Planning homes and transport together - an incomplete connection

THERE IS a big difference between building an individual home, or even a group of new houses, and designing for the needs of a community of people who live in the same place. That’s why the word neighbourhood exists. It’s also why planning exists.

We may, as a nation, need to provide thousands of new homes to solve a perceived housing problem, but we also need to structure hundreds of new or expanded settlements of which these homes will be part, and consider very carefully their transport requirements and impacts too.

Emerging new settlements – villages, towns and cities – were the building bricks of a growing society before the transport technological revolution made it possible – and increasingly easy – for people to live in one place, but undertake lots of their activities in completely different locations. This was the birth of 20th century sprawl, and the less than thoughtful creation of many new housing developments predicated on an era of limitless and fairly inexpensive mainly fossil-fuelled mass mobility.

There is, of course, a benefit from our modern world of independent lifestyles, but there should also be a recognition of a definite need for house building to be more than putting up accommodation units of a suitable size and design. The parallel creation of shared environments of which these units form part has become known as placemaking.

What we often see now is the supply of units of accommodation, built together for the convenience of the provider, but that only rarely might be accurately characterised as being conceived as part of a structured relationship with one another, and involving the other elements of economic, social and personal activity that most people now want as part of their lives. Thinking in detail about this is not a responsibility, unless imposed stringently upon them, that most developers are keen to have. But just as providing individual homes does not, of itself, create a community, so a single housing development – even if benefitting from good urban design and placemaking skills – will not ensure that the activity, social dynamics and mobility patterns of the occupants add up to either a desirable neighbourhood, or produce a sustainable transport outcome.

Even as recently as in the 1980s, transport planners often thought of their role in this context in a kind of technical silo. Thus it seemed a great idea to work out what the transport and traffic footprint would be for people moving into new homes, so that a formula could be used to ensure proper provision could be made for those needs. This was known as ‘Traffic Impact Assessment’ and was to be used to judge the provision of facilities – principally highways – that must be funded by, or for, new development to support such proposals being submitted for planning approval. Computer power was accordingly harnessed for what became known as TRICS – the Trip Rate Information Computer System, a database of empirical trip rates for developments used for transport planning purposes, specifically to quantify the trip generation of new developments.

The innocent initiation of this piece of thinking and practice might now be seen as a mistaken approach based on a technocratic and formulaic mindset – rather than one that also embraces behavioural consequences and impacts, including social, economic and environmental ones.

And though this process wasn’t known as ‘predict and provide’ in the way that planning and appraising strategic new road schemes became – it was arguably an even more prescriptive and restrictive basis on which to plan and decide about the transport aspects of new housing development.

As Colin Black explores in this issue, in his detailed examination of the link between housing and transport – and particularly highways – this embedded predictive relationship equation as to how decisions on the transport implications of new housing should be made, seems now in urgent need of review, as we seek to better fit together transport provision and housing development in our new social and environmental circumstances.

So far, new thinking about housing provision that grasps this issue has only emerged in a limited way as some local authorities have sought to change the system locally, based on more imaginative approaches to new housing design, and provision for appropriate sustainable mobility and accessibility. Such is the recent adoption by Oxfordshire County Council of the Decide and Provide approach to transport planning rather than the Predict and Provide approach, which has historically underpinned road building, to the detriment of other modes and the environment. No doubt other councils will look to adopt this approach moving forward. But this can be a lonely path to follow, as it means a struggle for any individual planning policy initiative to get traction, when the established approach of linking housing development and traffic capacity still remains the generally accepted way of doing things – and what developers and their advisors can point to as core principles when submitting planning proposals to the planning authority, or on appeal.

Early steps were made in planning policy at the national level in the 1990s with Planning Policy Guidance 13’s objectives to integrate planning and transport at regional, strategic and local levels, and to promote more sustainable transport choices when development was being considered. In 2012, PPG 13 was replaced by the National Planning Policy Framework, presented by the coalition government. The NPPF, including its section on delivering sustainable transport was to be a material consideration when taking decisions on planning applications, especially where the Local Plan is absent, silent or relevant policies out of date. The NPPF, together with the Planning Practice Guidance (PPG), set out what the then Government expected of local authorities.

Last year, a decade later, a further revised National Planning Policy Framework was drawn up by the current administration under Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove, and released in the autumn to set out updated planning policies for England, and how these are expected to be applied.

