Sustainability Guide

Reduce Traffic Impacts

This section is directed mainly towards developers of major sites, and local planners, highway engineers and transport engineers. The thinking behind it however, is valid for all kinds of development and every scale of community. Transport choices affect everyone, and have major implications for society, the environment and a sustainable future.

The layout of new development can have a major influence on how people travel and how sustainable those movement patterns are. This section therefore looks at accessibility to and from development and what steps can be taken to make sustainable travel choices more attractive.

Transport investment also has development impacts itself. The national '10 year plan' means many millions of pounds worth of investment and change in the North East. This too must be planned and designed in the best and most sustainable way.

The background story on travel and the environment does not make easy reading. Traffic continues to rise steadily. Harmful environmental impacts of this rise include more greenhouse gases (CO²) contributing to global warming, and air and noise pollution. These lead to health problems, particularly asthma in children, and the loss of wildlife and habitats.

Since 1970 the amount of car travel per person has almost doubled. If no action is taken, levels are set to increase again by over one third in the next 20 years.

In County Durham the number of people who drive to work increased by 30% between 1981 and 1991; and 61% of car journeys were less than 5 miles. Only 2% of journeys of up to 5 miles were made by cycle, compared to 27% in Holland, and this has halved (from 4%) since 1980. Most journeys of less than one mile within the Region are still made on foot, but the proportion made by car is increasing.

More sustainable travel patterns would mean fewer journeys by car, reducing the need to travel, shortening the average length of journeys made, and stopping the environmental damage caused. The key to this is to offer transport choices, making walking, cycling and public transport as easy to use and convenient as the car, by:

• Linking new development to existing pedestrian and cycle routes and places
• Giving people a choice of ways to travel; giving priority to walking, cycling and public transport
• Designing safe attractive streets with a real 'sense of place'
• Creating pedestrian routes and crossings that are safe to use
• Designing the layout to control the flow and speed of motor vehicles.

Walking

Safe, attractive and well cared-for pedestrian routes or links will encourage people to walk.

The routes should connect key buildings or destinations where people actually want to go, rather than follow a preconceived pattern, and should be overlooked, direct, positive and barrier-free. One of the most important factors is that pedestrians prefer to walk where they can be seen. Pedestrians using footpaths following streets will feel safe if they can be seen by drivers and people living and working in the area.

Off-street separated footpaths must be well lit and designed to be overlooked by houses and other active buildings.

When designing a development with the pedestrian in mind it is important to include the five 'C' principles:

• Connections - do the pedestrian and cycle routes lead to where people actually want to go?
• Convenience - are they direct and are crossings easy to use?
• Convivial - are the routes attractive, well lit and safe, is there variety along the route?
• Comfortable - are barriers removed and is the path of good quality and well maintained?
• Conspicuous - is it easy to find and follow a route? Are there a variety of surface treatments and good signs?

Designing the access to slow traffic and restrict the flow and type of vehicle will make pedestrians feel safer and make the connections easier to use.

The scheme can be designed to manage the traffic by using techniques such as raised surfaces, tight radii at junctions and well designed shared surfaces, to avoid conflicts of movement and encourage other activities. Bolt-on traffic calming and signs should only be used in 'retrofitting' existing places.

Cycling

Like walking, many of the measures to encourage cycling are low key and simple and again the five 'C' principles can be applied. Cyclists need clear, direct routes, which take them to local services such as the shops or railway stations, and particularly link residential areas and schools. They should connect into strategic networks such as the national cycle routes and should avoid stopping short at junctions or obstacles. The Region has identified that the main concerns that deter people from cycling are lack of safe routes, bike security and convenience.

Streets need to be safe for cyclists. On low-speed roads, cyclists can mix with cars, but busy roads could include cycle lanes or carefully designed shared pedestrian and cycle pavement space, although cycle and pedestrians will need to be separated for safety reasons in some areas.

Traffic-calmed streets are ideal, and can be designed-in when developing overall scheme layouts.

Providing a place to park and store bicycles is very important and should also be designed as part of the overall layout. Cycle parks should be located at key destinations, at least as conveniently as the car park; they should be positioned with other street users in mind; and linked to the main cycle routes.

