Public Transport

Water! That is all a hydrogen fuel cell bus releases into the air. Clean, green and coming to a bus stop near you, they are the ultimate in environmentally friendly buses.

Red buses are going green! Combining a conventional engine with an electric motor, hybrid buses are quieter, cleaner and more fuel efficient than standard diesel buses.

The Streetscape Guidance report gives advice and information to Transport for London staff who look after the design, appearance and upkeep of London's streets and roads.

This is a website designed for transport professionals and politicians at all levels, from local authorities, PTEs, government bodies and transport consultancies. The Network will provide you with the means of sharing good practice, carrying out process and performance related benchmarking and will enable the development of transport policy ideas on a national level.

In November 2007 the London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No.2) Bill was deposited in Parliament.

In 2000,1 the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (now the Department for Transport, DfT) published its strategy for road safety in Tomorrows Roads Safer for Everyone. In this document Mixed Priority Routes were identified as being among the least safe of urban roads. Subsequently, the DfT invited local highway authorities to submit schemes for inclusion in the Mixed Priority Routes (MPR) Road Safety Demonstration Project where DfT grants of up to £1 million were available for each participating authority. The ten schemes selected to be included in the project covered a spectrum of different types of authority and highway characteristics. This document reviews the experience from the ten schemes involved in the Demonstration Project and presents the lessons learned through the project to assist practitioners develop similar successful schemes. This report provides guidance for project managers and senior technical staff who might be involved in the development and delivery of MPR schemes, building on the experience of those that have already been through the process and understand the organisation and delivery issues involved. The MPR schemes have unique technical solutions to the redesign of their streets. It is not the purpose of this document to set out technical solutions. A brochure entitled High Street Renaissance and detailed scheme reports are also published on the DfT website, www.dft.org.uk. Summary Mixed Priority Routes are streets that carry high levels of traffic and also have: a mix of residential use and commercial frontages; a mix of road users, i.e. shoppers, cyclists, bus passengers, schoolchildren; a mix of parking and deliveries; They are not just transport routes. Although dealing with transport and safety is a key element, other concerns associated with the local economy and local communities may also generate an interest in improving the area with economic regeneration and environmental improvements. There are many benefits to be gained from enhancing the high street environment with an integrated approach. The investment is likely to contribute towards assisting the delivery of a range of local authority corporate objectives and targets including: accessibility planning; accident reduction; economic regeneration; Public Service Agreement; quality of life; and sustainability.

Encouraging more people to cycle is increasingly being seen as a vital part of any local authority plan to tackle congestion, improve air quality, promote physical activity and improve accessibility. This design guide brings together and updates guidance previously available in a number of draft Local Transport Notes and other documents. Although its focus is the design of cycle infrastructure, parts of its advice are equally appropriate to improving conditions for pedestrians. The guidance covers England, Wales and Scotland. Where the text refers to highway authorities (for England and Wales), the equivalent term in Scotland is road authorities.

Integration between cycling and public transport offers many of the benefits of convenient door-to-door transport over longer distances that are associated with car use. For operators, encouraging cycling to public transport offers increased passenger catchment compared to walking (typically up to four times the catchment area for the same journey time to the stop), as well as the potential to increase passenger numbers without some of the land-take and parking management issues associated with car travel (over ten cycles can be parked in the space required for one car parking space). In rural areas and some suburban locations, cycle access to stops or in-vehicle carriage may help to increase use and underpin public transport services that are struggling to make a commercial return, as well as offering a low-cost and socially inclusive form of access to cycling in the countryside. As with all sustainable transport promotion, each point at which there is potential 'uncertainty', or risk, in the journey will deter users. This might be in the form of lack of signs to parking areas, lack of security, or uncertainty about the vehicles' capacity to convey cycles, the conditions of carriage, or booking arrangements. It is important, therefore, that signs, vehicle layouts, leaflets and website materials produced by operators, passenger transport executives or local authorities make it easy and clear to users how to combine cycling and public transport.

This document, which forms part of the Government’s advice on transport within Ecotowns and New Growth Points, is aimed at all those involved in the planning, design and construction of new housing developments. It sets out advice on how to build an effective sustainable transport system in new developments, from the planning to the implementation stage. It recommends a variety of transport options to integrate and adopt according to the location and needs of the individual development. The TCPA Eco-towns Transport Worksheet, commissioned by CLG, supplements this initial guidance and concentrates on a route map for Eco-town developers. It provides a ‘how to’ guide to steer developers and others engaged in planning, delivering and managing eco-towns through the planning process. Both documents should be referred to in conjunction with each other.