Bedfordshire Local Transport Plan 2006/07 - 2010/11

Having completed the analysis of context, problems, opportunities, public opinion and priorities we can now define our objectives for this LTP.  In our provisional LTP we identified seven objectives that we have refined in this final plan.  Further information gathering, consultation and analysis, along with the publication of our corporate priorities (Transforming Bedfordshire), have enabled us to prioritise three of our objectives.

The priority objectives relate to the following issues:

1. preparing for growth;
2. developing the economy; and
3. managing our transport assets.

These objectives, along with the four objectives related to the Government’s shared priorities, are discussed below. 

Preparing for growth

Bedfordshire’s proximity to other growth areas, as well as the planned growth within the county itself, means that preparing for more residents, more economic activity and inevitably, more traffic, will be crucial. This relates both to the period of this LTP and beyond.

However, the uncertainties surrounding the delivery and impact of future growth mean that a robust but flexible approach to transport will be needed. The uncertainty will gradually decrease as decisions and experience evolves. Some indications of future trends in travel are given in the longer-term strategy in Chapter 5. Our general aim is to manage our response to the growth agenda, reflecting the concerns about the impacts of this growth as outlined in Chapter 3.

This means that the effects of transport on the quality of life of existing residents and visitors to Bedfordshire must be considered alongside the delivery of growth in the County. Growth cannot be accommodated at the expense of existing experiences of mobility for people or the local environment. 

Primarily, this objective will best be realised by:

• accelerating the completion of schemes that are already identified;
• seeking to inform and influence the land use planning process;
• ensuring policy decisions are as sustainable as possible; and
• giving maximum attention (by whatever means are most appropriate) to dealing with the transport implications of new development.

Developing the economy

We must make the County more attractive as a place to work as well as live if Bedfordshire is to become more prosperous and ‘self-contained’. Undesirable trends in transport, in particular growth in out-commuting, and increased car borne commuting, are to be minimised.

Bedfordshire must create more jobs. The availability of a quality workforce is a key consideration for decisions that organisations make about investment and location. The concerns of stakeholders and the public about the Sustainable Communities Plan, as outlined in Chapter 3 also relate well to the continued economic development of the county. Comments received via our workshops indicate the need to ensure that transport networks can facilitate economic growth in a sustainable way. Therefore, the LTP must, as much as it can, support the spatial and economic development plans for the area in terms of making Bedfordshire a knowledge-based economy as well as a desirable place for businesses and organisations to establish themselves and to thrive.

Picture 5 Bedford town centre market

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Improving leisure and shopping in Bedfordshire (such as Bedford town centre market) will also help to achieve this objective. Journeys for these purposes already outnumber journeys for work. It is important therefore, to take into account the implications for the transport networks of more visitors to the county and more internal trips by its residents for these purposes.

Specifically, for employees this will mean increasing work opportunities within the same travel time and by improving the choice of transport types from their home.

For employers this will mean maximising the availability of a quality local workforce and improving journey time reliability for personal travel and freight.

The changes that will be achieved for transport must be understood and reflected in local economic and regeneration activities.

Asset management

We will seek to optimise the use of transport networks as a whole in terms of use, maintenance and congestion, taking account of possible new infrastructure and changing demands.

We will move from a ‘worst-first’ approach to maintenance to consider a broader range of factors in deciding what actions to take.  This will include having a better knowledge of the value of existing infrastructure, knowing how important each part is and how it is used, understanding what the value for money of possible approaches might be, and taking fuller account of the implications of any decisions.  This is generally known as taking an Asset Management approach.

The public have made it clear to us that the condition of Bedfordshire's roads are unacceptable and needs to be a high priority for this LTP, as outlined in the 'Local Views on Transport' section. Our public workshops and discussions with local stakeholders highlighted that the minor roads should be the main priority for maintenance. Our partner Bedfordshire Highways is under contractual commitments to improve  road conditions to agreed standards described in Chapter 7.

In addition to the principle of getting value for money in looking after existing assets is the need to get value for money from new assets.  This means ensuring that, whenever we propose to make transport improvements, we will first compare the proposal with other Bedfordshire objectives and consider whether there are alternative ways to achieve the changes we seek.

This objective addresses two important aspects of transport considerations. The first is that the state of maintenance of carriageways in the county was considered a high priority in public involvement exercises, as outlined above. The second is the need to meet targets set for Best Value Performance Indicators relating to road surface conditions.

The main mechanisms to achieve this objective will be by:

• developing a Transport  Asset Management Plan; and
• through improved prioritisation and performance management.
• our new MAC contract will play a key role in delivering this and we have high expectations of it.

