Transport & Accessibility Policy
Alternative Solutions
The UK Transport ideas exchange
& discussion forum
Welcome to TAPAS
Here are just some of the issues we are keen to see under discussion
Latest issues under discussion amongst transport professionals
The deep flaws in how we model freight
The treatment of freight movements is an area of serious weakness in transport planning, writes Professor Phil Goodwin. The assumptions being made are not underpinned by adequate understanding, suffer from a lack of suitable data analysis, and embed misrepresentation of commercial and economic realities. All this seems highly likely to be leading to inappropriate decision-making. An in-depth review is needed, he argues.
Most recently viewed papers on TAPAS
1) The deep flaws in how we model freight | Phil Goodwin | 8 May 2024
2) Housing Development and Highways - will we ever break the link? | Colin Black | 23 April 2024
3) Decision time for England’s biggest road project. What are the implications? (Part Two) | Phil Goodwin | 21 March 2024
4) Achieving a genuinely sustainable transport future for the UK | Round Table Discussion | 14 April 2023
5) The Theoretical and Practical Limits to Demand Responsive Transport Services | John Sutton | 6 March 2024
6) Achieving behaviour change in transport — what should be the guiding principles? | Round Table Discussion | 31 January 2024
7) Visions require validation: new approaches for deciding and testing which policies will deliver | Peter Jones | 4 October 2023
8) Triple Access Planning – a diffusing innovation that reflects our new look world | Glenn Lyons | 21 March 2024
9) This might turn out to be another significant moment | Arman Farahmand-Razavi | 2 December 2021
10) 50th Anniversary of the Transport Studies Unit, Oxford University: A Memoir | Phil Goodwin | 31 July 2023
Asking the experts
IN WHAT COULD BE SEEN as a positive step for enriching the breadth and depth of the specialist knowledge available to government, the Department for Transport has identified 45 experts to join a new advisory panel. But perhaps more interesting is how it will use them.
There certainly seems to be an ever-expanding list of available expertise being focussed on the transport field - perhaps indicating the importance and complex multi-faceted nature of current challenges.
Constant re-examination of policy and practice to address emerging new circumstances and challenges seems essential.
Where is MaaS going? Its complicated…
Mobility as a Service has been an idea that’s time has supposedly come for a decade or more. However it’s not hit the mainstream, and one of the companies that has led the way in developing the concept has just gone bust. Is it being stopped from taking off? Will it ever deliver the benefits for easy- to- use multi modal travel that its advocates believe are possible? The authors of a new book on MaaS, Beate Kubitz and James Gleave, outline the current state of play, and the prospects.
Housing Development and Highways - will we ever break the link?
Why does new housebuilding still so often mean major new highway investment asks Colin Black? Predict and Provide may be disavowed now, but the old paradigms of Transport Impact Assessment live on in both the types of housing provision proposed, and the accessibility arrangements supposedly essential to go with it. Can local planning and transport authorities themselves specify approaches that break the link - or is something much more definitive needed at national policy level he wonders. And might a new Government potentially have the motivation needed to deliver it?
Sidewalk stories from the Big Apple. What makes a city special - and worth fighting for
Looking at other countries, cities and cultures can teach us a lot, and give us a new lens through which to examine how we live and work ourselves, says John Dales. Just back from the USA he reflects on some of the forces that shaped New York, and the dangers of chasing future visions that miss the fundamentals of what really matters.
What is the place for DRT in the wider public transport system?
Each transport mode has operational and economic attributes that define its potential to play a role within the overall mix of options. As technologies and business concepts evolve, the transport options change too. But reality and cost-effectiveness, rather than promotional claims, should define the most appropriate choices in public policy and expenditure on them, argues Professor Peter White. He is concerned in particular about an absence of consistent examination and evaluation about what Demand Responsive Transport can deliver at an acceptable cost.
Triple Access Planning – a diffusing innovation that reflects our new look world
Transport planning must evolve to match the new context of a changing world in which mobility is just one element of how we connect with the things we need and want to have, and to do, says Professor Glenn Lyons. Here he explains the origins and development of the Triple Access Planning idea, and introduces a new Handbook about it with guidance for practitioners about implementing the concept in the context of their professional activities.
Decision time for England’s biggest road project. What are the implications?
The recently completed examination of the revised National Highways proposals for a new downstream crossing of the Thames between Kent and Essex exposed some fundamental issues about how the rationale behind its justification was both presented and tested, believes Phil Goodwin. These are matters of more general significance, he feels, and here he provides an analysis of the case presented, and the wider questions it highlights about major road scheme appraisal and the robustness of the review process, in the first of a two parts TAPAS contribution on the Lower Thames Crossing, and the issues it raises
The Theoretical and Practical Limits to Demand Responsive Transport Services
As someone involved in studying and delivering community transport and dial-a-ride schemes from the 1980s, and more recently a consultant to one of the Rural Mobility Fund DRT projects, John Sutton believes he can offer some perspective and realism to the true prospects for DRT in the passenger transport spectrum. In this contribution he explores the theoretical and practical limits of DRT, and why these realities mean it can only be effective in limited niche markets and special circumstances, even with the deployment of the latest scheduling and communications technology.
Beyond Carrots & Sticks – why it’s time to replace this unhelpful transport policy metaphor
It is said that language can drive us apart, and that’s the case with the concept of deploying carrots and sticks, widely, but mistakenly, adopted by the transport planning and policy fraternity, believes Pete Dyson co-author of ‘Transport for Humans’, doctoral researcher at University of Bath and former behavioural scientist at Department for Transport. He points to its unwanted messaging implications in presenting the case for change to decision-makers and transport users, and proposes there are better ways to discuss travel behaviour change
Rowing Backwards: The New Politics of Decarbonisation
There has been a substantial reaction to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s policy changes to the Government’s approach to achieving Net Zero, most specifically the commitment to end fossil fuel car sales in 2030, extending the deadline to 2035. But he also sought to present a different way of thinking about the broader policies on the trajectory to the 2050 Net Zero deadline. TAPAS asked Professor Greg Marsden to comment on the implications.
