Mobility at Steer

We’ll be limiting the active audience to 100 people to ensure a manageable discussion.

Priority is given to attendance by LTT subscribers.

Please email: tom.daldry@landortravelpublications.com for joining instructions

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Consultants, Researchers & Suppliers

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LTT800 12 June -25 June 2020

To get your profile in print and online call us on 020 7091 7895 or email jason@landor.co.uk

Air Quality Consultants Ltd provides independent expert advice on ambient air quality. Established in 1993, the Company has completed many assessments of road, rail, shipping and airport schemes. Its staff have presented expert evidence at numerous Public Inquiries. The Comapny plays a central role in the development of air quality management and assessment in the UK and abroad, and has developed guidance and many of the tools used for assessment.

Bristol contact: Penny Wilson on 0117 974 1086 London contact: Chris Whall on 020 3873 4313 Email: aqc@aqconsultants.co.uk www.aqconsultants.co.uk

C4ST is independent, clear-eyed, and practical. We provide you with the analysis, evidence, advice and the support you require at the point where key elements of modern transport meet – energy efficiency, vehicle emissions, “mobility as a service”, shared mobility services and demand reduction. C4ST is lead by two very experienced transport professionals who often work together but take separate commissions around their special interests.

Visit: www.c4st.uk Chris Endacott PhD: +44 (0)1743 366 182 Richard Armitage FCILT M: (0)7973 538 556 Incorporating Richard Armitage Transport Consultancy and Gfleet Services

CEC are a civil engineering consultancy with over 30 years’ experience, and an enviable reputation for quality, reliability and value. We provide transport planning, water management and civil engineering detailed design services including; access appraisals and feasibility studies, technical input to masterplans, Transport Statements & Assessments, Travel Plans, Travel Plan Co-ordinator role, Road Safety Audits, Flood Risk Assessments, drainage strategies, river modelling, highways and drainage detailed design, highway condition surveys and expert witness services.

Please contact: Swindon: Brett Farmery Tel: 01793 619965 Email: bfarmery@coleeasdon.com Bristol: Doug Hickman Tel: 01454 800474 Email dhickman@coleeasdon.com www.coleeasdon.com

Specialist consultancy providing highway, traffic and transportation advice to both the public and private sectors. Transportation Strategies, Transport Assessments, Sustainability Appraisals, Travel Plans, Policy Advice, Expert Witness Support.

Forester House, Doctor’s Lane, Henleyin-Arden, Warwickshire, B95 5AW Tel: 01564 793 598 Fax: 01564 793 983 inmail@dtatransportation.co.uk www.dtatransportation.co.uk

Gateway TSP

Gateway TSP offers cost effective and comprehensive Road Safety Engineering consultancy advice including:

• Road Safety Auditing • Road Safety Studies and Assessments (AIP) • Design of Local Road Safety Schemes • Walking, Cycling and Horse-riding Assessment and Review

Contact us on: 01483 679350 or by email at: info@gateway-tsp.co.uk Gateway TSP, 84 North Street, Guildford GU1 4AU www.gateway-tsp.co.uk

Independent sustainable transport planning and research consultancy, formed in 1998.

Our expert team of professionals works in partnership with public, private and third sector clients around the world, specialising in: • Sustainable Development • Data & Analytical Tools • Policy & Strategy • Public Transport • Smarter Travel • Research Web: Contact: Tel: Email:

www.itpworld.net Nick Ayland 0115 824 8250 ayland@itpworld.net

Intelligent Data are the market-leading providers of Traffic, Transport and Environmental data. To find out more about our ATC, MCC, ANPR, Environmental Data and Parking surveys please contact: info@intelligent-data-collection.com or call: 0845 003 8747

Specialists in all aspects of traffic signal design, analysis and training. As the producers of industry standard software such as LinSig, JCT is unrivalled in its ability to offer clients correct and appropriate solutions to their traffic problems. In particular, JCT is highly regarded for its expertise in signal roundabout and complex junction design having been involved in numerous projects and providing advice to Government at both National and Local level.