Communal indoor cycle storage in new homes can make owning and using a bike more convenient for residents, as bicycles take up a lot of space if parked in the hallways of flats or houses. In rural areas it may also be important to consider providing links to bridleways to provide safe off-road riding routes for local trips.

Public Transport

Where it is too far to walk or cycle, the most sustainable alternative to the car is public transport. In general people will readily walk for 5 minutes (400m) to a bus stop and 10 minutes (800m) to a train or Metro station.

They can be encouraged to use public transport by providing direct, attractive and safe pedestrian and cycle routes to the stops or stations, with sheltered waiting areas. When developing larger schemes it is important to involve the public transport operators from the outset to ensure that the requirements of public transport access are included in the layout of the scheme.

It is also worth exploring the feasibility of providing an additional bus stop on an existing route, diverting an existing route through the site, or in some cases providing a new bus route to serve the site, depending on the number of new passengers generated from the development. Very large schemes that are adjacent to or include an existing railway line may even support the provision of a new rail station or stop. The density of development will have a critical bearing on whether public transport is viable (see Think About the Whole Place).

Local authorities can use planning conditions and Section 106 agreements to ensure that the development supports sustainable transport policy. These can influence travel patterns through on-site transport measures and facilities: specifying maximum parking; setting target percentages of trips by public transport; requiring safe cycle storage; or improvements to the public transport, walking and cycling networks.

Local authorities often work with developers and transport operators to develop Travel Plans (TPs) (previously known as Green Transport Plans or Transport Plans) for larger sites that comprise jobs, leisure, shopping and services or for smaller sites that will generate large amounts of traffic. The TP will include details of how the development will contribute to delivering sustainable transport objectives by minimising traffic generation and car usage, promoting public transport, walking and cycling, improving safety and providing for environmentally friendly delivery and distribution. Some of the proposals in the TP may be made binding by attaching conditions to the planning permission. Much of this is being put into practice around the country. It is up to local authorities to spread the word and increasingly, to insist upon it.

Streets and Traffic Management

Incorporating well designed traffic management can help to create sustainable traffic movements - in other words reducing pollution, noise, severance and accidents, promoting safety, improving the attractiveness of an area and limiting parking space.

Highway design can be applied in an interesting and attractive way to avoid rigid geometry and yet be suited to the activities that will be carried out on the streets. For example, a shopping street will need space for people to linger, meet and sit down to eat or drink. In general the designs should minimise the negative impacts of cars and allow safe, pleasant and convenient use by pedestrians and cyclists.

Highway infrastructure must be carefully designed to control vehicle movement rather than pedestrian movement.

In new housing, streets and roads should follow how the buildings are laid out, not the other way round.

Arrange buildings to form street enclosures	Design footways to reinforce this	Plot vehicle tracking path, to check carriageway width is sufficient

The principle of tracking should be applied (refer to Places, Streets and Movement, DETR 1998) - the streets and junctions should be fitted around the building form. It produces a network that is traffic-calmed by its nature, because the layout and arrangement of building frontages and sight lines induce drivers to move at slower speeds.

Traffic calming should be designed around the local context and avoid the use of standard solutions. Developers, planners, landscape architects and highway engineers should work as a team to achieve the best solution.

In consultation with the local authority, innovative area wide schemes can be promoted such as:

• Home Zones restrict the speed of traffic in residential areas, creating a safe and more pleasant environment
• Safer Routes to School - plugging into or creating new networks of car free routes for children to cycle and walk to school safely.

Parking and Servicing

Where and how cars are parked can be a major factor in the quality of a development, in the sustainability of transport patterns, and in reducing the land taken for development. It affects the environment in other ways too: large areas of hard surface parking mean more water run-off and risk of flooding (see Conserve Water Resources).

Traditional terrace parking accommodates parking on street		Planning policies and standards can create car dominated streetscapes
The standards-based approach creates standards based spaces		Traditional courtyards provide attractive spaces that accommodate cars

The first decision that has to be made is how much parking to include. As a general rule, parking standards now set maximum provision so as to encourage developers to provide less than the set level, and people to use alternative transport modes. Historically, authorities set minima, Government policy now rejects this - it has led to over-provision, and encourages car use for every conceivable journey.

