Reports:
Organisation, planning and delivery of transport at the regional level
10 Year Transport Plan monitoring strategy
Executive Summary
1: Introduction
2: Current Regional Organisational Structure
3: Issues Arising for the Implementation of the 10YP
4: The Regional Context
5: Key Problem Areas
6: European Best Practice
7: Directions of Change
Appendix A: Current Distribution of Transport Responsibilities and Processes in England
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Executive Summary
Report contents
1. The Transport 10Year Plan (10YP) proposes delivery of a better performance by the transport system and a greater contribution by transport to wider economic, social and environmental aims. This report identifies key problems and issues for the delivery of the 10YP arising out of current arrangements for planning and transport at the regional level.
2. Regional planning is of crucial importance because, throughout the industrialised world (and at least partly because of the impact of modern means of transport), the region is becoming at least as important at the city, county or nation as a focus of economic and social activity. Best practice in other European countries is reviewed and benchmark criteria for improved regional organisation and planning of transport set out. Finally, options for action are identified to provide a basis for discussion on the way forward.
Current regional organisation and planning of transport
3. The current regional planning process involves a wide range of agencies, with a variety of responsibilities, implemented through many processes. The agencies and processes and their relationships are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Current Institutional Relationships and Responsibilities for Regional Plans
4. The regional planning process is, clearly, complex, demanding of high levels of consultation and co-ordination. As with all such structures, it demands strong political leadership to provide regional direction unencumbered by local agenda. The current institutional structure cannot guarantee to produce such leadership, nor the technical capacity to support it.
Issues
5. Interviews were conducted with key players in the regional transport process, across the country and at the centre. All respondents supported the need for and direction of the 10YP. However, all saw significant barriers to delivery at the regional level. Key issues identified from these interviews and the consultants' own knowledge and experience are presented under the headings of resources, institutional and processes.
Resource issues
6. As we have identified in other work[1], there are real concerns about the likelihood of achieving the levels of funding identified in the 10YP, particularly from private investment and from local charging.
7. These resource issues bear more heavily on public transport investment (£79.8bn including national rail and London and local non-road, of which £51.3bn is from the private sector) than on investment in roads (£31.7bn - strategic, local and London, of which £5bn is private sector). The recent problems in the rail industry and their effects on potential private investment exacerbate the imbalance in implementation of the 10YP, with the prospect that investment in road elements will run ahead of rail and other public transport.
8. Continued investment in roads without balancing public transport investment would fuel further decentralisation of activity and development, increasing difficulties for provision of public transport and increasing car-dependency in a familiar vicious circle. In these circumstances the aims of the 10YP are less likely to be achieved.
Institutional issues
9. Finance comes down to the regional and local levels by different routes, such that the achievement of an integrated and balanced pattern of investment sets difficult problems for the institutional structure to resolve. The performance of current regional agencies and processes suggests that at present they lack the capacity to address these problems successfully.
10. The 10YP aims of lower congestion and pollution, combined with increased economic activity and urban renaissance, require shifts in transport and locational behaviour which are unlikely to take place without major improvements in public transport services and changed expectations (at least) about the cost of road transport. In the absence of national measures for relating the cost of travel more directly to road use[2], the main tool for achieving this shift is through regional coordination (through the RTS) of local charges and parking standards in LTPs. A major barrier here is the absence of an institutional structure for securing 'additionality' of local charges and for preventing destructive competition between local authorities around parking standards and charges.
11. Other institutional issues include:
- partnership working between agencies has failed to focus on necessary trade-offs between the components of sustainable development (economy, social progress, use of natural resources and environment);
- the cross boundary issues which arise because authorities do not cover the rural hinterlands which they serve;
- the need for a process to address cross-regional issues;
- deliverability of schemes and policies related to different modes;
- the commitment of national bodies such as HA and SRA to the regional planning process;
- the capacity (technical and political) of RAs and RPBs to handle the regional planning process.
Process issues
12. Although LTPs provide 5-year resource guidance, the incentives for LAs to raise money from local transport charges are weak, since hypothecation does not guarantee additionality. Authorities see little incentive to take political risks without clearer and longer-term support from Government.
13. There is a lack of Government guidance on regional shares of finances, leading to unrealistic 'shopping lists' in both RTS and Multi-Modal Study (MMS) work and insufficient focus on preparing and implementing priority schemes.
14. There are skill shortages in transport planning and in the delivery and implementation of transport systems. These skill shortages range from planning and appraisal, through design capabilities and into implementation and maintenance, the latter particularly in respect of rail maintenance and improvement. There is also a shortage of drivers for the increased numbers of buses and trains needed by the Plan.
Regional context and key problems
15. Each region is different and requires a strategic approach tuned to its particular needs, resources and opportunities. However, the range of strategic problems that transport presents for regional governance is similar across all regions, as are many of the shortcomings of existing institutions in tackling them. The following examples are used to illustrate a number of key problems.
Example 1: The social inclusion measures for rural areas announced in the 1998 Transport White Paper led to greater coverage of concessionary fare schemes, but outside PTA areas support for individual mobility and socially necessary services is not consistent across District boundaries.
Example 2: Restraint of car-use throughout many regions is undermined by fear of competition both from within the region and from neighbouring regions.
Example 3: Congestion charging is not being taken forward, partially due to problems at the national level (such as additionality and lack of clear commitment), but also because of the lack of a sufficiently powerful local political structure.
Example 4: Park and Ride schemes proposed by urban areas to serve residents of the journey to work hinterland are frustrated by objections from the neighbouring authorities.
