Connecting our Cities: The Local Transport Bill and Beyond
Despite the current market conditions, traffic congestion is still one of the most pressing problems facing cities and their communities today, and the Core Cities have been working in recent months to respond to the opportunities and challenges introduced by the passage of the Local Transport Bill.
From the Bill’s earliest stages, the Core Cities Transport Group demonstrated proactive leadership, initially with a meeting between a group of Leaders and the then Secretary of State, Ruth Kelly. This continued through workshops with Department for Transport officials, inputting to consultation around the drafting of the legislation, and campaigning for greater powers for urban areas in the planning and delivery of transport solutions. The final version of the Bill reflects this input, marking a major step forward in the empowerment of cities.
The legislation introduces expanded powers to allow for better integration of public transport, highways and traffic functions. Existing Passenger Transport Authorities have been renamed Integrated Transport Authorities (ITAs) and given the sole responsibility for future local transport plans. They will, however, be expected to work closely with district councils to develop and implement the plans.
The Bill also enables local authorities to review the boundaries of these governance arrangements to ensure that they reflect economic realities—i.e., city regions. The legislation also provides a new regulatory framework for bus services, enabling ITAs to introduce Quality Contracts for bus services much more easily than was previously the case. And although controversial, the Bill also paves the way for further urban road user charging and other methods of demand management.
Since the publication of the Bill, the Core Cities have been taking positive action to develop these opportunities, with a number of authorities including Birmingham, Leeds (link), and Sheffield (link), undertaking governance reviews to inform the arrangements for their new ITAs. Liverpool will also be commissioning a similar governance review in May. In addition, Nottingham City Council has been a forerunner in piloting workplace parking charges as a measure of demand management, with plans to introduce a levy in 2010 (link). The Core Cities Transport Group itself has been represented in some of the Department for Transport’s plans for delivering a more sustainable transport system (link).
Despite these advances, however, major challenges remain. Transport is part of a bigger picture, and the Core Cities have been campaigning for greater linkages between transport policy and funding, and the wider economic objectives of housing, regeneration and spatial planning. To this end, the Transport Group is regularly monitoring progress with other working groups on shared issues such as housing growth and climate change.
In addition, whilst the Local Transport Bill has given the Core Cities greater control over their transport networks, it has not answered the perennial problem of where to find the resources for investing in these networks. One innovative approach to generating the necessary investment in infrastructure, developed by the Core Cities Group, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, would enable Core Cities to establish Accelerated Development Zones (ADZs) which could include transport infrastructure (link to Hard times call for innovation
story).
Future Transport Group discussions will look at the challenges of implementing the Local Transport Act in Core Cities, including issues of integrated ticketing, bus usage, commuting and changing people’s transport choices and behaviours and discussion with Cabinet Office, PTEG and Network Rail.