Travel Plans
A Travel Plan is a strategy employed to manage the transport and travel to a site in a sustainable manner. It should contain both physical and promotional measures, which aim to reduce the number of trips to a site, easing reliance on private car travel and improving the accessibility to a development by a range of travel modes (such as public transport and cycling).
Due to growing congestion problems on the road network and the Government's commitment towards reducing carbon emissions (transport is the only sector where carbon emissions are still growing), prospective developments are increasingly required to demonstrate a commitment towards sustainable travel, in order to gain planning permission.
A Travel Plan should establish a structured strategy that defines and co-ordinates this commitment; this can yield a number of benefits for both developers and occupiers (businesses).
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Developers benefits
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Business benefits
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Improve access and choice
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Alleviates parking and congestion problems
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Design for access and permeability
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Savings in cost of providing/managing car parking spaces
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Reduce parking requirements to provide more room for development and higher density
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Stress reduction and time savings for staff
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Business benefits make the site more attractive to potential occupiers
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Supports staff recruitment and retention
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Illustrates corporate social responsibility
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The Government has provided guidance on the inter-relationship of the Travel Plan and Transport Assessment. Whilst this is not a new requirement, the information that is needed is much more rigorous, and details of this can be found in the document Guidance on Transport Assessment.
It is recommended that the Travel Plan should be scoped in combination with the Transport Assessment with the local planning authority at the earliest stage; the benefits and opportunities of Travel Plans can then be maximised when ‘designed in’ to developments. These pre-application discussions can often reduce costs to the developer and minimise the time taken for the successful application to receive permission – click here for more information on pre-application discussions.
What are the cost implications?
There will be some cost involved in the development, implementation and monitoring of a Travel Plan. However, by implementing a Travel Plan, costs can usually be saved on highway works, and the adoption of a sustainable transport policy from the opening of a new development can avoid access and parking problems in the future, providing a valuable long term benefit. In addition, many businesses have found that savings are greater than costs (e.g. the cost of a company Travel Plan is often considerably less than the cost of maintaining parking spaces), or can be minimised by co-ordinating efforts with other companies.w The Process Works
There are a number of stages in the Transport Assessment process, a summary of which is presented in the flow chart below.