JCT Consultancy Ltd, LinSig House, Deepdale Enterprise Park, Nettleham, Lincoln LN2 2LL Tel: 01522 751010 Fax: 01522 751188 Email: anthony.gerundini@jctconsultancy.co.uk www.jctconsultancy.co.uk

Mayer Brown is a leading Consultancy for Transport Planning, Infrastructure Design and Environmental Assessment in the UK. Services include Transport Assessments, Travel Plans, Transport Planning, Accessibility Studies, Highway and Infrastructure Design, Air Quality and Noise Assessments, Road Safety Audits, Pedestrian and Cycle Networks, Regeneration Studies, SuDS, Drainage and Flood Risk Assessments, Topographical Surveys.

Offices in Woking (head office), London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Isle of Wight Contacts: Paul Stocker (Transport Planning) pstocker@mayerbrown.co.uk Tim Moore (Highway and Infrastructure Design) tmoore@mayerbrown.co.uk Tel: 01483 750508 www.mayerbrown.co.uk

Transport economics and logistics consultancy providing research services, freight transport modelling and advice to the public and private sectors since 1982, based on maintaining trade and transport databases and the specialist expertise of its consultants. Owner and operator of the GB Freight Model (GBFM), which forms the freight module of the DfT’s National Transport Model. Multimodal expertise in road, rail and urban freight, ports and shipping, ferries and inland waterways, air freight and warehousing The consultancy’s services for public sector clients in the freight and logistics sector include:

• Freight strategy and policy development at a regional, sub-regional and town/city level • Freight transport modelling using the GBFM • Regional and sub-regional analysis of international trade in goods • Forecasting of the strategic supply and demand for warehousing • Freight demand forecasts, capacity analysis and feasibility studies for freight terminals, infrastructure networks and freight services • Evaluation of user and non-user benefits of freight projects and strategies • Global supply, demand and economic analysis of ferries and container shipping • Rail, planning and commercial advice concerning the development of Strategic Rail Freight Interchanges.

Contact Chris Rowland Tel: 01244-348301 Email: chris.rowland@mdst.co.uk

Nationwide Data Collection (NDC) provides specialist data collection services for transport planning, traffic engineering and market research. Our staff have unrivalled experience in organising large scale data collection exercises with particular expertise being available in conducting manual & automatic traffic counts, roadside interviews, pedestrian counts & interviews, ANPR, Infrared video, radar speed surveys and parking studies.

UK offices in Scotland, Ossett, Warwick and London. Ireland offices in Dublin and Athlone. European office in the Netherlands enquiries@nationwidedatacollection.co.uk www.nationwidedatacollection.co.uk

We are a transport planning consultancy, covering all modes of transport including railways, public transport, highways, cycle, walk and air transport. We specialise in advanced multi-modal transport modelling, forecasting and appraisal together with its market research and computer software.

Over 25 years experience in a wide range of UK and international projects including specialist toll road model audits. Our innovative transport planning software, Visual Choice for advanced demand modelling and Visual-tm for everything else combines fast, powerful multi-modal modelling with a friendly user interface.

S2, S3, S4 Audley House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Herts HP4 1EH Tel: +44 (0) 1442 879075 mail@peter-davidson.com www.peter-davidson.co.uk

PFA Consulting has over 30 years’ experience of providing development advice and solutions to the public and private sectors. Services include: access appraisals and feasibility studies; transport assessments and statements; junction assessment and microsimulation modelling; sustainable transport and travel plans; planning appeals and expert witness; flood risk assessment and drainage strategies; highways and drainage design; walking, cycling and horse-riding assessment and review; input to legal agreements; and construction supervision and management.

PFA Consulting Ltd, Stratton Park House, Wanborough Road, Swindon SN3 4HG Tel: 01793 828000 Email: admin@pfaplc.com www.pfaplc.com

Q-Free offers a complete range of ITS products, solutions and professional services based on the most advanced and cost-effective technologies with an established UK Office and Production Facility based in Weston-Super-Mare in the South West of the UK. Products, Solutions & Services include: Traffic Counters & Classifiers; Cycle & Pedestrian Monitoring; Bluetooth™ Traffic Monitoring; Weigh-In Motion Systems; Tolling Systems; Parking Systems & Solutions.

