Annual progress report July 2004

The Bedfordshire Local Transport Plan was produced in 2001. Since then we have been putting it into action. This Annual Progress Report tells you about progress we made with the Plan during 2003/04. The Executive Summary below summarises this progress.

Schemes delivered

In 2003/04 we successfully delivered 95% of our planned programme (compared to 92% in 2002/03) and invested in transport well beyond the funding allocated to us by Government. Projects delivered included a key bus priority scheme along the Kempston Road corridor in Bedford. This project involved combining maintenance and integrated transport budgets to deliver a scheme that also included a new cycle route, improved bus stops and road crossings. Stagecoach introduced a new fleet of low floor buses and enhanced service frequency on this route to coincide with the completion of the project.

Numbers of bus passengers have grown continually on this route since completion of the scheme and introduction of the new, more frequent buses. In addition peak hour journey times into Bedford have fallen by over 7 minutes as a result of this road operating more efficiently.

We continued to invest heavily in maintaining roads and footways. This included 80 road maintenance schemes compared to the 64 schemes we planned to do, reflecting our commitment to bringing our roads up to standard. In total we completed maintenance work on 68 kilometres of roads as well as 13 kilometres of footways. We also completed the award-winning Arlesey bridge replacement during 2003/04.

Our cycling programme allowed us to deliver all of our planned cycle tracks. These six schemes added an additional 8.4 kilometres of cycle route in Bedfordshire. In addition to this, funding from other sources enabled us to deliver or progress further cycling schemes, including landfill tax funded routes in the Marston Vale. Our cycle parking programme overran but will be complete in June 2004.

We delivered six new footways as well as a variety of rights of way schemes that continued to focus on improving accessibility and maintenance. We also delivered nine footway maintenance schemes in addition to the considerable carriageway maintenance programme.

Our road safety and traffic management programme delivered Safer Routes to School schemes benefiting 11 schools, six pedestrian crossings, nearly 20 kilometres of new speed limits as well as progressing town centre enhancements. Last year decriminalised parking enforcement was launched in Mid and South Bedfordshire increasing the proportion of the population covered from 25% to 85%. Coverage of the entire county is planned by April 2005.

We also launched the Bedford DART, a demand responsive public transport service in Bedford. This innovative project focuses on deprived areas of Bedford and is funded from the Government's Urban Bus Challenge.

Progress towards targets

We invested nearly £9,000,000 to reduce the lengths of principal, non-principal classified and unclassified roads in need of repair. But, in spite of this, our targets for principal, non-principal classified and unclassified road maintenance remain challenging. We are still on track to achieve our targets for principal and non-principal classified roads by 2006 providing sufficient resources are available. We are on track to achieve our target for unclassified roads by 2010.

Our road safety promotion, education and engineering work as well as promotion of walking and cycling (especially to and from school) continue to contribute towards falling road casualties. We have met and exceeded our original targets and so have set new stretched targets and are on track to achieve them all. We have also combined walking, cycling and powered two-wheeler categories to create a "vulnerable road users" category and are on track to achieve challenging targets for reductions killed, seriously and slight casualties.

This year's information suggests that minor losses of bus passengers have been off-set by increases in rail passengers. Loss of bus passengers generally may have been countered by improvements in passenger numbers on the Kempston Road corridor. This suggests that continued investment in bus priority measures, accessible bus stops and Park and Ride schemes should help improve bus passenger numbers and satisfaction in line with our targets.

The amount of cycling measured in Bedford was similar to last year. We have set revised targets for cycling, as our original target was not based on clear data. We are on track to achieve our new target. We have recognised that we should directly monitor cycle routes to reflect where we are providing the cycle network. This year we report cycle count data taken from actual cycle routes. This will allow us to monitor trends in cycling every year.

The amount of walking at the Bedford inner cordon continued to grow slightly and actually equalled our 2006 target. This may be due to local factors last year and we will review our future target for walking when we produce our second Local Transport Plan next year.

This Annual Progress Report includes predictions on future trends for the majority of our indicators. The Report also includes targets to both the end of the current Local Transport Plan (2005/06) and, indicatively, our next (second) Local Transport Plan (from 2005/06 to 2010/11).

An effective spending programme

As in previous years we planned to deliver more than the funding available can pay for. This allows us to be flexible about where we spend our money to account for some schemes that may be delayed or not proceeded with. The Local Transport Plan funding allocation for last year was significantly less than our planned and actual spending programme. Nevertheless, once again, we included a significant amount of our own funding in the final spending programme.

Annual progress report contents

Introduction|

2 Schemes Delivered|

2.1 Overview
2.2 Major Schemes
2.3 Integrated Transport Schemes
2.4 Maintenance Schemes

3 |Targets and Indicators|
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Core Indicators
3.3 Local Indicators

4 |Spending Programme|
4.1 Planned and actual spending
4.2 Planned spending in 2004/05
4.3 Planned spending in 2005/06

5 Glossary|

Tables

Table 1 Planned and actual schemes delivered in 2003/04
Table 2 Bus passenger changes and the Kempston Road scheme
Table 3 Journey time changes due to the Kempston Road scheme
Table 4 Bedford Dart passenger numbers
Table 5 East Beds Link passenger numbers
Table 6 Extra speed limits introduced in 2003/04
Table 7 Summary of progress on targets
Table 8 New cycling indicator baseline data
Table 9 Planned and actual spending in 2003/04
Table 10 Additional investment in transport 2003/04
Table 11 Other investment in transport 2003/04
Table 12 Planned spending in 2004/05

Annexes

A Proforma A – Core Indicators
B Proforma B – Local Indicators
C Finance Forms
D Maintenance Information
E National Targets and Shared Priorities
F Supplementary bid