FOUNDATION FOR INTEGRATED TRANSPORT TRANSPORT FOR NEW HOMES NEWSLETTER 2 Transport for New Homes is a project that aims to discover how and if new housing is being built around sustainable transport walking, cycling, bus, rail or tram. Based mostly on field-work, the team go to see new housing and photograph what they find, together with associated transport. They also speak to residents, planners, public transport operators and others about the development. The project will culminate in an exhibition in spring 2017 with observations and recommendations. Over the summer we visited a number of further urban extensions and have formed some overall impressions which we will test when we do our in-depth visits, these taking place in October and November. Reacting to what we have seen so far, we have looked at planning applications and transport assessments to try to discover why it is that large new areas of homes on greenfield sites go ahead without planning from the very start around public transport, this despite national and local policies. It appears also that the mechanisms of the five-year housing land supply enshrined in the National Planning Policy Guidance, end up with large scale housing developments in places that are hard to serve with public transport and a long way from walkable services and amenities. Lots of parking. We continue to see many greenfield urban extensions dominated by the car. This becomes obvious from the sheer amount of parking visible on visits, and the very large amount of traffic forecast by transport assessments associated with planning applications. We have been genuinely amazed at the amount of tarmac devoted to parking in places built in the last few years. In many cases there are no back gardens or very small ones because where gardens should be, there is a car park instead. The sheer amount of Typical spine road through urban extension. Parking is often behind the homes parking provided, coupled with the location of development close to fast roads out of town, is surely a formula to promote a car-based life style. Potential public transport users in these new places, look as though whereas in previous generations of suburbs there would be gardens. they are much more likely to drive. Greenfield housing estates proposed everywhere. The number of new settlements in the countryside in the form of villages, eco-villages, garden suburbs and urban extensions built, in construction or proposed in the many Local Plans we have looked at, is astonishing. There appear to be more than thirty in the South West alone. What is amazing is that there is no vision or adequate funding for a coordinated modern public transport system to carry the tens of thousands of new residents from all the new settlements to cities where jobs and services lie. This is Parking surround some residential streets on all sides 1
Whereas previous generations of suburbs had back gardens there are now car parks complicated by the effects of rural bus cuts and existing overcrowding on local rail. We are allowing a distributed model of development at a time when services and employment are being centralised, meaning more travel for new residents. How will it all work? Whilst the notion of smart cities is attracting attention and smart travel is where the future is supposed to lie, the way we are building on greenfield sites moves us in a completely different direction. 2 More car-based than Milton Keynes? Orientation around the car in places being built today appears to be greater than in Milton Keynes, for which we have some of the original plans. In Milton Keynes local amenities were planned carefully to be within walking distance and the assumption was that people would often use the bus, which was factored into the model. Much less surface area was devoted to parking than many places today. Google maps gives interesting views on housing recently built. In a newly constructed urban extension in the east Midlands an aerial view of residential streets (above) 'You simply have to have two or three cars' reveals just how much area that was once green fields is now devoted to car parking. Cars are parked to the front of houses along the road but the surprise is around the back. Where one might expect back gardens for each group of homes, nearly the entire space is instead devoted to large car parks. The way onto the A5076 is plain to see and from then a series of roundabouts take you to other parts of the road network. The area between the houses and the road is being planted as a kind of buffer between the fast dual carriageway and the new homes. It remains from our visits to find out if the High Street to the bottom of the screenshot has any shops. In its favour, the development has some grassed areas and trees and good public realm. The location of bus stops? We will see.
A visit to Lund in Sweden reveals a very different model for new homes, built at a higher density so that everyone is closer to the centre by bike or on foot, and able to acess public transport easily. What about in other parts of Europe? This model of development is very different from that seen by a member of the Transport for New Homes team while visiting Lund in Sweden. Here, new homes are built at high density as flats and town houses with more trees, green squares and shared spaces, and also community gardening areas where you can have your own garden if you want to. Parking is limited but instead residents enjoy more green space, easy routes into town with buses going very near where they live, easy access to the railway station which is a good bus interchange. With less area wasted on tarmac, the result is often larger living accommodation (individual flats are often larger than new builds in England), less expense on buying and running 2 or more cars, and proximity to services and amenities by sustainable modes of travel. Housebuilders may argue that in the UK that people don t want areas of flats, but developers such as Crest Nicholson building exactly that seem to have found a ready market in this country. A new town with a station. Efforts have of course been made to build sustainablilty into new settlements in this country. Cranbrook new town in Devon has a new station generally with an hourly service albeit some way from the town. Buses run through the estate; there is also a great deal of car parking. High hopes for the bus. The proposed Vale Villages outside Bristol, like Wichelstowe near Swindon, have high hopes for the bus. At Swindon cuts to funding diluted the original idea of bus-based rapid transit and from our visit it looks as though many people drive. When we visited Corby to see the new Priors Hall Park development, buses didn t actually enter into the new housing area. This is missing a trick to get a good established bus service going early on before everyone assumes that one is supposed to travel everywhere by car. Close working with the bus industry from the start is absolutely essential, to market the bus early on as a whole product that people want to use, as we have heard from Stagecoach who are now commenting extensively at the Local Plan stage. Walking. From initial visits to Poundbury near Dorchester in Dorset, the new urban extension appears to be less car-dependant although at this stage to what extent is unclear. Its pastiche architecture may not appeal to everyone but we did get the impression of an established community walking around and using local amenities. Efforts have been made to include useful bus services along residential streets to link directly with Dorchester town centre. How much these are used is yet to be discovered. We will be using our questionnaire to speak to residents. 3 Poundabury s architecture may not be to everyone s taste but it does provide a good walking environment with buses going through the new area, plus a pub, cafes, restuarants, small shops, community centres and so on. The residents we have spoken to so far love living there. We wil get more insights when we visit again in October/November.
