Policy aims - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 181

Table 11.1 Objectives and sub-objectives in the NATA framework (source: TAG unit 3.2)

Objective Sub-objectives

ENVIRONMENT
To protect the built and natural environment

To reduce noise
To improve local air quality
To reduce greenhouse gases
To protect and enhance the landscape
To protect the heritage of historic resources
To support bio-diversity
To protect the water environment
To encourage physical fitness
To improve journey ambience

SAFETY
To improve safety

To reduce accidents
To improve security

ECONOMY
To support sustainable economic activity and
get good value for money

To get good value for money in relation to
impacts on public accounts
To improve transport economic efficiency for
business users and transport providers
To improve transport economic efficiency for
consumers (users)
To improve reliability
To provide beneficial wider economic impacts 1

ACCESSIBILITY
To improve access to facilities for those without
a car and to reduce severance

To improve access to the transport system
To increase option values 2
To reduce severance 3

INTEGRATION
To ensure that all decisions are taken in
the context of the Government's integrated
transport policy

To improve transport interchange
To integrate transport policy with land use
policy
To integrate transport policy with other
Government policies

Notes
1 Wider economic impacts are effects on employment and productivity additional to those arising
directly from changes in travel times and costs represented by transport efficiency.
2 Option value is the importance which non-users place on the presence of transport opportunities -
for example by businesses on the presence of a public transport facility to bring workers or customers,
or by car owning residents as a fall-back when their car is not available.
3 Severance is the impairment of local accessibility (normally as experienced by pedestrians or cyclists)
arising from the physical barrier of a transport route (e.g. motorway or railway) or from the deterrent
effect of traffic volumes or speed.

embodies has a strong conditioning effect on 'Government policy in practice'. Probably
the most notable feature of NATA is that two of the five main aspirations of the 1998
White Paper ('better health' and 'a fairer, more inclusive society') do not figure as
main objectives. Health issues do appear - rather incongruously - as sub-objectives
under the Environment objective (local air quality and personal fitness). Narrowly
defined attributes which have relevance to social inclusion are included under the
sub-objectives of security, severance and access to the transport system but the more
significant attribute of personal accessibility is omitted (i.e. the opportunity for people
to access the facilities they need). The reason for this is that, for the population as
a whole, changes in accessibility are taken to be reflected in people's actual travel
behaviour and hence subsumed within the economic efficiency calculations. However