Managing congestion

Further work has been undertaken between the provisional and final plans to understand locations and levels of congestion on our roads, as discussed in Chapter 3, and we now have a platform upon which to build. Bedfordshire currently suffers from congestion and will be subject to new pressures as a result of growth. However, our work on understanding the impact of growth on traffic levels means we need to monitor this very closely, whilst addressing existing congestion ‘hot spots’ such as in Bedford town centre and Leighton Linslade. Congestion is also a high priority for the people of Bedfordshire, as highlighted in Table 6 ‘Issues and priorities from public/stakeholder involvement exercises’.

We must minimise the growth in congestion resulting from growth in housing and employment in and near to Bedfordshire, and maximise the opportunities that planned investment in the road and public transport networks will bring.

The means of achieving this will include:

• knowing what the trend would be without any mitigating interventions;
• developing better measures and monitoring of congestion;
• investing in improvements to existing networks;
• improving the travel choices available;
• managing transport networks better; and
• providing travellers with better information. 

These have been informed by work undertaken in our public involvement exercises, which identified improvements to non-car modes and improving traffic management systems as the main priorities for tackling congestion. Monitoring our own performance will become easier and more reliable as a result of developments in predicting and monitoring traffic congestion and journey times.  Central to all this will be our Network Management Strategy (see Chapter 5).

Accessibility

We will focus on access to the main services and facilities that people need, in particular work, education, food shopping and healthcare. Access to work and further education (and skills training) have been identified as the main accessibility priorities through the development of our accessibility strategy. This will be delivered, largely through innovative and tailored travel information provision (see Accessibility Strategy in Chapter 5 for details). The development of the strategy has been consulted on widely and has been carried out in conjunction with local stakeholders, it reflects local views and complements our priority objective of supporting a developing economy.  Prioritisation will allow us to concentrate our efforts on these specific areas, but it is likely to deliver benefits more widely.

Additional transport is one way to improve access in the short-term, but views collected during consultations made it clear that  longer-term objectives relating to where and how services are provided, were more fundamental. In particular, the further integration of transport with land use planning, in order to bring services and facilities closer to those who require them will ultimately lessen the need for, and distances required to travel. This will be particularly important in new housing and employment development, service and facility planning and delivery.

The accessibility objective supports the recent move to increased consideration of accessibility in the planning of services and facilities, and is consistent with our Accessibility Strategy.  Increased accessibility will be delivered by working with internal and external partners, other organisations and stakeholders but also through mechanisms such as our walking, cycling, bus and other supporting strategies.

Safer travel

We have recognised the importance of using a range of actions, such as child education on road safety and tackling accident problem sites,  to reduce accidents in Bedfordshire. Road safety issues continue to be a priority for the public and stakeholders, particularly on matters such as speeding and vulnerable road users (see the 'Local Views on Transport' section). Road safety will continue to be an objective throughout LTP2.

However we want to go further.  We want to take a broader approach to safety by considering perceived as well as actual levels of safety and looking at all factors and actions that might have an influence on risk and behaviour.

We link safety to other objectives such as maintenance and making travel safer in reality and in people’s perceptions.  We aim to reduce the danger of traffic collisions as well as transport related anti-social behaviour and crime. We will also reduce health risks caused by inactivity, traffic congestion and lack of suitable access to facilities. 

The primary means of delivering this will be through our:

• Road Safety Strategy;
• Transport Asset Management Plan; and
• Network Management Strategy.

Air quality and the environment

The nature of the environment in Bedfordshire, the growth proposals and the use of Strategic Environmental Assessment to steer transport policy have already been discussed.  All these point to the need for a broad environmental objective to help manage the changes taking place in Bedfordshire over this LTP period and beyond. The sustained levels of growth which Bedfordshire will experience over the next five years and towards 2021 mean that all aspects of the environment will experience pressure on an unprecedented scale.

On air quality in particular, we need to anticipate future problems and act preventively rather than reactively. Our work with the public and stakeholders has identified air quality as a significant local issue in urban areas of the county. Stakeholders also recommended proactively supporting the work in Air Quality Management Areas. We will work with Borough and District Councils (who monitor air quality) to achieve this. The two main means of improving air quality are to ensure that air quality factors are considered in wider policy-making, and to develop Air Quality Strategies and Action Plans. Besides air quality we will consider climate change-related emissions as these present a considerable long-term risk to quality of life both nationally and internationally.

Summary

We now have seven objectives, three of which are priority objectives ('preparing for growth', 'developing the economy' and 'managing assets'). These objectives shape our strategy and delivery programme and will provide an essential guide to the progress that we make over the second Local Transport Plan.

In the next chapter we outline the 19 individual strategies that will contribute to meeting our objectives.