Many councils are blissfully unaware of a hidden but substantial risk of significant financial and reputational damage, which often only comes to light when a hard-done-by motorist delves into the detail of a traffic regulation order and successfully challenges their fine.  Staple fare for the Daily Mail and other tabloids, which gleefully report that the local authority concerned will now be forced to pay back thousands of pounds of illegal fines.  Meanwhile, the council faces a race against time to ensure that errors are corrected and traffic movement and/or parking activities...

At a time when the government is under pressure over future transport provision – particularly regarding decisions on rail electrification schemes in the north and new runway capacity in south-east England, three leading transport experts set out their contrasting views of what the government should prioritise at the annual Transport Practitioners Meeting. 

On this the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, celebrations, discussions and exhibitions around the UK and the world mark the significance of a document hailed as the foundation for political freedom, human rights and countless democratic movements throughout history.

For decades we have been demanding ever more from our streets. It is not just that people are travelling more. Now there are multiple elements to manage: reconciling the movement and place functions our roads have to perform; prioritising various users in the competition for road space; servicing the economy and society through the utility services under the surface; and more.

The Urban Transport Design Award recognises highways, traffic and transport schemes that do much more than just facilitate movement, and urban realm schemes that do much more than look good...

New highway schemes and developmental infrastructure should ideally be designed and implemented in accordance with safe systems principles.  One way to help achieve this is through the appropriate use of road safety audits, non-motorised user audits and quality audits.  There have been significant developments in this field in the last 12 months with Transport for London introducing a new Safety Audit Procedure in May 2014 and more recently the publication of the long awaited departmental standard for Road Safety Audit; DMRB HD19/15.  The new HD19/15 standard, which...

Whilst you listlessly stare out your office window wondering when the day will come that you do not shudder the moment you walk outside or when you can finally retire your deerstalker cap for yet another season,  we at PTRC are busy preparing for our full summer of trainings and, of course, our annual Transport Practitioners’ Meeting (TPM). This year marks the 13th Annual Transport Practitioners’ meeting, and whilst 13 is not a number that traditionally calls out for  celebration or particular fanfare, we are confident that this year’s conference will...

Many of you will have seen last week’s email flagging up the TPM abstract submission deadline extension to Monday 16th February.  That’s next week!  We’ve had an excellent response so far and without wishing to prejudge the deliberations of the TPM committee, I’m expecting that many of the abstracts we’ve received so far will be accepted and make excellent papers. Several authors have been studying the links between parking provision and economic vitality, and coming to some very different conclusions.  Similarly, people’s propensity to change travel behaviour comes under scrutiny by a...

Last November, a Court of Appeal ruling raised some interesting issues for developers, highways engineers and asset managers alike.  The case centred around the question of whether on-going maintenance costs of highway infrastructure delivered by developers can lawfully be incorporated into Section 38 Highways Agreements.  By way of background, Section 38 of the Highways Act (1980) provides a mechanism by which the local highway authority may agree to adopt infrastructure constructed by developers as “a highway maintainable at the public expense”.  By entering into such an agreement, the...

After almost a year of uncertainty, the DfT document 'Guidance on transport assessments' (GTA) was withdrawn from circulation in October 2014. Initially not mentioned within the guidance superseded by Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) in March 2014, it was instead marked as ‘archived’, before quietly finally being finally withdrawn as a current government document. The length of time taken to remove the paper from circulation could be taken as a sign of the importance that it's taken within the development planning industry. But what does its withdrawal actually mean? What did GTA offer and...