Contact us: Tel: 01934 644299 Email: sales.uk@q-free.com www.tdcsystems.co.uk

Severnside TDC specialise in the provision of Transportation Data Collection Studies.

Our client focus and attention to customer satisfaction allows us to provide a professional service for every piece of work. Our services inlude but are not restricted to Video based Transport Surveys, ANPR, Drone Surveys, Public Transport, Cycle/Pedestrian Studies & Parking Studies.

Contact: Stephen Jones Email: steve@severnsidetdc.co.uk www.severnsidetdc.co.uk

Specialists in all types of Traffic and Transport Survey and Data Consultancy Operating throughout the UK, Ireland and internationally, we utilise the best and most appropriate technology, techniques, skills and experience available to deliver data solutions. Our central support and technology teams together with our network of operational bases employing over 200 full time specialists allows us to deliver some of the largest and most complex data collection contracts in the UK alongside individual local projects all utilising the innovation and skills Tracsis are known for. Technologies we use include digital ANPR, Video, Bluetooth, WiFi, ATC, Video Analytics, GIS asset management and Mobile Phone Network Data Analytics. See our website for local office details or contact our Head Office at: Tel: +44 (0)1937 833 933 Email: TaDS@Tracsis.com www.TracsisTraffic.com

The Transportation Consultancy (ttc) is a dynamic and innovative transportation consultancy that specialises in transport planning, traffic engineering, sustainable transport and transport economics. Our people have over 100 years of combined technical knowledge and can offer you expert advice covering the whole transportation sector, helping you to make sound decisions in today’s complex environment. Our advice is underpinned by innovation, technical excellence and expert opinion, enabling our clients to make sound decisions in what is often a complex and challenging environment. “ttc” has a set of values that guides us in our everyday business and continues to drive our ambition to provide unrivalled advice that helps deliver the best transportation solutions to our clients.

Please contact Alan Bailes Tel: 07803 894686 Email: info@ttc-transportplanning.com www.ttc-transportplanning.com

The CIVINET UK & Ireland Network is the sustainable transport network for local authorities. Members can access European and national funding information, comprehensive sustainable transport expertise and networking events. Private organisations are welcome as associate members.

Tel: 0117 907 6520 Email: civinet-uk-ireland@civitas.eu www.civitas.eu/civinet-uk-ireland

PTRC Education & Research Services Co Ltd is a company within CILT (UK). PTRC is the leading international organisation specialising in the training of transport, highways and planning professionals.

Tel: 020 7348 1970 Emai: info@ptrc-training.co.uk www.ptrc-training.co.uk

Join the Transport Planning Society – the professional home for transport planners and transport planning qualifications!

The TPS facilitates, develops and promotes best practice in transport planning and provides a focus for dialogue and debate between all those engaged in it, whatever their background or other professional affiliation. TPS works closely with its four partners ICE, CILT (UK), CIHT and RTPI to further the profession and in the development of professional qualifications, such as the Professional Development Scheme (PDS) and the Chartered Transport Planning Professional (CTPP). We also hold great events, bursary competitions, awards and much more – check out our website for details.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7665 2238 Email: info@tps.org.uk www.tps.org.uk

Specialists

View their full CVs at TransportXtra.com/consultants

BURGESS Peter. M.Sc. (Econ), B.A.(Ind.Econ), Cert.Dip. AF, MCILT Transport Economics Limited DfT Business Case Support. Economic Impact Reports. Mode Split Revenue Support Grant. Waterbourne Freight Grant.

European Funding (Evaluator): (INEA) Connecting Europe Facility; (EASME): HORIZON 2020 (SMART cities and Urban Mobility).

Innovate UK bid support: Economic and Environmental Impact criterion Email: peter.burgess@transportecon.com www.transportecon.com STAVELEY Peter. MSc CMILT Public Transport Consultancy Railway and bus operational planning, public transport strategy, railway timetabling, capacity studies, software development, data manipulation.

