The European Commission White Paper states that the idea of connecting modes, particularly through rail and transport hubs, is seen as increasingly important in the achievement of seamless travel, says Michèle Dix, Managing Director of Planning, Transport for London.
Transport hubs, or interchanges, are the purview of the TfL interchange group, whose job is specifically to look at the development of interchanges across TfL, to work with partners in developing those interchanges but, importantly, also to work with external partners such as funders and developers. Increasingly, TfL works with developers, rather than against them.
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In creating interchanges, TfL seeks to create more trips, to create more accessible journeys and to provide new public transport capacity. The aim is to get more out of existing networks; to encourage more people to use public transport or to walk and cycle – and, importantly – to create greater opportunities for people to travel to jobs and places of work, which ultimately leads to increased economic activity. Our aim is to ensure that new trips are made by sustainable modes; discouraging car and road freight traffic where possible.
Local and strategic development control processes should seek to ensure a number of conditions are satisfied, including:
• High trip generating developments to be located in areas of high public transport accessibility, connectivity and
capacity;
• The design and layout of sites maximise access on foot, cycle and to public transport facilities;
• Maximum opportunities for sustainable freight distribution where possible;
• Land for transport use is safeguarded in line with London Plan policy and Supplementary Planning
Guidance;
• Planning contributions are sought for transport improvements, where appropriate.
When talking about transport and promoting economic development, a major step forward is to develop ‘joined up’ strategies. Much of what is done in London is guided by three key strategies – transport strategy, spatial planning strategy and economic development strategy, all of which are integrated. Looking at the key policy areas, particularly mass transport strategy, all have similar goals: promoting economic development whilst improving quality of life, improving the opportunities that people have to access jobs, making it more secure and save to travel and, finally, ensuring that transport contributions to CO2 emissions are reduced.
The key is the integration of land use, development and transport policies, and re-visiting problems created by land-use and transport strategy that has developed separately. In a constrained environment as far as funding is concerned, TfL needs to make the most of existing systems, encouraging people to travel at different times of the day. Where necessary, we must look at providing further public transport capacity.
A remarkable impact has been made over the past 10 years, with a mode shift from car to public transport, a seven per cent decrease in car mode share and a seven per cent increase in public transport mode share. We’ve now set ourselves a challenge to do more for bicycles. Currently two per cent of mode share is by bicycling. What we want to see over the next 20 years is a five per cent mode share by bicycling, which is a marked increase for London.
To meet these challenges, TfL will concentrate on development, and good public transport provision helps us do this. London is very dense in the middle, with some 30 per cent of employment occupying just two per cent of the space, which is very well served by public transport. There are 1.2 million people working in central London, compared with about 100,000 in Los Angeles, so it’s easy to see why these cities have different patterns of public transport and car usage.
London is one of the most economically active areas in the UK, and it is a net exporter of tax GDP, so if dense development can be achieved around good public transport hubs, we can help to stimulate economic development. Central London is very accessible, which is why people tend to want to develop there. But there are also pockets of good accessibility spread across greater London. We need to make more of these pockets and consider what improvements can make these areas better and more attractive for development. Some 50 per cent of London’s population growth will be in east London, so development and better accessibility in the east must be assured in order that the generation of more, and longer, trips by people in the east trying to get to work in the centre or the west.
Provision of public transport capacity enables development density to be increased. Development in the vicinity of interchanges enables more sustainable trips to be made on the radial and orbital public transport networks, and provides local and sub regionally-significant centres for shopping, employment, entertainment and other amenities.
In order to ensure that development is encouraged around these areas of good public transport, we need to make sure that our development control processes work well, making sure that development is located in areas of high public transport accessibility, connectivity and capacity. Sometimes improvements need to happen and, if so, those improvements should be paid for by the developer. TfL also wants to make sure that developments are designed and laid out to maximise the use of walking, cycling and public transport.
TfL also wishes to make provision for sustainable freight, and to ensure that land is safeguarded for transport use in future London plans. In working with developers, we aim to understand what impact the development might have on a particular location – and to encourage the choice of a location that makes the most of existing transport capacity. Where this doesn’t quite match, we make sure that we get Section 106 (or Community Infrastructure Levy) contributions (Planning Obligations used following the granting of planning permission to secure community and/or to mitigate the impact of new developments upon existing community facilities) from the developer to pay for any necessary public transport improvements and, increasingly, to ensure that they pay for more than just access to a station. If a development needs a new underground line to support its viability, then we need to ensure that developers are part of the funding solution. By looking at all the interested developers as a package, because they will all benefit from underground line extension, we envisage that they will all pay a contribution.
Interchanges are critical to the promotion of sustainable development. They not only enable different channel choices to be made, but actually provide new opportunities for people to live, work and access facilities. The key to interchange is making sure that they are high quality, simple, and accessible. This cannot as yet be said about all our interchanges, and not about Network Rail’s interchanges, but TfL is seeking to improve standards.
Interchanges can be catalysts for socio-economic development. We can make interchange more attractive, improve the accessibility and attract development. Simply through a developer being on board in a specific location, the need for more connections is generated, helping to make that interchange more attractive in itself. Making interchange as smooth and attractive as possible is important in promoting more accessible journeys. Interchanges must be efficient – make sure that timetables are coordinated; that there is a high enough frequency of services passing through the interchange; that station layouts are clear and that passenger circulation and physical accessibility is catered for.
Interchanges must also be integrated with other modes: working with partners such as rail companies is really important. Ideally, passengers will not notice the ‘join’: they will pass through an interchange and feel that the system is operated by the same organisation to the same standard, with the same level of information throughout.
Ticketing is also important. At TfL, we’ve made a great stride forward by encouraging the use of a smartcard across all trains, buses, and national rail suburban lines in London. Physical accessibility is also key: there are parts of London where travel times is considerably lengthened because of lack of step-free access at local stations. Over the next 20 years, TfL plans to identify the interchanges across the network that need to become step free in order to speed up journey times.
TfL is also making more of existing networks: the Orbital Overground is taking poorly-used overground lines and improving the service and frequency of trains, smartening up stations, upgrading lights and information services, staffing stations – all basic things – and suddenly a whole new set of movements is possible in London. As a result of these improvements, more people are using these lines to go around London, rather than travelling into the centre and out again, as they have done historically.
This article is based on a presentation given at the Sintropher conference in London, 201i. Sintropher is a five-year cooperation project with the aim of enhancing local and regional transport provision to, from and within five peripheral regions in North-West Europe
