The 1990s paradigm shift - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 112

in orientation and the complementary transport measures it included reflected
developments in local transport planning taking place at the same time (7.9 below).
The DTp's main fiefdom concerned with national roads and traffic was not being
challenged.
The stated objectives of PPG13 were
• to reduce growth in the length and number of motorised journeys;
• to encourage alternative means of travel which have less environmental impact;
and hence
• to reduce reliance on the private car.
In this way local authorities will help meet the commitments of the Government's
Sustainable Development Strategy to reduce the need to travel; influence the rate
of traffic growth; and reduce the environmental impacts of transport overall. These
objectives represented a radical change from the original (1988) version of the PPG
which dwelt entirely on more mundane highway engineering matters, reflected in
its original title: Highways Considerations in Development Control . The PPG rapidly
acquired totemic status amongst transport professionals such that the phrase 'PPG13'
- meaning the 1994 version - came to be used as convenient short-hand for a range of
local planning and transport policies concerned with demand management linked to
the goals of sustainable development.
The main thrust of 'PPG13' was to promote development within urban areas and
to locate major generators of travel in existing centres which are highly accessible by
means other than the private car. PPG13 was complemented by revisions to PPG3
on housing which favoured development on previously used (so-called 'brown-field')
land within existing built-up areas (DETR 2000b), and to PPG6 on retailing which
supported development in or adjacent to existing town centres (DOE 1993).
Together these PPGs signalled a policy initiative which set out to reverse the long-
established drift of population and activity from major towns and cities to smaller
towns and rural areas. It also represented a complete reversal of the market-led policies
adopted by the same Conservative Government a decade earlier which had allowed a
rash of peripheral and other non-central retail and office developments to appear in
virtually every town (Headicar 1996).
From a sustainable development perspective the Achilles' heel of PPG13 was that
it neither contained, nor was accompanied by, any commitment to reducing actual car
use. The phraseology was very carefully designed to refer only to reducing the need to
travel and providing the opportunity for travel by means other than the car. Politically
it was important that choice was seen to remain firmly with the individual traveller.
The Government's stance on this issue is encapsulated in the reaction given by the
Environment Secretary John Gummer to the RCEP report:
I am not persuaded that the kind of draconian increases recommended [in fuel
duty] would have the effects they suggest; people's attachment to their cars is not
mere whim but reflects real comfort and convenience. We must design our cities
of the future so that choosing not to have a car is made increasingly possible.
From the viewpoint of the development industry, PPG13 represented a radical,
probably unrealistic and certainly unwelcome change since it ran against the obvious
logic of market forces in a mass car-owning society. The planning profession was