247 Davidson Road, Croydon, CR0 6DQ Tel: 07973 168742 Email: Peter@PeterStaveley.co.uk www.PeterStaveley.co.uk

To get your profile in print and online call us on 020 7091 7895 or email jason@landor.co.uk

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TransportXtra.com/ltt

The LTT Directory

The LTT Directory 31

Learning Intelligence Networking & Knowledge Sharing

www.landor.co.uk

//Automatic Traffic Surveys

// Skilled and dedicated teams throughout the UK

Tube/Radar/Bluetooth

Full national coverage

// Manual Surveys

TRAFFIC + TRANSPORTATION

Roadside Interviews / Public Transport / Cycle & Pedestrian Surveys / Parking Studies / Market Research

// Video Surveys ANPR / High Mast / Covert Studies/ Journey Times Surveys

THE DATA COLLECTION SPECIALISTS

Contact Joe Maclaren or Jeremy Rowlands

surveys@ctstraffic.co.uk // 01772 251400

WWW.CTSTRAFFIC.CO.UK

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LTT800 12 June -25 June 2020

32 The LTT Directory

The next issue of LTT will be published: Friday 26 June Advertising booking deadline: Tuesday 23 June

For recruitment advertising please contact Jason on: 020 7091 7895 or email: jit@landor.co.uk

For display and directory advertising please contact Jason on: 020 7091 7895 or email: jason@landor.co.uk

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34 The LTT Directory

LTT800 12 June -25 June 2020

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www.Jobs-in-Transport.com

Recruitment 35

The best jobs for transport specialists start here Below is a selection of the top vacancies currently advertised on the UK’s leading transport jobs board: www.Jobs-in-Transport.com

Strategy Officer (Perth) Principal Transport Planner

£34,170 - £39,654

Starting Salary £39,182 An exciting opportunity has arisen for 2 highly motivated and skilled Principal Transport Planners to join the Transport Strategy Team at Kent County Council, playing a proactive role in supporting growth across Kent.

You’ll lead on delivering the transport strategy function which plays a central role in supporting the development of the County Council’s position on a range of strategic transport planning matters including the new Local Transport Plan, the new transport strategy for the emerging Sub-national Transport Body – Transport for the South East, the Kent and Medway Energy and Low Emissions Strategy, the Growth and Infrastructure Framework, the Kent Environment Strategy, and major transport schemes across the County.

Qualified to NVQ Level 5 or equivalent in a related discipline, your experience includes strategic transport planning in a complex and varied environment, in the public and/or private sectors. You possess a thorough understanding of current and emerging national transport policy, economic appraisal and business case development, project management skills that enable you to deliver major projects within agreed budget and timescales, excel in partnership working and relationship building whilst managing a busy and diverse workload.

Lying at the heart of Scotland’s transport network, and covering the Angus, Dundee City, Perth & Kinross and Stirling Council areas, Tactran is the statutory Regional Transport Partnership with a duty to create a Regional Transport Strategy and oversee its delivery. The Partnership is also a statutory Community Planning and Development Planning agency, and has a key role in supporting the development and implementation of the Tay Cities and Stirling & Clackmannanshire City Deals.

You will have responsibility for supporting the development, implementation and monitoring of the Regional Transport Strategy and related delivery programmes, with particular emphasis on advancing the Active Travel, Health & Transport, Travel Planning and Travel Information elements of the Strategy. This will involve supporting and contributing to key stakeholder and partner liaison and assisting in the appraisal, procurement and delivery of proposals and projects. Key tasks will be the management of Tactran’s Active Travel Grant scheme and associated initiatives, in close liaison with Sustrans Scotland and Tactran’s Regional Active Travel Development Fund projects.

Ideally educated to degree level in a relevant discipline, you will also be familiar with transport and wider policy issues within an RTP or local authority environment and have knowledge and/or experience of relevant legislation, procedures and best practice in sustainable and active travel provision, travel planning and travel information.

Closes: 17th June

APPLY NOW: https://bit.ly/2zmGQQC

APPLY NOW: https://bit.ly/37lsTip

Closes: 29th June

Senior Research Fellow for Young People, Transport and Health

Wayfinding Officer

£33,397 - £40,322

£23,814.50 - £26,109.50 A temporary post for a Wayfinding Officer has been created to support two exciting projects, across two local authorities (Oxfordshire County Council and Cherwell District Council) to run for fourteen months within a small number of sites.