Urban regeneration projects deliver in more sustainable locations. The good news is that housing actually within large urban areas appears to be much less car dependant, with less parking, much within walking distance, and public transport available for when it is not. Kidbrooke Village (photographed above) near Lewisham is one example which we are looking at in some depth. Bath Riverside is a development of apartments and town houses on a large brownfield site in the city. Recently occupied in its first stage, it will eventually have 2,500 homes close to amenities in Bath, being only a short way from the centre, bus stops and the railway station. A footbridge over the river gives access from one side but there are several walking and cycle routes with trees planted along streets through the development. The developer (Crest Nicholson) explained that generally it is envisaged that one car parking place for a two or three bedroom home was all that was provided and that some people didn t have a car you were so close to public transport and many amenities were in easy walking distance. The density of homes was high but each quadrangle of apartments overlooked a large shared garden space at the back. Parking was provided underground. Shops are planned European style integrated into the new buildings. Crest Nicholson have also built the new apartments in the centre of Taunton which are close to all amenities and the station, and in Bristol. New Bath Riverside eventually providing 2,500 homes is close to public transport and all amenities. Large scale housing development Kidbrooke, London is a few minutes walk from Kidbrooke station and buses to lots of destinations. It has its own parks and gardens, school and other amenities. homes are being built. Garden suburb? Back to greenfield development and masterplans and brochures advertise the garden suburb. It is not clear whether homes will look over back gardens or simply cars parks, but certainly one gets the impression that the garden suburb of the future is a different animal from that of the past. Leaving green space may attract new residents, but for a community needs much more than rough areas of planting for walks and cycleways, nice as they are in good weather. The danger is that dormitory settlements appear with little in the way of local provision and that when it comes to the crunch, for many daily activities, you have to drive. The coupling of new road capacity with new settlements says it all: a large number of trips by car are expected. Transport Assessments show large traffic increases. This leads us on to transport assessments by local authorities, which are generally orientated around car journeys before and after construction of the urban extension. The resultant junctions over capacity or congested strategic routes are then flagged up as in need of upgrade and quickly use up developer funding apportioned accordingly. Where is public transport in the picture? The answer is unclear. Planners we have spoken to say that opening new stations is far harder than building new roads and rapid transit (tram or bus-based) extremely difficult to reliably fund. Bus services to isolated car-based urban extensions are difficult to make commercially viable, and bus cuts are affecting the very areas where More road capacity. The notion that you must add road capacity to cope with additional journeys is one thing but sometimes it is the other way round. New large scale housing is encouraged onto out of town sites specifically to locate close to junctions and roads seeking developer or government funds. The thinking is that then developer can part-fund the road. In Wiltshire for example, the location of 2,400 new homes at Ashton Park to the SE of Trowbridge has been specifically chosen to insist that the developer part-finance the West Ashton Relief road to the tune of 11 million pounds, with further money from the Growth Fund. Meanwhile the Oxford Mail recently ran a story 'Garden Village outside Oxford could unlock A40 cash' in August 2016 which explained that a bid for money to add capacity to the A40 on the back of a 4
very large new area of housing near Eynsham, albeit in this case with some public transport provision. The same idea of paying for road capacity through housing has also been reported for the new Eco Village near Bicester. Car-based destinations for car-based housing. If we have observed a great deal of parking in urban extensions, we have also seen adjacent fringe of town retail and employment obviously anticipating the majority of people arriving by car. Many urban extensions come with promises of a vibrant local centre. There is also the question as to whether local centres will be commercially viable if everyone shops en route back from work or picking the children up from school or childcare? It remains from our interviews to discover whether what we have observed in the way of fringe of town shopping and carbased business parks matches the reality of how people live and what residents think would reduce their car-dependence. Where the Transport for New Homes project is going next The next stages of the Transport for New Homes project include: Detailed fieldwork including interviews with residents and/or community groups at six housing developments. We have chosen six places to study in depth and have done a questionnaire with on-line survey to use in our discussions with community groups and A new local centre for a housing development residents. Our initial idea of interviewing residents in the street at local centres within new areas of housing has been shown to be impractical in some locations. This is because local centres have not been built and there are consequently very few people walking around to interview. Where this is the case we are now speaking directly to schools, sports clubs, mother and toddler groups and so on. The people living in the new housing areas, the public realm and the public transport in use will be photographed by a professional photographer for the exhibition to provide images to show what has been built and how residents are getting around walking, cycling, using public transport or driving. More visits to other housing developments. We will photograph a number of other new areas of housing and record as profiles what has been provided for local residents in terms of local facilities, public transport and public realm. Further discussions with public transport operators about their experiences in building in really good bus or rapid transit services to new large areas of housing. Assembling material for a touring exhibition and associated seminars, one in Bristol and one in London, and others in locations to be decided, generally near to the places that we have studied. The exhibition will display our photographs, our findings and recommendations, and profiles of all developments visited. There will also be animations of traffic flow and road congestion associated with development to appreciate the consequences of building car-based settlements now and in the future. We hope to influence policy at both national and local level to place public transport, walking and cycling truly at the centre of the planning system to ensure that we build new homes in the right location and in the right way for sustainable travel. Jenny Raggett Project coordinator October 2016 5