Example 5: Metropolitan Districts find difficulty in agreeing priorities unless it is clear that each District gets a 'fair share'.
Example 6: The Regional Planning Body is generally too weak to counterbalance the urgent but sectional interests of the RDA and a single Borough acting in concert to support, for example, development of major traffic generators close to motorway junctions.
Example 7: Pressures to attract housing and employment development mean that there is over-allocation, allowing the potential developer greater choice, but not always meeting the sequential principle required to encourage urban renaissance and combat dispersal. The failure to resolve such pressures is the result of a poor regional decision-making process.
16. We conclude that the current system of planning and delivery of transport at the regional level has a number of weaknesses that will hamper the delivery of the 10YP. The key problems we identify from this analysis, are:
- The lack of an appropriate institutional framework to integrate national and regional rail proposals into regional transport strategies and priorities;
- The lack of a process for distributing the benefits of a local charging scheme beyond the authority implementing the scheme;
- The lack of an appropriate institutional locus for strategic Park & Ride for major urban areas;
- The pressures for 'fair shares' between authorities in prioritising major transport infrastructure within the region;
- The long timescales and high resource assumptions of certain MMSs may inhibit a realistic focus on priorities, exacerbating the problems of imbalance between modes and preventing integration with regional planning and economic strategies;
- The absence of a national perspective on key routes, which would assist regions to influence external connections beyond their boundaries;
17. The fundament issues underlying many of these problems is that regional government does not have its own source of funding for regional schemes.
Regional planning in Europe
18. On the basis of the work on European Best Practice undertaken for CfIT, we have reviewed what might be adopted from the regional planning systems in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. The evidence of success with regard to public transport integration and rail patronage in Germany is very strong and appears associated with the coexistence and integration of significant transport, economic and planning functions at a regional level, including the existence of powerful regional and subregional transport authorities. This contrasts strongly with the current distribution of responsibilities between national, regional and local institutions in the UK.
19. There are many differences in the national context between the UK and Germany - particularly as regards institutional, resource and transport planning/evaluation processes. Nevertheless analysis of the best continental European systems suggests three criteria for the assessment of future arrangements for the organisation , planning and delivery of transport at regional level. They should:
- secure mutual reinforcement between transport investment and other regional and subregional development measures;
- permit investment planning and prioritisation across areas, schemes and modes, maximising cumulative progress towards National Plan targets, encouraging collaboration and resisting distortion by local or sectional interests;
- offer regional and subregional public transport users services that are seamless across modes at an operational level, and well-linked to national and international services.
20. In these terms the best existing arrangements in the UK are those found in London, but these still fall far short of continental best practice.
Directions of change
21. Within a longer-term 'direction of travel' towards a regional level of governance, suggestions are put forward for adapting the UK regional transport organisational system so as to perform as well on the key criteria as the continental European approaches typified by the German Länder and Verkehrsverbünde. An alternative is put forward to the pattern of regional institutional relationships and responsibilities shown in Figure 1 - see Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Regional Institutions, Relationships and Responsibilities in the Longer Term
Conclusions
22. The findings of the report may be summarised as follows:
- Current regional structures limit effectiveness in delivering the major changes required by the 10YP. In particular, current processes of nomination from local bodies to regional structures encourage a parochial approach to regional decision-making, and tend to result in 'lowest common denominator' policies;
- European best practice delivers greater integration of transport modes with each other and with wider economic, environmental and social objectives, leading to a more 'even-handed' delivery mechanism between modes. This appears to be associated with a stronger regional level of governance, providing an arena for effective collaboration of local authorities with each other and with central government;
- Movement towards a more significant level of regional governance in the UK is likely to be a slow process, but there are organic and administrative steps which could reap many of the benefits enjoyed in 'best practice' countries pending more fundamental constitutional change;
- Some of the necessary steps have been foreshadowed by the Green Paper on Planning (Regional Spatial Strategies linking land-use, transport and economic planning; clearer distinctions between national policy and advice in PPGs; statement of national policy as context for major infrastructure projects);
- These reforms need to be taken further, particularly in terms of specifying minimum national transport networks (assuring regions about external connections); articulating clearer national strategies for the distribution of population and economic activity and providing long-term regional resource guidance. Within a clear framework of subsidiarity, reflecting these national policies, more power could be devolved from Whitehall to regional and local levels. The ability to raise and spend locally-generated transport resources, and to negotiate mixed packages of local, regional and national support is a particularly significant aspect of continental best practice, and should be an early aim of reforms;
- Changes are also required at local level, in terms of continued movement towards a unitary structure of local government and regional and subregional structures.
Project Team
Oscar Faber
Marlborough House
Upper Marlborough Road
St Albans
Hertfordshire AL1 3UT
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8784 5784
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8784 5700
Website: http://www.fabermaunsell.com
In Association with:
National Economic Research Associates
Economic Consultants
15 Stratford Place
London W1C 1BE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7659 8500
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7659 8501
Website:
http://www.nera.com
Supported by:
ERM
8 Cavendish Square
London W1M 0ER
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7465 7200
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7465 7272
Website:
http://www.erm.com
Ecotec
Priestly House
28-34 Albert Street
Birmingham
West Midlands B4 7UD
Tel: +44 (0) 121 616 3600
Fax: +44 (0) 121 616 3699
Website:
http://www.ecotec.com
ITS Leeds
Institute for Transport Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
Tel: +44 (0) 113 233 5325
Fax: +44 (0) 113 233 5334
Website:
http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk
1: CfIT.
Initial Assessment Report. May 2002.
2: CfIT.
Paying for Road Use. February 2002.
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