The journey to Net Zero: examining the assumptions and expected outcomes from policy aspirations and interventions
The last few months have seen hightened discussion of the contribution of transport to addressing global warming and climate change, and which measures will be the most effective to achieve genuine reductions in carbon emissions and progress towards Net Zero. TAPAS presents here a series of articles exploring the recent political commitments and projections in this field, and their strengths and weaknesses, with potential wider application in transport policy and planning.
Lessons from the Elizabeth Line: what can we learn from the emerging evidence?
An exceptional level of high-quality monitoring has been undertaken by Transport for London as the passenger responses to the opening of the new Elizabeth Line emerge. TAPAS presents here a series of articles exploring the significant behavioural and system development implications, including the elasticities of demand relating to major journey time and service quality changes, with potential wider application in transport policy and planning.
Replacing bus services in low demand areas: Can Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) play a worthwhile and cost-effective role?
With continuing financial pressures on the provision of conventional public transport in rural and low density suburban areas, Demand Responsive Transit systems, providing services by small vehicles running to dynamically determined schedules based on specific customer journey requests, have been advicated as a suitable alternative. Considerable public money has been made available for their intruduction, but how successful have they been, and is this a cost-effective solution? TAPAS presents some contrubutions on this issue, and welcomes further submissions.
Visions require validation: new approaches for deciding and testing which policies will deliver
It has been widely accepted that better approaches are needed to developing and defining local transport strategies beyond the old ‘predict and provide’ thinking. But that will require new frameworks for creating the agreed visions, and ensuring that proposed policy measures are robust and effective, says Professor Peter Jones. Here he explains the concept of ‘vision and validate’ and what it means for the way transport planning practitioners work.
From black and white to shades of grey – the flawed world of expert knowledge dissemination in transport
How should creative thinking and research about the challenges facing transport best be presented, and is the traditional ‘academic publication’ model fit for purpose in the new world of exploding information provision? Professor Phil Goodwin has strong concerns that what has grown up as academic protocol is deeply flawed, and has been marginalising some of the most important content coming from beyond the universities. He’d like to see a better and more accessible framework.
Round Table Discussions
Second successful ‘Transport Thinking Forum’ Round Table event in association with TAPAS tackles ‘changing travel behaviour’
We are very pleased to record our holding of the second successful ‘Transport Thinking Forum’ Round Table event in association with TAPAS, which addressed the theme of achieving behaviour change in transport. You can read several articles on this topic on TAPAS.
First successful ‘Transport Thinking Forum’ Round Table event in association with TAPAS
We are very pleased to record our holding of the first successful ‘Transport Thinking Forum’ Round Table event in association with TAPAS, which addressed the theme of achieving a sustainable future for UK transport.
Featured TAPAS Collection
Road Plan Assessment and Appraisal
With both economic and environmental issues to the fore, TAPAS contributors, Phil Goodwin, Greg Marsden, Derek Halden, David Metz and others explored the basis on which major road investment schemes can be justified or not.
See the articles and join the discussion.
The route to Net Zero: DfT assumptions look well off course
The Welsh Government Roads Review
The 2022 DfT National Road Traffic Projections: unanswered questions and required conversations
More Work is Needed on the Interactions between Appraisal and Investment - and explaining where the costs and benefits go
When the facts change, we should change our thinking – and that’s the case with planning our future transport now
Reviews and Reflections
Phil Goodwin
Professor Phil Goodwin is Emeritus Professor of Transport Policy, University College London and University of the West of England. He was head of the Transport Studies Unit at Oxford University for 16 years, before moving to UCL in 1996.
50th Anniversary of the Transport Studies Unit, Oxford University: A Memoir
Having been (up to now) TSU’s longest serving Director, I was pleased to open the 50th Anniversary celebrations, with an assessment of its changing role over the years.
The arc of TSU has been an unusual one. The pre-history in the 1950s was intended as a focus for the intellectual activity of the transport industries. The Unit itself started in 1973, with Ian Heggie as Director, as a mostly detached part of the Economics Sub-Faculty, with almost no teaching, entirely self-funding, and research that was a challenge to the prevailing transport orthodoxy of economics-based modelling. When I was Director, it developed a strong research-based influence on policy, mostly in challenging the predominance of ‘predict and provide’ approaches subordinated to car dependence. At the height of this influence, in 1994, we were awarded an exceptional ESRC ‘centre of excellence’ designation, with 10 year funding based on rethinking traffic growth and replacing equilibrium methodologies by dynamic ones: that work was completed not in Oxford, but by the Unit decamping to London.
Arman Farahmand-Razavi
Arman Farahmand-Razavi is a transport and planning advisor and a business strategy professional. He is the joint editor of the TAPAS.Network.
This might turn out to be another significant moment
Arman Farahmand-Razavi offers his personal reflections on a forum that embraced the big issues of our time, and how it has reminded him of past gatherings of the sector’s leading thinkers
REFLECTING on the 5th Annual Local Transport Summit in Brentford last month, I felt privileged to be part of a discussion that could come to be seen as a significant moment in the history of professional transport planning in the UK. The significance may not have been the event itself, or any of the individual speakers and their presentations. But after the traumatic experience of the past 18 months it provided a special opportunity to get together physically and to take stock of what had changed in the world since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And the world certainly seems to be a different place, needing new approaches to addressing the very real challenges that humanity faces.