Interchange: How transforming transport will drive growth and better UK mobility

Experience-led systems

Iain Painting is our community and regeneration lead. He was joined on one of the first panel discussions by Adam Scott. Adam is the creative director at Freestate; he set the scene by talking about the historical connection between placemaking and transport. He also shared the integral need to consider people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions throughout any given journey. “The design of experiences is critical to how we survive and thrive at great scale,” Adam said.

He explained how transport has long held one of the most critical roles in bridging divides in society and that the concept of “place” should be transformed into “experience-led systems.” Above all, he argued, “caring for the user and their journey, rather than the destination,” must be prioritised by all in placemaking and UK mobility. By doing so, we can make more judicious investments.

The focus then shifted to the benefits of promoting active travel, which should be the natural choice for short journeys in the future, according to Joe Charlesworth, technical director at Sweco UK. Walking, wheeling, or cycling are already part of many UK mobility journeys today. So, how can we make these modes easier choices for people in their daily routines?

Kate Gifford, head of future mobility at West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), spoke around their vision to help the economy to grow by

• Enabling sustainable transport choices
• Promoting the known benefits
• Shedding light on the unknowns

We know that more people choosing more active modes of transport will result in improved air quality, reduced traffic, and provide much-needed injections into local economies. But we also need to show the health, safety, and wellbeing benefits—as well as the greater affordability of these options. How often is the cost of owning a car factored into the cost of a journey when compared with other modes, for instance?

Daring Danish development

I was interested to hear that Kate had asked Sweco to research examples from overseas to support WYCA’s transport strategy. Sweco’s Niels Stange spoke around two cases from Denmark. He said that focusing on integrated and active transport in Odense’s city center helped create a lively and economically strong area where stores and cafés thrived. He also showed the broader effects of regional cycling infrastructure. The supercycle highways in the Copenhagen region have led to many health benefits. They have also helped reduce congestion and provided accessible infrastructure for all. Niels noted that city authorities had taken the right approach by monitoring the effects from the outset. This allowed them to show a positive return on investment and conduct health studies showing that new cyclists were able to greatly reduce their body age in just one month.

So, is this type of inter-regional scheme replicable when it comes to UK mobility? Should we be using public health metrics in options appraisals as well as traditional transport metric such as travel time and distance?

Matthew Carpen is the managing director of Barking Riverside Limited—a major development in East London with plans for up to 20,000 new homes, as well as a strong focus on connectivity. He suggested that tight regulations and having to argue the case for viability were key hurdles to overcome for aspiring UK mobility infrastructure like the Danish examples. “You have to find the right individuals, who have the right determination and drive to achieve the vision, and also this takes time,” he said.

Phil Mayall, managing director of Muse Developments, another one of our key clients, agreed. He stressed that there needs to be a shift in the current UK system. It needs to focus more on

• A place’s potential over time
• Allowing for upfront investment in infrastructure
• Recognising that we’re creating platforms for value in the future

It’s an interesting challenge. Considering UK mobility, it may require a rethink around needs-based assessments, demand profiles, and how we prioritise development and regeneration.

Phil and Matthew both landed on a powerful point: The Danish cycle scheme received support from 29 local mayors, 28 mayoral municipalities, and the Capital Region. They worked together to build a network by seeing the long-term potential benefits it could bring to their regions and communities. Matthew noted that, although that level of collaboration is rare in the UK, it can happen with the right partners. Specifically, it’s those who recognise that transport, health, and housing are issues that transcend politics.

In Denmark, Niels noted that this drive was initiated by a few select mayors. But it gained momentum, growing support, and funding as it progressed. Sometimes all it takes is someone to make the first move.

Bringing communities with us to support UK mobility

From a local authority perspective, Kate suggested that from WYCA’s side, they’re accepting that their local travel plan is based on a long-term strategy. But she said there will always be a need to identify parts of the plan that can be delivered in the first few years to ensure continued buy-in from the public.

There was no doubt from this panel that getting support for sustainable transport interventions is challenging. And it’s vital to make communities feel part of the process through “meaningful” engagement. As is balancing this with the need to get things moving, through strong leadership and decision-making.

Reducing car dependency to improve UK mobility

Later in the day, I hosted my own workshop session with a group of developers, transport-delivery authorities, and specialists. The ask? How can we deliver more sustainable transport initiatives that better support a new settlement or urban-regeneration scheme? The data shows that people’s habits aren’t changing fast enough. So, what do we need to do differently to reduce car dependency and drive development that has a more balanced modal share?

