Peter Brett Associates is such an established name in the UK transport consultancy sector that it’s easy to overlook a very basic question: who is, or was, Peter Brett? Ah, says Keith Mitchell, PBA’s chairman, the late Peter Brett was a structural engineer originally with consultant Arup but who in 1965 set up his own consultancy practice based in Reading. PBA is therefore fast approaching its 50th anniversary and Mitchell is about to notch up 30 years with the practice himself....

A team of academics have launched a blistering attack on Britain’s privatised rail industry in a report that aims to influence  Labour Party thinking ahead of the next General Election. The authors say the handling of rail policy since privatisation in the 1990s has been a “serial shambles”. The Great Train Robbery report has been authored by a team of eight researchers led by professor Karel Williams, director of the Centre for Research on Social-Cultural Change at the...

WHEN THE Government submits a hybrid Bill to Parliament in late 2013, seeking powers to build a new high-speed railway between London and the West Midlands, it will be accompanied by a formal Environmental Statement (ES). The ES will set out a description of the scheme and how it was developed; the alternatives that were considered; an assessment of the likely adverse and beneficial environmental effects of the scheme; and proposed mitigation measures to manage or reduce likely significant...

The Treasury's infrastructure plan is a list of projects, not a real plan with clear priorities, the public accounts committee has concluded. The MPs were "not convinced" that a plan requiring £310bn of investment was credible in the economic climate and given the difficulties in raising private finance on acceptable terms. Furthermore, investors would be reluctant to invest until Government policy was clear and consistent, the committee says in another of a string of...

Sir Colin Buchanan’s grandson, Paul Buchanan, this week paid tribute to his grandfather’s work in defining critical issues of transport planning and policy 50 years ago but raised a number of new challenges for the transport planning profession and policy-makers. Giving a lecture in London to members of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, Paul said his grandfather’s  seminal 1963 report Traffic in Towns had correctly identified the fact that...

We have seen unprecedented change in the field of transport policy and planning over the last few years, with the inevitable consequence that there are now significant policy and governance gaps at every level. However, it is the policy gap for planning, funding and delivering transport projects at the national level that I think is the most worrying and that shows little sign of being filled. From what I can glean, the Department of Transport and its ministers seem noticeably reluctant to step...

It is now 40 years since the then Department for the Environment published its proposals for Transport Policies and Programmes (TPPs). The TPP, uniquely in Europe, provided local authorities with the encouragement to adopt an integrated approach to local transport planning and the powers, guidance and finance to facilitate this. Sadly, as is often the way in the UK, successive governments could not resist tinkering with a successful system.  By the 1980s TPP funding was only available for...

The DfT is to sweep away ‘red tape’ hampering the delivery of new housing and economic development that generates traffic on the Highways Agency’s road network. Roads minister Stephen Hammond said the reforms, contained in a new draft circular, would remove “unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation” and create more opportunity for businesses and communities to “realise their aspirations”. But one transport consultant who works with major developers...

Tests have shown how clean, dry, well-compacted repairs to potholes last longer, according to Nottingham Trent University/University of Nottingham. A coat of bitumen emulsion between two asphalt layers in repairs and hot-mixes for deep defects greatly improves repair durability, they say. The initial study is the first step towards predicting how long individual repairs will last, the researchers said....

If you are near to an internet browser as you read this, type the search term ‘Peak Car’ into Google and have a look at the top two or three page listings. Now repeat the test with the search term ‘High Speed 2’. At the time of writing, the top listing for ‘Peak Car’ is a Wikipedia article on the subject. Similarly, the Wikipedia article on High Speed 2 is ranked second by Google, just below the official HS2 website, but above the Department for...