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
1) Labour starts its transport journey... But who is deciding the path? | Peter Stonham | 17 July 2024
2) What should the new Government do about Roads and Traffic? A Strategy for Truth and Reconciliation | Phil Goodwin | 17 July 2024
3) Transport matters a lot - but not in elections. And that, on the whole, is a good thing | John Dales | 17 July 2024
4) Most decisions have climate consequences. But can we really seek to embrace them all? | Peter Stonham | 2 July 2024
5) Triple Access Planning is a useful concept – but have the practicalities been fully thought through? | David Metz | 2 July 2024
6) Who should design and deliver a national road pricing scheme? | Richard Sallnow | 2 July 2024
7) Plus ça Change… | Peter Stonham | 18 June 2024
8) London mayor has a big target for cutting carbon emissions - he needs big ideas to achieve it. Here are five to start with | Mark Frost | 18 June 2024
9) Should we really be expecting anything much better for transport policy from the next Government? | Jonathan Bray | 18 June 2024
10) Spending wish list for transport set to meet harsh post-election financial realities | David Leeder | 18 June 2024
1) What should the new Government do about Roads and Traffic? A Strategy for Truth and Reconciliation | Phil Goodwin | 17 July 2024
2) London mayor has a big target for cutting carbon emissions - he needs big ideas to achieve it. Here are five to start with | Mark Frost | 18 June 2024
3) Plus ça Change… | Peter Stonham | 18 June 2024
4) Visions require validation: new approaches for deciding and testing which policies will deliver | Peter Jones | 4 October 2023
5) Decision time for England’s biggest road project. What are the implications? (Part One) | Phil Goodwin | 6 February 2024
6) Travel behaviour change: what’s possible, what works, and what’s needed? | Peter Stonham | 6 February 2024
7) Achieving behaviour change in transport — what should be the guiding principles? | Round Table Discussion | 31 January 2024
8) The Theoretical and Practical Limits to Demand Responsive Transport Services | John Sutton | 6 March 2024
9) This might turn out to be another significant moment | Arman Farahmand-Razavi | 2 December 2021
10) Housing Development and Highways - will we ever break the link? | Colin Black | 23 April 2024
What should the new Government do about Roads and Traffic? A Strategy for Truth and Reconciliation
The new Labour administration is faced with making a challenging set of decisions about controversial highway schemes inherited from the previous Government, and setting out a wider framework of future roads and traffic policy, which it didn’t do before the Election. Phil Goodwin argues that a long hard look at the legacy position and establishment of clear set of objectives is needed to anchor decisions going forward. He suggests the establishment of thoughtful and inclusive independent review would really help that process
Transport matters a lot - but not in elections. And that, on the whole, is a good thing
This publication, and its readers, are both really concerned about transports matters. But, as John Dales argues here, that’s not generally the position of most ordinary citizens, with transport not at all a defining issue when it comes to national elections. So why, he wonders, did the Conservatives go overboard in trying to make the needs of drivers a key plank of their pitch? He’s pretty confident it was a pointless exercise, and is quite pleased about that too.
Labour starts its transport journey…But who is deciding the path?
IN JUST A WEEK OR SO since the General Election, the new Labour Government has been very active in asserting the arrival of a new era in British politics. Though not the highest of profile areas, transport has had its fair share of attention, particularly in the choice of the full ministerial team of five, led by Louise Haigh, taking forward her former role as Shadow Transport Secretary, but with two particularly interesting ministers in support — Lord Peter Hendy, spearheading Labour’s rail agenda, and Lilian Greenwood given the interesting title of Future of Roads Minister — alongside Simon Lightwood leading on Local Transport, and Mike Kane responsible for Aviation and Maritime.
Triple Access Planning is a useful concept – but have the practicalities been fully thought through?
Recognition that transport provision is just one part of achieving spatial connectivity and user accessibility is a welcome step says David Metz. But he feels that the formalised concept of Triple Access Planning is an idealised approach to embracing this truism, and the realities of specific geographic transport challenges, available practical options, and public and political behavioural expectations mean the theory will be hard to deploy successfully.
Happy 10th birthday to the ‘Mini Holland’ poster child, and may there be many more happy returns
It’s been 10 years since Waltham Forest secured £27m funding from the London Mayor to create a ‘Mini Holland’. The far-reaching success of the programme illustrates the importance of genuine leadership, holding your nerve in the face of adversity, and understanding what the majority thinks, not just what the minority shout, says John Dales
Transport investment appraisal - What are we really trying to measure?
Measurement of inputs and outputs from transport investment has been refined over the 50 years or so since the concept of cost-benefit analysis was first applied in the sector. But David Metz believes that the underpinning conceptual thinking has not been re-examined sufficiently to reflect new objectives, priorities and public spending choices, with debate restricted to detail within a narrow group of professionals. The fresh thinking of the Welsh Government to embrace wider issues is welcome, but still leaves unresolved issues, he argues.
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.
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
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.