Restricting car parking spaces in accordance with national planning policy (current standards suggest a maximum of 1.5 spaces per dwelling) will help to achieve planning permission; reducing the area needed for parking resulting in more land being available for development; increasing the potential value for the developer.

It is increasingly unrealistic for off-street parking provision to try to keep up with the growth in car ownership. In dense urban areas this could mean car-free schemes, but more commonly a maximum 100% ratio (one space per dwelling with visitor parking accommodated on the street) ensures that parking does not get out of hand.

Special needs housing or housing adjacent to a public transport interchanges or nodes, or along key public transport routes, may also require less parking. If it can be shown that parking levels are less than the maximum required by policy it is likely to be viewed favourably by the planning authority.

One way to reduce the amount of parking required is to provide spaces that can be shared by different users. The simplest form of this is traditional on-street parking. Off-street, shared spaces can also help reduce the amount of parking needed, for example they can be used by employees by day and then by cinema goers and shoppers in the evening. In residential areas shared parking can take the form of communal, rather than designated owner parking.

The second consideration is how to incorporate the parking into the development in the most attractive way. Vehicles should not dominate the space, or inconvenience pedestrians and cyclists, and parking within the front of buildings should be avoided where it breaks up the frontage, restricts surveillance and is generally unattractive to look at.

The best place for off street parking may be in secure rear courtyards or else in garages recessed behind the main building elevation. Courtyards should be well overlooked and of the correct size to fit the character of the development. On street parking should be well designed to help to calm road traffic, with room for landscaping and pedestrian and cycle movement.

The best way to minimise the impact of parking for commercial or large residential developments is to design in underground or basement parking, as it maintains the street frontage.

Although usually expensive, it is increasingly likely to be viable, if values continue to rise and traffic conditions worsen.

Multi-storeys should only be considered when the design can be incorporated into ground level activities and integrated with surrounding uses.

Where large surface car parks do exist, designing in landscaping and giving priority to pedestrian movements and safety can soften their appearance and the impact of the traffic.

In both cases, parking provision can be designed to allow for different future uses (if, say parking demand drops, or policy tightens), which will allow for useful economic activity without major upheaval. Consideration should be given to designs which enable parking structures to convert to other uses should parking requirements diminish in the future.

The ideal form of service delivery should be from the street directly to the building. Where a servicing or delivery yard is required the visual impact can be minimised by placing it at the back of the building.

Services Infrastructure

The routing of services should be designed to suit the kind of place being created and should avoid the standard layout of service corridors that currently dominate the layout of buildings and landscaping schemes. There are two possible options:

• Routing down back streets and yards, which will avoid disruption when the services have to be dug up. Services to houses do not have to be from the front but can be routed from the rear of communal areas.
• Fitting services into the landscape, for example bunching them to avoid important trees.

Thinking long term: planning to give people choice in future means thinking about including - from the outset - points for recharging zero-emission vehicles, adequate cycle storage and so on.

As with the transport providers, service providers should be involved in the early phases of the development process to decide on routes, requirements and programming.

The services may be accommodated in shared service strips, they can be routed away from the adopted carriageway, and equipment boxes / sub-stations can be carefully designed as shared facilities camouflaged within the development. The use of Geotextiles in service strips can reduce the risk of tree root penetration, allowing landscaping schemes to be developed close to the serviced routes.

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Rules of Thumb

• Give People Transport Choices

Sources of Info

• Places, Streets and Movement: A companion guide to Design - The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR)
• Planning Policy Guidance Note - DETR
• Urban Design Compendium
• Sustainable Development: A Better Quality Of Life - DETR
• Local Transport Plans, (5 year transport strategies)
• Durham City Access For All / Wear Valley Disability Access Forum
• Rural Transport Partnerships, Rural Transport Officers
• Sustrans, (for cycling information)
• Integrating Servicing And Landscaping - Forestry Commission
• Transport 2010, The 10 Year Plan - DETR
• Traffic Section and Road Safety Teams of the Highways Authorities
• Travel plan advice from Government Office for the North East
• Travel Plan advice from Sustainability Team - DCC

Case Studies

• Orange Green Travel Plan, North Tyneside
• Newcastle Airport Public Transport Plan
• Hetton Sustainable Transport Action Plan