Credit: Integrated Transport Planning (ITP) Consulting
by Professor John Parkin, Emeritus Professor of Transport Engineering
The nature of a vision led approach
A vision led approach considers how to make places attractive, prosperous, safe, healthy, and easy to get around. It approaches the planning and development of transport infrastructure in ways that will influence travel choices that, in turn, will help create these better places.
Rather than a linear ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ modelling approach to transport planning, the vision led approach is iterative and holistic, embracing flexibility, learning from past mistakes and adapting to uncertainty. It is important to note that it does not advocate for spending less on transport infrastructure. Instead, investment is directed to accommodating alternatives and unlocking latent demand for modes of travel such as walking, cycling and public transport.
While ‘vision led’ is an emerging term, it represents the art of the possible and a step change in attitudes towards transport planning and design. The approach is summarised in ITP’s figure above.
Rather than focussing on cars and roads – and predicting future demand and providing for that demand – the vision led approach starts with a collective ambition for how a place should look and feel. When communities are asked how they would like their local area to function, rarely do people directly ask for bigger junctions or wider roads.
A new guide
The approach is easy to understand, but perhaps more difficult to implement. To assist planners and designers, a new guide has been drafted and is available from the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE), repository and from the Transport for Quality of Life (TfQL) website. The guide was prepared by Transport for Quality of Life, the Centre for Transport and Society at UWE, the ITP consultancy, Jon Parker Consultancy, and other partners.
The guide is intended to help plan development and transport infrastructure by using an approach that helps grow prosperity; meets decarbonisation objectives; and delivers more sustainable, accessible, equitable and healthy communities. This can help achieve the Government’s five missions of securing prosperity, reaching net zero, and improving safety, opportunities and health. It is in line with Welsh Government’s Well-being of Future Generations Act and its subsequent strategies for transport.
The guide considers how goals and priorities should be defined and how roads policy should be defined. There are now many emerging examples of well-defined and executed developments that follow these principles including large scale master planning, housing developments, and alternatives to building roads.
The guide is intended to assist everyone who is in any way connected with development and transport infrastructure planning.
The report can be downloaded from the UWE repository here: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14331734/vision-led-planning-how-to-plan-development-and-transport-infrastructure-more-sustainably or from Transport for Quality of Life’s website here: https://www.transportforqualityoflife.com/reports/vision-led-planning-how-to-plan-development-and-transport-infrastructure-more-sustainably/.
The guide was not externally funded. It has been endorsed by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) and the Transport Planning Society.
This blog was written by Prof John Parkin, Emeritus Professor of Transport Engineering at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of the West of England, Bristol.
Professor John Parkin is Emeritus Professor of Transport Engineering and was Deputy Director of its Centre for Transport and Society. He has been involved in all stages of the promotion of transport schemes including policy formulation, modelling and forecasting, operational analysis, economic appraisal, design, construction, and evaluation. He has worked across all modes of transport and researches the links between infrastructure design and user behaviour. He was a member of the Welsh Roads Review Panel. He has a specialism in cycling infrastructure design and authored Designing for Cycle Traffic. You can contact him at: John.parkin@uwe.ac.uk.