Working in conjunction with Active Oxfordshire - the county’s sport and physical activity partnership, Oxfordshire County Council seek to pilot a School Wayfinding project to test the efficacy of using signage and road markings to encourage parents and carers who normally drive their children to and from school to park a short distance away and walk the last/first stage of their journey. The project will be community led and seek to complement existing initiatives to improve road safety conditions, reduce air pollution outside of school gates at opening and closing times and reduce CO2 emissions associated with the ‘school run’.

You will join the Centre for Transport & Society (CTS) at UWE Bristol, a group of 10-15 academics and researchers focused on the interactions between society, mobility and technological change. The post-holder will receive input and support from staff at UWE Bristol and Sustrans, while also working alongside the other four Health Foundation funded post-holders in other organisations.

We are seeking someone who has the ability both to conduct high quality research and to interpret and communicate evidence in a way that is compelling to policy and delivery organisations in the transport sector. We are looking for someone skilled at listening to the experiences and views of young people and highly motivated to make a difference to their lives.

Closes: 16th June

APPLY NOW: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/jobs

The Wayfinding Officer role will be key to delivering on the following priorities for each partner – these are not exhaustive and there will be synergies between the partner projects which should deliver efficiencies. Experience is required in: ·

- Practical experience of dealing with contractors, procuring and installing small scale infrastructure projects

·

- Practical experience of project management

·

- Asset mapping, auditing and gathering and interpreting data

·

- Interpretation and design (to include stakeholder consultation briefs and multiagency planning)

·

- Designing of wayfinding routes and infrastructure

·

- Experience of planning/urban design

·

- Experience of working in partnership, public engagement and stakeholder management

·

- Health and safety and risk management.

Closes: 29th June

APPLY NOW: https://bit.ly/30y5lW3

To advertise, contact Jason on: 020 7091 7895 or email: jason@landor.co.uk

Head of Highways £68,486 - £71,999 About you This is a once in a career opportunity to shape a Highway Service for a new authority, to be able to consider all the activities that local authorities undertake and manage on their highway network. The local and economic climate is exceptional and that brings significant demands and pressures that will test and develop your managerial and engineering capabilities whilst working in a new political landscape for the Council.

The service has a high profile with the public and the Councillors, with many more councillors in the new Unitary Council, developing effective and efficient mechansims for communicating about the service is a real challenge and there is an opportunity to modernise the service.

Skills & Experience/About You We are looking for a qualified professional with a proven track record of delivering high quality highway services showing the ability to think differently and show innovation in service delivery.

Closes: 27th June

APPLY NOW: http://bit.ly/2ZLNzOH

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Editorial

Tel: 0207 091 7875 | Email: ed.ltt@landor.co.uk

Advertising

Tel: 0207 091 7895 | Email: ads@landor.co.uk

Next issue

Published 26 June 2020

TransportXtra.com/ltt

LTT800 12 June - 25 June 2020

News

People

TfL’s £100k+ earners grow, but staff costs stay stable

REMUNERATION

THE NUMBER of Transport for London staff receiving more than £100,000 remuneration rose to 521 in 2019/20, up from 468 in 2018/19. TfL’s overall staff costs remained stable.

Of those earning more than £100,000: • 178 had a base salary exceeding £100k, up from 171 in 2018/19 • 130 had a base salary of £80,000£100,000 but were paid overtime taking them over £100k • 131 had a base salary below £80k but went over £100k through overtime • 82 received voluntary severance that took them over £100k (down from 117 in 2018/19).

Many overtime payments were for specialist engineers working overnight and weekends on major Tube and rail projects.

As well as the 521 TfL staff earning over £100k, 36 staff employed by Crossrail Ltd, a subsidiary of TfL, did so too.

TfL’s headcount (including agency staff) stood at 27,603 fulltime equivalent (FTE) on 31 March, up from 27,280 on 31 March 2019.

In all, 14,810 of the workforce earned more than £50,000 (including salaries, fees, performance-related pay, benefits in kind, lump sums and termination payments, but excluding pension contributions).

