Local Transport Today is the authoritative, independent journal for transport decision makers. Analysis, Comment & News on Transport Policy, Planning, Finance and Delivery since 1989.

Lies, damned lies, and...

Conventional transport appraisal is broke beyond fixing. But what can take its place?

John Dales
25 September 2009
Great Charles Street Queensway in Birmingham. It severs the city centre from the historic Jewellery Quarter and is constraining the centre’s necessary physical growth. But it also carries around 80,000 vehicles a day and would cost tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds to adapt to the changing needs of the city. Using conventional transport appraisal processes alone, change will never happen. But, for the citys sake, it really must.
Great Charles Street Queensway in Birmingham. It severs the city centre from the historic Jewellery Quarter and is constraining the centre’s necessary physical growth. But it also carries around 80,000 vehicles a day and would cost tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds to adapt to the changing needs of the city. Using conventional transport appraisal processes alone, change will never happen. But, for the citys sake, it really must.

 

I begin this month by cutting straight to a review of some comments that have recently appeared in LTT concerning the thorny issue of transport appraisal. In LTT 527 (28 Aug), Alan Wenban-Smith and Tom van Vuren were reported as believing that “credible precision about value for money is unlikely to be the output of a transport model any time soon”. In LTT 528 (11 Sep), David Simmonds and Neil Raha ask the question about what is preferable: conventional transport modelling that...

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John Dales

John Dales

John Dales MSC BSC MCIHT CMILT Director, Urban Mov

John Dales is a streets design adviser to local authorities around the UK, a member of several design review panels, and one of the London mayor’s design advocates. He is a past chair of the Transport Planning Society, a former trustee of Living Streets, and a committee member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. He is director of transport planning and street design consultancy Urban Movement. 

 

j.dales@urbanmovement.co.uk
+44 (0)7768 377 150
www.johndales.com

 

 
 
 

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