Articles - Transport Futures Institute

How to plan for smart growth freight transport

Smart growth aims to improve the quality of life in communities, with a strong sustainability emphasis, aiming to conserve energy and protect environmental quality.

A key smart growth theme is efficiency – reducing the socio-economic cost per-capita of infrastructure and services.

This requires transport and planning professionals to plan future land use patterns which are compact and provide a range of transport options, to reduce the need to travel, the number and length of trips and car dependance.

How to ‘sweat’ your transport project

by Phil Charles

High performing transport professionals need to adopt a mindset of squeezing more out of their projects, doing more for less.

Using this approach means your project is more likely to be supported (funded), at a time when transport agencies are facing significantly reduced budgets.

In 2010 the UK Highways Agency funding levels were reduced from £2.6B down to a projected £2B in 2014-15, a reduction of 23% over five years, in the face of increased demand and cost increases. Budget cuts are being experienced in other areas in Europe, in North America and Australia.

Efficiency savings are not enough to meet these budget cuts and uniform cuts across all programs result in reduced outcomes – achieving less with less!

Doing more for transport with less money – the new way

by Phil Charles

As Australia moves through the first quarter of the 21st century, the need to find new ways to fund essential transport infrastructure and services is becoming increasingly urgent.

This is attributable to the collision of several important elements:

expectations of a good level of service on both roads and public transport continue to increase, as does demand for new capacity
rapidly increasing costs to provide and maintain services and infrastructure in Australia, far exceeding the rate of increase in CPI and in taxation revenues
the call on government funds for law and order, welfare, health and educational services continues to increase, reducing the proportion of funds available for transport infrastructure and services
user pays pricing reforms have proved difficult to introduce in the transport sector. This means roads remain free to use, revenue from traditional tax payer sources has been increasingly stretched, and traffic demand growth continues unabated.

Value capture funding – why is Australia missing out?

by Phil Charles

Value capture funding allows a government to raise additional revenue by identifying the real beneficiaries of an investment, and enforcing a mechanism which recoups some that value to the government investor.

For transport investments, some of the primary benefits occur for lands in the project catchment. Benefits include the improved accessibility conferred on a site, and possibly improved amenity experienced by its inhabitants.

How to be a better transport professional

by Phil Charles

You are a professional if you are a member of a vocation or occupation that has specialised knowledge, skills, education or experience. For example an engineer or planner with a degree and three to five years experience can be considered a professional.

Enhance Your Professional Status with CPD Badges

by Phil Charles

You put in a solid day’s work for a full day’s pay. While that’s something to be proud of, it doesn’t help you stand out much from the crowd.

In a field as specialised as transport, it pays to distinguish yourself from the rest. Most everybody in the industry has a university degree under their belts, and all transport professionals worth their salt keep abreast of the latest news and innovations in the industry as a matter of course. So, what steps can you take that will lift you to a place of notable prominence in the field?

Integrated Transport 101: critical success factors

by Phil Charles

Moving people has often been considered from a mode perspective – by road or rail – rather than taking a whole of transport approach, ie integrated transport.

Now with increasing travel demand and resource constraints it is more critical that proper consideration is given to the factors that ensure integration success.

A recent report published by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia “Integrating Australia’s Transport Systems: a strategy for an efficient transport future” [1].

Multimodal Transport Planning – whats important?

by Phil Charles

Todd Litman of the Canadian Victoria Transport Policy Institute, in a recent paper (December 2012) describes his view of the basic principles of transport planning.

The paper describes ‘conventional’ transport planning, with a focus on motor vehicle traffic conditions and the ‘newer’ methods for multi-modal planning and evaluation.

This may be the case for North America, but is less so in Australia. I believe that integrated and multimodal planning has been ‘conventional’ for some time here.

Integrated Transport 101: how to get results

by Phil Charles

The six best practice essentials for success

Transport planners are facing the competing demands of delivering better mobility vs tightening budgets.

How can we as transport professionals meet these challenges?

The key is to employ best practice integrated transport planning. This entails using a systematic, sustained and accountable framework, that clearly addresses community (customer) needs.

So what are these best practice essentials?

What are the key considerations for public transport station access?

by Phil Charles

Successful urban public transport has to consider all aspects of the journey from origin to destination, from door to door. One component that has been largely neglected is access to, and egress from, rail and bus stations.

Access to mass passenger transport services at bus or rail stations (including bus rapid transit and light rail) is an important component in the overall traveller experience and key to improved patronage and sustained growth into the future.