We wanted to start by outlining what “good” looks like in UK mobility.

Paul Richards, director of development and regeneration for Stockport Council, was in the room. So, it was easy to focus on this Greater Manchester town as a beacon for great transit-oriented development. He cited the Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation as a key mechanism for enabling delivery. The initial aims were to reduce car use in areas of regeneration. The town makes use of car clubs and mobility hubs to give people more options of getting from A to B. The ongoing renaissance of Stockport hasn’t been without its challenges though, and while positive interventions are in place, it’s difficult to get people to see them as the paths of least resistance.

Carrots and sticks for the future of transport

In this discussion, the group decided that efforts should be centred around disincentivising car use. Here’s the catch: The alternatives must be credible, convenient, and equitable. We pointed out some initial challenges. These included a lack of national guidance and the fact that many developments will still include multiple on-plot car parking spaces per home. This dissuades people from using public transport or reducing their car use. Fundamentally, the problem may be with the way society views what makes for an aspirational home. Is it a highly dense but connected apartment or a house that includes a two-car driveway?

At the same time, we discussed that our aspiration for better UK mobility isn’t a war on cars. There will always be a need for private vehicles, especially in rural areas. But in urban areas, measures should focus on reducing their use for entire journeys or for every trip. We must take back the lion’s share of travelling, by moving it into active travel and the public realm integrated with connected public transport.

We spoke around the need to do more to make the out-of-home experience as seamless as possible for people, from the moment they leave their door to when they come back again. This reminded me of the points Adam Scott made earlier in the day. We agreed that it boils down to influencing people at specific decision points they have throughout their day. Whether that’s how to get to work, go to the shops, or travel into a town centre and everything in between so that at each decision point sustainable travel options are the obvious choice.

Learning from elsewhere to guide UK transport trends

In the roundtable, Buckshaw Village and St Cuthbert’s Garden Village were shown as good examples of UK mobility. These are developments that put people’s choices and connectivity front and centre of the process—holistically and from the outset. It was even suggested that more could be done before the land purchase to prompt the earliest possible options around sustainable transport. The group talked about new suburban developments around Paris. They showed how new tram lines and mobility hubs were enabling better travel profiles within communities. 

But are we missing easy ways to bolster UK mobility? For example, improvements in local train and bus services? Or making sure real-time travel information is easily and always available? We discussed how the important it is to identify and make the most of existing transport infrastructure. We should prioritise investment and development here, rather than always thinking about designing from scratch. Context is everything. And a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work in the UK.

One way we unlock the full potential of new developments is with public sector investment. The conversation echoed the points made earlier around proving viability. It was noted that land value capture as a tool wasn’t being used effectively when it came to business cases. Public health and wellbeing were stressed as such important, but commonly overlooked, metrics when it comes to good case making for more active UK mobility schemes. The group argued that real value creation happens over the life of any asset and comes in innumerable forms that somehow need to be captured.

Considering the voiceless

Finally, I put forward a key point for long-term schemes. We must monitor the impacts and adapt strategies as a project develops. Those steps are crucial to getting us as close as possible to the vison for the future set at the beginning of the planning and development process. When we’re looking at the way we plan and design our new communities, are we truly thinking about the future people we’re designing for? How will their needs, or the needs of the second or third generations of residents, differ from those held by today’s society?

Currently, these people don’t have a voice in the process of how their future communities and transport networks will come to be. But we know that younger people today are less likely to own a car outright, are more likely to use mass-transit schemes, are more aware of the environmental, less likely to own more things, and require less space. When we think about the future of UK mobility, do we need to backcast our visions? Should we do so based on trends we’re seeing now rather than assuming old behaviours will persist in the future? It’s not a concept that is easily sellable to local authorities when considering new developments. This is a UK mobility approach we explore in our Bridging the Gap research.

Everyone agreed that connected places are thriving places that drive meaningful economic growth. And we agreed that getting back to the art of forward, strategic, and community-focused planning plays such an important role in getting where we need to be. Challenging our unconscious bias towards driving by offering better choices that fit the needs of the future is an incredibly important stepping stone on our growth journey. But challenges and questions remain about how we make this leap for better UK mobility.