[This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 15 January 2025]
This week: New Towns, Barbara Cartland and public transport!
Create Streets are in the news this week with the publication of their discussion paper ‘Creating New Towns Fast And Well’.
After all, the 1.5 million new homes planned over the next parliament are going to have to go somewhere… and hopefully not in random fields in the middle of nowhere with a grand view of a motorway flyover.
The seven Design Principles set out in the paper are all solid urban design approaches and don’t say anything new, except that maybe these principles cannot be stated too often given the below par development that still keeps getting approved.
But the thing that really stood out for me was the lack of promotion of public transport.
While talking about buses doesn’t ignite the fever-pitch excitement of active travel and its big screen release LTN1/20, let’s not forget that not everyone can – or wants – to drive. My apologies – not – to highways engineers who are still obsessed with predict and provide even though this approach is now obsolete. See the latest iteration of the NPPF (109) although I admit that with two or three NPPF updates currently coming out every year this may well be out of date and superseded by the time you read this.
Let’s face it, even Barbara Cartland found that level of output a challenge.
The paper makes no mention of access to public transport in terms of travel modes – see Principle 2. I have written previously about the issues raised, particularly for women and other vulnerable pedestrians, by lack of access to bus services. New Towns need buses, folks! And ideally a BRT link to bring the residents from the new communities directly into the existing town or city centre. Just make sure the link is running before the residents start to move in. And for the love of malbec, please ensure land is safeguarded to ensure these links are deliverable throughout all development phases. We don’t need another Partridge Walk – the scheme alluded to here – on our hands. And while I’m here, who the heck names these places? Do you know how many partridges walk on a dual-carriageway? Not many.
Public transport does get a mention in terms of mixed-use areas – Principle 7 – but only to say that walking and cycling should be so easy that using a bus becomes unnecessary. Well, if you’re doing your weekly trolley dash around [insert your supermarket of choice here], a bus can be a blardy useful thing to help you get the merchandise home.
FACT: women make 30% more bus journeys than men and the majority will change their behaviour in order to feel safe. As placemakers we must provide well integrated and overlooked bus infrastructure as well as the cycle lanes and pedestrian links that get all the publicity.
Ultimately, we still live in a carsick society. But will these new towns be able to turn the tide given the challenges facing our under-resourced planning departments?
#carsick #placemaking #createstreets #newtowns #nppf