transport planning - Transport Futures Institute

How better transport results from land use planning

Why is understanding the linkages between land use and transport so important for transport and planning professionals?

Transport is a primarily a derived demand, we travel in order to get to a destination, to undertake an activity and to carry goods. Land use is a key determinant of the need, when, how, and where to travel.

So learning how to influence land use and develop integrated transport plans means you will become one of the critical few transport and planning professionals who have this knowledge and know what an be done.

What is successful transport integration?

by Phil Charles

Understanding the essence of transport integration is the first step to building a successful transport system.

What does Transport Integration Really Mean?

The term “integration” gets used a lot by transport planners. But what does it really mean?

Let us consider the importance of integration from a user’s perspective. It can be distilled down to issues pertaining to time, cost, and quality of transport.

How to plan for smart growth freight transport

by Phil Charles

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.

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.

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?

How to avoid three common transport planning mistakes

by Phil Charles

Solving complex policy issues, such as improving travel time reliability, are challenges facing transport professionals. Problem analysis, however, is not a common skill among transport professionals.

Transport Problems are Complex

Transport problems are complex and dynamic, making them difficult to comprehend fully. They usually don’t have a simple solution, and dealing with them may require a combination of solutions to resolve effectively. Consider three common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Are you looking forward or backward?

by Phil Charles

Imagine trying to drive a car where your entire view was a giant rear-view mirror. You have a great view of everything behind you, but you cant see a thing in traffic ahead.

What are the odds you will get where you are going?

Now while that may sound a little foolish, surprisingly it’s the way most people run their programs or projects.

Optimism Bias in Transport Planning

by Phil Charles

In 2005, Professor Bent Flyvbjerg identified two main causes of misinformation in policy and management: strategic misrepresentation (lying) and optimism bias (appraisal optimism).

Strategic misrepresentation is the planned, systematic distortion or misstatement of fact—or lying—in response to incentives in the budget process.

Optimism bias or appraisal optimism is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be overly optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. This includes over-estimating the likelihood of positive events and under-estimating the likelihood of negative events.