LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION
Annual Conference, Harrogate
8 July 1999
Room to Move: Sharing the gains and pains of integrated transport
Dr George McL Hazel
Director of City Development, The City of Edinburgh Council
1 The approach
Edinburgh has the fastest growth in car ownership in the UK and possibly Europe. Between 1981 and 1991 car ownership in central Edinburgh grew by 57% while over the same decade UK car ownership grew at half this rate - 29%. While the public have visual evidence of the impact of this trend in terms of traffic congestion and excess demand for car parking spaces, there is still lack of information and perception on the levels of atmospheric air pollution and to what extent it is impacting upon our health. Even less is there an awareness of the social effects of increasing car dependence and the interrelationship with the city’s economic base.
Atmospheric air pollution, increasing congestion, and the developing mobility deprivation of those without access to cars makes it imperative, and not just desirable, that policies aimed at reducing car dependency and encouraging public transport, walking and cycling are implemented as quickly as possible.
Yet rising car ownership and increasing levels of traffic are often considered a measure of economic success. We need to uncouple this link - a successful economy and a quality environment need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, the contrary is increasingly likely to be the case, as modern service-based economies rely increasingly on quality of life factors to attract inward investment and draw in visitors and tourists. But to achieve a "win-win" position means thinking not just about transport service and infrastructure, but also about urban form, economic and fiscal frameworks, and the lifestyles that give rise to the need to travel.
There are broadly four strategies that can be adopted, a mixture of push and pull measures, and these will be needed in combination:-
Imagination and innovation in all these are needed if we are to achieve sustainable patterns of transport and development. In this paper I deal specifically with the use of road space in terms of the physical allocation of this scarce resource between different users, and how charging for use of roadspace might affect this.
Roadspace: a scarce resource?
As traffic demand has grown, the pressure on transport planners has generally been to increase road capacity to accommodate additional demand. Outside built-up areas this has manifested itself in extensive new road building, which in turn has generated new development pressures adding yet further to traffic growth. Within urban areas, the constraints are much greater. Some towns and cities have constructed new roads, others have maximised the traffic throughput of their existing network. Neither option has provided a long term solution to traffic pressures in any city, and congestion remains a problem virtually everywhere.
One of the reasons that congestion continues to increase is that the main alternative means of transport to the car in most cities - buses - have become increasingly disrupted by congestion, and hence become a less and less attractive alternative. Similarly, congestion and increasing traffic levels make cycling an unpleasant and dangerous activity, and affect the comfort and safety of pedestrians.
In cities in particular, the roadspace available has become more and more dominated by the car. Pavements have become narrower to accommodate extra traffic lanes, pedestrians have been given less crossing time and have to take tortuous routes to cross roads, and everyone is affected by increased pollution. This makes no sense in transport terms, and it also damaging to the economic viability of the city as it becomes more polluted and provides a reducing quality of life to its inhabitants and visitors. A rational and environmentally sustainable transport system requires a re-assessment of the way in which roadspace is used.
Reprioritisation
Cities exist in order to promote the interchange of goods, labour, ideas, culture through a vast range of activities, both formal and informal. A sustainable, prosperous city will be one that facilitates this interchange by making it easy for people to meet, by design and by chance. The informal, chance element of city life is often forgotten - yet this is probably the key to a city's success, creating the quality of life that attracts people to the city. Street cafes and benches in public squares symbolise that lifestyle.
To enable this requires careful use of city space: there is a delicate balance between space for activities - including public space for the informal aspects - and space needed to provide accessibility to those activities. Where the balance is wrong, the city's economy and environment will be damaged. Over the last forty years or so, more and more city space has been used inefficiently to try and cope with growing car use. Buildings, pedestrian and other public spaces have been replaced by car space, and low density, car based suburbs, business and retail "parks", have taken over former countryside.
