Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4.16 Broad Street, Oxford. How do we progress towards strategic policy goals more effectively?
Enabling sustainable travel is complex and difficult process, requiring infrastructure investment,
urban planning, traffic demand management, cleaner vehicles; and also a strong and concerted
governmental lead, public awareness, participation and engagement. Changing travel behaviours
is complex societal problem requiring a complex and wide-reaching response.
longer term, and authorities find it difficult to progress significantly towards strategic targets
such as reducing CO2 emissions. Such barriers are linked to the centralised funding system,
where the larger investments are controlled by the Department for Transport. This needs to
change, with funding prioritised and even raised locally. There is also a wider problem in
practice. There is a major aversion to innovation (and necessarily risk) in transport planning,
and efforts to adopt the newer public transport options, or public realm, cycling and walking
schemes are often lacking. Compare some of the practice in the UK to Copenhagen, Delft or
Gröningen (cycling and walking); virtually any of the French cities, such as Strasbourg,
Montpellier, Bordeaux (tram schemes and public realm); Bogotá and Curitiba (bus rapid
transit); San Sebastian, Madrid or Barcelona (public realm); and Freiburg or Malmö (urban
extensions); and we can see UK practice is failing to deliver the quality that has already been
introduced elsewhere. The good practice has been around for years, and there are many
advocates, but internationally leading practice in the UK is rare, and the reasons for this are
often process or funding-based.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulties inherent in implementation, both at the city and the
county level, three contrasting scenarios were constructed for Oxfordshire:
Scenario 1 - Business as usual (BAU) : a continuation of the current policy approach (and
levels of implementation), with only ad hoc progress being made towards sustainable
travel behaviours, no real strategic direction, and low funding levels.
 
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