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.

At present, the upward trend in car use appears relentless - more people owning cars, making more frequent and longer journeys. To change this trend will require radical measures. Travel is in itself an unproductive activity - the first aim of a sustainable transport policy should therefore be to minimise the demand for travel without reducing the opportunities for economic, social, educational or leisure activities. The second aim should be to ensure that necessary travel takes place with minimum damage to the environment. To be achievable, measures to work towards these aims need widespread community support.

There are broadly four strategies that can be adopted, a mixture of push and pull measures, and these will be needed in combination:-

• Allocation and prioritisation of road space
• Integrating planning of transport and the use of land, buildings and public space
• Encouraging more environmentally friendly travel
• Fiscal and regulatory change

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.

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.

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.

Over a number of years, a number of measures have been taken in Edinburgh to try and improve the allocation of roadspace between different users and between movement and environmental and interaction space. In the historic Royal Mile, pavements have been substantially widened, leaving space for cafe tables and street performers. The estimated impact of even this limited reallocation of space has been an estimated increase in spending in Edinburgh, mainly by tourists, of £26m per annum.

In Princes Street, car traffic was removed from the eastbound direction in 1996, leaving buses, cycles and for some sections taxis. This change also allowed the widening of pavements to provide some additional space for pedestrians. Surveys of pedestrians indicated an 18%-34% increase in spend after even these limited alterations. In the westbound direction, car traffic was limited to one lane for most of its length in 1994, with a two lane wide bus lane in the section containing the city’s busiest bus stops. Studies are being carried out to examine how car traffic can be further reduced.

In the streets of the "first New Town" parallel to Princes Street, traffic management measures have been taken to exclude through car traffic. However there is a large volume of on-street parking in this area, together with substantial delivery and loading activity. As a result, these streets remain busy and at times congested. To provide greater priority for pedestrians crossing the main streets in this area, zebra crossings have been re-introduced into the city.

In cities such as Edinburgh where rail or other segregated public transport infrastructure is limited, it is necessary to ensure that the roadspace available for motorised traffic is used efficiently - and this means removing buses from the general traffic congestion. This is the rationale for the Councils "Greenways" scheme, which allocates significant capacity specifically for the use of buses through extensive and well enforced bus priority on major radial routes. The first routes, on the A8 between the Maybury junction and the city centre and between the city centre and Leith came into operation in August 1997, and a second batch of three corridors came into operation last month.

Initial results from the first routes suggest significant increases in patronage, as well as improvements to journey times and reliability. The largest operator in the city reported an increase of 250,000 passengers per annum, and journey time improvements of 10% to 25%

Jan Gehl, a Danish architect much involved in Copenhagen’s experience, was commissioned in the summer of 1997 to conduct a preliminary appraisal of the City of Edinburgh along the lines of the Copenhagen project. The resulting survey and report "Public spaces and public life, Edinburgh 1998 - First Impressions concerning Potential and Problems" recognises a limited success in some public spaces in the city, including Rose Street and parts of the Grassmarket, but noted that much of the city centre is "... urgently in need of improvement in its amenity for pedestrians." The report is particularly critical about the quality of environment in locations like Princes Street and the Castle esplanade and suggests that the recent designation of central Edinburgh as a World Heritage Site increases the importance of addressing these issues.

The Council has only taken the first steps in managing roadspace to create an environment for the 21st century. But real success requires a much wider range of measures that will reduce the underlying demand and pressure for car use.

Edinburgh has been perceived as being at the forefront of the development of new approaches to urban transport policy, and as highlighting the need for a holistic approach to tackling the issues. The City of Edinburgh Council’s moving FORWARD which included targets to reduce significantly the modal share of car traffic by 2010, has been seminal in this respect. But it is clear that much more radical measures than those adopted to date will be needed to achieve this. Concern about traffic levels in the city is as great if not greater now that it was in 1994 when the strategy was launched. Although this may well be an issue of perception rather than fact, it remains a significant pressure for further action.

At the same time public funding for transport investment has reduced significantly over the period. The use of the new charging powers outlined in the Transport White Paper appears to be the only way out of the dilemma.

However, discussion of new revenue-raising powers has identified two essential prerequisites if there is to be any chance of implementation:

A further requirement is likely to be to ensure that at least some of the investment in alternatives to the car is in place before road user charging is introduced. To achieve such up-front funding will require new approaches to financial engineering which may well have repercussions in terms of the accountability and transparency of the arrangements set up.

The public and political sensitivity of these matters means that the focus for producing a new transport strategy for the city potentially incorporating road user charging will be around the development of a wide range of partnerships. Partnerships are needed with the public, with business and with neighbouring local authorities many of whose citizens will be very much part of the strategy. Partnership will be required with the private sector particularly in relation to financial matters. Partnership will be needed with central government and the Scottish parliament to ensure an acceptable statutory framework. And partnership will be needed with academic institutions and other public bodies to support the development of the programme.

Innovative approaches to developing many of these partnerships will be needed, and this process has already been started in the city. However, firm decisions on any major development programme towards road user charging have yet to be made.

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:

• 72% of people supported the introduction of more pedestrian only areas;
• Just 14% agreed that ‘capacity for cars on the roads should be increased’;
• Nearly 90% of over 3500 consultees supported proposals for a South Edinburgh cycle network focusing on on- street cycle provision.

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:

• Equity

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".

• Economic impacts

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.

• Spatial effects

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.

• Health

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.

• Environment

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.

• Transparency and accountability

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.

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, and 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.