Policy instruments (3) - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 220

street management (14.7) and air quality management (14.8). Finally we review
the opportunities available to influence traffic conditions through the regulation of
development, including private off-street parking (14.9).
14.2 The changing role of traffic management
'Traffic management' began as a set of techniques used independently of one another to
address problems at particular points on the highway network - establishing priorities
at junctions and introducing traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, parking restrictions,
one-way streets and so on. As noted in Chapter 5 a major advance took place in the
1960s in its role in accommodating growing volumes of traffic within urban areas more
generally, particularly in town centres. Comprehensive schemes were implemented in
congested localities comprising a combination of measures designed to 'get the best'
out of the existing road system in advance of major road-building. The control of on-
street parking was a central feature of such schemes.
Rather than simply address a succession of localised problems, the Traffic in Towns
Report (MOT and MHLG 1963) identified a broader vision within which traffic
management measures should be designed. This offered the potential to bring about
a hierarchical pattern of traffic movement in an area which reflected the suitability
of individual streets to accommodate it rather than merely respond to the pattern
which occurred spontaneously or which derived from the routes which had been used
historically by through traffic. (The current application of a hierarchical approach to
the planning and management of urban networks is explained in section 11.7 of IHT
1997.)
The difficulty with seeking to apply this approach in many older urban areas is
the fact that there are few if any roads built to modern design standards (with little
or no frontage access) on to which the main flows of traffic can be redirected. In
rural areas too, calls by villagers for action to deter 'rat-running' by through traffic
have to be set against the fact that classified B and minor A roads in the vicinity are
often little better in their suitability to accommodate heavy traffic. In both urban
and rural areas therefore the issue of traffic management across a network quickly
raises controversial questions about the distribution of benefits and disbenefits - of
gainers and losers - not only in terms of safety and environment but also of motorists'
convenience of access and through movement. It is for these reasons that in places
where it is not practicable or acceptable to alleviate problems by the redistribution
of traffic the application of traffic calming techniques has increasingly been followed
instead (see 14.7).
The extent and sophistication of traffic management schemes was subsequently
extended through the linking of traffic signals according to predetermined programmes
appropriate to traffic conditions at different times of day (Urban Traffic Control). These
in turn have been superseded by Intelligent Systems governing traffic movements
across whole networks in real time. Likewise the control of parking has extended
from relatively narrow concerns about safety and obstruction at particular locations
to comprehensive strategies embracing both on- and off-street facilities across wide
areas, and concerned as much with the volume and type of traffic which is generated
by the available facilities as with the physical manner in which provision for parking
and loading is made. An important dimension of more modern traffic management
schemes has been their inclusion of public transport priorities, whether this is in the
amount of 'green time' allocated to roads which function as main routes or to the