A revised National Planning Policy Framework was published last year under Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove. Some progress appears to have been made in promoting sustainable transport, through a shift in emphasis in the consideration of transport issues in plan-making and development proposals. But there are still weaknesses in the ability to reject schemes that are too highway and parking dependent

Some progress appears to have been made. In the chapter on transport in the revised National Planning Policy Framework entitled ‘Promoting Sustainable Transport’, there is a significant shift in emphasis in the consideration of transport issues in plan-making and development proposals. The need to consider transport issues from the earliest stages is highlighted, not only to enable impacts on transport networks to be assessed, but also to identify and pursue opportunities to promote walking, cycling and public transport use. By taking this approach it is hoped available transport infrastructure and technologies can be recognised, environmental impacts identified, assessed and taken into account; and transport considerations made integral to the design of schemes, also making for higher quality places.

The new framework seeks to have policies prepared so that strategies and investments for supporting sustainable transport and development patterns are aligned. It puts an emphasis on the role of land use planning in reducing the need to travel and offering genuine choice of transport modes, which in turn can help to reduce congestion, emissions, improve air quality and public health. The framework encourages priority to non-car modes in terms of development layout and connectivity, providing a greater sense of place that is safe, secure and attractive for all. It also encourages developments to provide for necessary infrastructure to enable electric vehicles to be charged in safe, accessible and convenient locations.

But though there is clear recognition that the environmental impacts of traffic and transport infrastructure should be identified, assessed and taken into account in considering development plans, this only goes so far.

Whilst it is also asserted that the planning system should actively manage patterns of growth in support of sustainability objectives and “Significant development should be focused on locations which are or can be made sustainable, through limiting the need to travel and offering a genuine choice of transport modes”, opportunities to maximise sustainable transport solutions are acknowledged “to vary between urban and rural areas, and this should be taken into account in both plan-making and decision-making.”

And whilst developments which will generate significant amounts of movement continue to be required to provide a Travel Plan, with applications supported by a Transport Statement or Transport Assessment, the follow through on this for how better decisions can consequently be made, is limited.

When assessing development proposals, three principles are required to be taken into account to ensure that appropriate opportunities to promote sustainable transport modes can be (or have been) taken, given the type of development and its location; so safe and suitable access to the site can be achieved for all users; and any significant impacts from development on the transport network (in terms of capacity and congestion), or on highway safety, can be cost effectively mitigated.

Regrettably the NPPF update does not directly address the need for carbon reduction. Indeed a key paragraph undermines any such wider ambitions in stating that “development should only be prevented or refused on highways grounds if there would be an unacceptable impact on highway safety, or the residual cumulative impacts on the road network would be severe.” There is no carbon impact test. Meanwhile it is also stated that maximum parking standards should only be set where it is necessary to manage the local road network or for optimising the density of development in city and town centres and other location that are well served by public transport.

How this revised Planning Policy revision will affect green belt land, the delivery of affordable housing and indeed development and the planning process in general is yet to be clear; and so is its contribution to the implementation of strategic transport planning at both a local and sub national level, and pursuit of policies for the better integration of land use, economic and transport planning. And more fundamentally, their contribution to the Government’s Net Zero Strategy, and its commitments to addressing the climate emergency.

One thing of particularconcern, is the fact that, as the new NPPF is not principally a transport document and not issued by the DfT, it seems to have been largely overlooked by those in the wider transport planning world. Of course, ideally if there were not the deep silos with which we are now all familiar, the Department for Transport would have itself signalled the emergence and importance of the new NPPF. And, logically, given it due status and context in the new guidance on Local Transport Plans - if that had actually been issued as promised.

The LTP guidance is something we have now spent three years waiting for, and still cannot expect to see before the General Election. Would it be too much, however, to hope that a new Administration could bring a new clarity of purpose to how it wants development and transport to be better integrated – and quickly issue the long awaited advice, presenting a more coordinated and productive approach, not just setting out DfT’s requirements, but fully relating those to the policies of other Departments too?

The new National Planning Policy Framework may be an opportunity – or it may be a missed opportunity – for those seeking to better connect the provision of new housing and creation of a more sustainable transport system. It seems we will have to wait a bit longer to find out which.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT890, 23 April 2024.