TfL’s total remuneration costs in 2019/20 were £2.179bn, almost identical to the £2.177bn in 2018/19 and down from £2.250bn in 2017/18.

Commissioner Mike Brown

received remuneration of £519,661 (up from £508,301 in 2018/19), of which £372,227 was salary, £145,225 performance-related pay for 2018/19, and £2,209 benefits in kind.

Remuneration of other chief officers (many including pension contributions) include: • Mark Wild, Crossrail chief executive, £479,531 • Chris Sexton, Crossrail deputy chief executive, £436,554 (including £100,000 performance-related pay for 2018/19) • Lestor Hampson, property development director, £403,333, (including £179,638 performancerelated pay for 2018/19) • Gareth Powell, managing director for surface transport, £386,085

• Stuart Harvey, director of major projects, £357,755 • Shashi Verma, director of strategy and chief technology officer, £327,689 • Vernon Everitt, managing director for customers, communications and technology, £316,450 • Graeme Craig, director of commercial development, £255,629 • Alex Williams, director of city planning, £236,829 • Helen Murphy, director of TfL consulting and international operations, £206,758 • Howard Smith, Crossrail chief operations officer, £205,328 • Lilli Matson, chief safety, health and environment officer, £204,417 • Michèle Dix, managing director, Crossrail 2, £202,599.

Severance payouts total £18.6m TfL paid out £18.6m in non-compulsory exit packages (‘severance’) to 239 staff in 2019/20. This was down from the £30.7m paid to 475 staff in 2018/19, and the £51.4m paid to 704 staff in 2017/18.

Former group financial controller Sarah Bradley received £278,686. She left TfL on 31 July 2019 but received total remuneration in the financial year of £361,220. A spokesman told LTT her exit package consisted of six month’s salary in lieu of notice, a one-off severance payment and untaken leave. The terms were set when she joined TfL. The accounts record one severance payment of over £400,000 and two between £350,000 and £400,000, all to un-named officials. Said the spokesman: “They received what is called ‘pension augmentation’ which is where someone agrees to a lower voluntary severance agreement on the basis that we top-up their pension to the amount they would have received if they continued to work until age 60. For accounting purposes the total amount TfL would pay for this is listed in the year they left the organisation.”

He added: “As a result of the Dawn Jarvis review, TfL has introduced new arrangements, which have reduced the notice periods of senior staff. These will reduce any future severance paid as new appointments will be made on this basis.”

Clark is Connected Places Catapult chair Greg Clark (pictured) has been appointed chair of the Connected Places Catapult on a renewable three-year term, succeeding Terry Hill. Clark is global head of future cities and new industries at the HSBC banking group and a non-executive board member of Transport for London. He has an honorary professorship in urban innovation and policy at University College London and the University of Strathclyde, and is the founder of The Business of Cities, a UK-based urban analytics start-up that works with clients in 20 countries.

Harris joins CILT International Jon Harris has joined the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport International as education strategy and business development lead. He moves from train operator West Midlands Trains, where he had been integrated transport and accessibility manager since November 2018. He previously worked in transport consultancy.

Smith joins AVAL from Tully De’Ath Louise Smith has joined AVAL Consulting Group as a parttime principal transport consultant. She moves from consultant Tully De’Ath, where she was a part-time senior transport planner, and she has previously worked for the Project Centre and MVA (now SYSTRA).

Hubery leaves Lincs for Love to Ride Sarah Hubery has joined cycling organisation Love to Ride as a local project manager in Lincolnshire. She moves from Lincolnshire County Council where she was a sustainable travel officer.

Brown leads Cambs climate commission The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, led by mayor James Palmer, has appointed Baroness Brown of Cambridge to chair a climate change commission that will advise on how the area can achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Brown is deputy chair of the Committee on Climate Change. The combined authority’s commission will produce an interim report in the autumn and final report early next year.

Kilpatrick joins Journey4 Marianne Kilpatrick has joined business transformation consultancy Journey4 as a senior associate to providing advice across the transport sector, with a strong focus on rail. She has spent 30 years consulting in the transport sector, particularly rail, including with SNC-Lavalin Atkins.

If you would like to be included in this column please call 0207 091 7875 or email ed.ltt@landor.co.uk