Yet the trends can be reversed. This has been demonstrated in Copenhagen. Copenhagen officials have managed (by removing cars in certain areas and turning space over to walkers) to generate thriving open-air public spaces which operate from mid-March through to October. Cafes will now even provide their customers with blankets so that they can drink cappuccinos out of doors on sunny but very cold days in February. The message is that having experienced an improved urban environment, city dwellers have become so used to the ethos that every possible tactic is adopted to extend the season. Such outdoor life offers the attraction of diversity, the unusual and the unpredictable, as well as opportunity to meet people.
2 Awareness and Acceptance
Consultation with the public and other interest groups is a crucial part of the development of transport policy and projects in Edinburgh. Surveys in the city have shown strong support for measures that re-allocate road space, for example:
However, the way in which proposed policy changes - whether reallocation of roadspace, or the introduction of road user charging - may impact on people’s main concerns and priorities needs to be clearly understood and explained. The importance of this increases as more radical and innovative policies are proposed. Evaluation of options needs to incorporate all these issues, and comprehensive reconsideration of the approach to evaluation and assessment is essential.
This potentially leads to a very wide range of questions. Impacts can be categorised into a number of areas, and some of those which are often inadequately dealt with at present might include the following, which is not comprehensive:
Who are the losers and the gainers from any change, defined in social terms (for example the "marginal motorist", socio-economic groups, geographic terms (one area benefiting at the expense of another), demographic categories (families as compared to single people). Many other definitions could be developed. Consideration needs to be given to which are the most important, which affect notions of "fairness".
The economic impacts, both localised and over a wide geographical area (regional, national or international) of physical changes, of changes to accessibility, and of changes to environmental quality are still not well understood, and need further major study. Understanding of the effect on both small and large businesses of these changes will not only provide the basis for assessing overall economic impact, but will be essential to gain the acceptance of business.
Policy measures implemented in particular areas may affect land use and locational policy within that area, or they may cause shifts in locational decisions between different areas particularly if local authorities compete to attract development through non-sustainable transport policies. For example restraint measures such as parking restrictions or road user charges in city centres may stimulate peripheral development, or may stimulate moves by businesses to a less restrictive city. Approaches to location decisions by business, and ways of reducing competitive pressures achieving a "lowest common denominator" position need to be examined.
There is an understanding by health professionals of the effect of present transport trends on health. However this understanding is less amongst transport professionals, and certainly amongst the public at large. This issue could be a key factor in the development of public awareness and acceptance of the need for change to current trends, but it needs considerable development to improve understanding and communication of these linkages.
Environmental impacts have been the subject of extensive research, as has their inclusion in evaluation techniques. However the treatment of environmental impact in a holistic way, incorporating both global and local impacts, and quantifiable and non- quantifiable elements remains difficult.
New approaches to provision of transport services and infrastructure have raised issues in terms of the objectives of the providers in relation to public aspirations. These matters become even more significant when new sources of funding are discussed, either through private sector investment, or through new charges or levies on road users.
3 Conclusion
New approaches to the management of roadspace are not just an issue of efficient management of the transport system, they also support wider policies for economic success, environmental improvement and conservation, health and social policy. Inevitably, car drivers will feel themselves to be the victims in measures that reduce the capacity available or increase the cost of use for cars and transfer space or money to public transport or pedestrians, and such policies can give rise to heated debate. However, the current and increasing mismatch between the supply of roadspace and demand for its use has to be addressed for the benefit of essential car users as well as the community at large.
A strategy to prioritise and allocate roadspace should not therefore be perceived as "anti-motorist". The objective of such a policy should be to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient way; and this means encouraging the use of the most appropriate form of transport for any particular journey. In many cases this will remain the car - many car journeys cannot be easily substituted by alternative modes. But measures to bring about prioritisation and reallocation of space have to be demonstrated to be part of a comprehensive strategy that is understood and accepted by the public. Considerably more effort in the future will be required to show that "the status quo is not an option", and to develop change in partnership rather than in conflict with the public.