Delivering a Sustainable Transport System

Following the successful prioritisation of transport projects for the East of England’s Regional Funding Allocation in 2008 (RFA2), MRC McLean Hazel and their partner JMP Consultants were re-commissioned by the Region to develop a set of strategic challenges and priorities for their response to the Department for Transport (DfT) consultation on ‘Delivering a Sustainable Transport System’ (DaSTS).

The project began by defining a set of high-level transport-agnostic challenges facing the East of England region in the future. These challenges were framed under the five DfT strategic DaSTS goals:

• Reduce Carbon Emissions
• Support Economic Growth
• Promote Equality of Opportunity
• Contribute to better Safety, Security & Health
• Improve Quality of Life and a Healthy Natural Environment

Each of these high-level challenges was then subjected to an evidence-based appraisal to determine its relevance to transport and its appropriate geographic scale (local, regional or national). This process resulted in a set of Transport Challenges to be taken forward as the focus of regional transport policy for the future. Where sufficiently robust regional evidence exists on a challenge and its impacts, this challenge has been ‘banked’ for consideration in future regional transport work. Where a challenge is presently lacking in adequate evidence, a proposal was made to the DfT for a study to better define the transport challenge. The report summarising this piece of work can be found on the East of England Regional Assembly website The East of England Regional Assembly (EERA) :: Delivering a Sustainable Transport System.

The East of England region submitted a list of 10 studies to the DfT, the majority of which have been approved for further development work. The East of England was the only English region to have no studies given the ‘red light’ by the DfT, which demonstrates both the strength of the evidence-based research as well as the benefits of close involvement of the DfT throughout the evolution of the project.