Gloucester: Transport planning and the Safer City Project

Abstract:

Gloucester is the first location in UK to embark on a city-wide approach to casualty reduction. The 'Safer City' initiative is the only demonstration project of this kind in the United Kingdom. Unlike other highway authorities which tend to use a piecemeal approach by reacting to accidents at junctions, along routes or in one area, Gloucester is tackling safety problems on all roads within the city boundary. This transport planning approach can be regarded as an example of best practice for the following reasons:

• the planning relates to a city-wide perspective;
• the planning process involves a wide range of professional and local people;
• safer issues become a central topic of transport planning;
• reduction of casualties is a top priority;
• policy to move traffic to the right roads;
• policy to involve people actively in safer road use.

Background and objectives

Although the United Kingdom has a relatively good accident record in Europe, it is assumed that fatalities and other casualties are avoidable if municipal traffic planning makes it easier for all road users to cope with their environment. This approach takes into account that the impacts of bad planning and incremental land use (e.g. urban development without coordinated planning of public transport infrastructure) as well as misuse of the function of roads (e.g. use of inner city roads instead of by-pass routes) can be corrected. In order to demonstrate the viability of this approach the British Department of Transport issued a competitive call for tender on a new approach to road safety. The regional authority, Gloucestershire County Council, in partnership with the local authority, Gloucester City Council, was awarded the project in 1996.

The aim of the Safer City project is to substantially reduce road casualties, i.e. reach the target of lowering the number of casualties by at least one third by April 2002 (five year project duration plus one year for monitoring process). The philosophy behind this ambitious goal is to prove that accidents have not to be treated as a single traffic issue but as a result caused by isolated traffic management, inappropriate planning and implementing of physical engineering measure, inadequate land use, a lack in road safety education and insufficient enforcement of existing transport regulations. A city-wide road safety approach would therefore be better suited to change traffic patterns.

Implementation

Project date and status

The Safer City project started in April 1998 and is planned to run for five years.

Strategy

The 'Safe Town Initiative' brings about new elements in road safety in Gloucester. It is a whole city approach towards reducing casualties, as opposed to just in one area, along one route corridor or at one single site. Furthermore, a city-wide approach should minimise the potential for accident migration and/or risk compensation.

The first stage of the Safer City strategy was directed towards an in-depth stock-taking of the status quo:

• accidents and accident patterns in particular for vulnerable road users;
• traffic flows;
• pedestrian and cycle movements;
• the existing road hierarchy;
• land use patterns and their associated journey and traffic generation;
• bus routes.

Two strategic analysis, SWOT and PEST, were conducted which relate to internal and external factors of the transport situation.

Analysis of internal factors in the current state of conditions which can be influenced from inside a municipality when carrying out a project to minimise problems in the future. The following factors are examined in the SWOP analysis:

Strength - e.g. funding guaranteed over five years, expert staff on road safety;

Weaknesses - e.g. poor casualty record, short lead-in time and timescale;

Opportunities - e.g. reduction of road casualties, lower and more uniform traffic speeds;

Threats - e.g. public dissatisfaction, programming and phasing of works (poor).

Analysis of external factors which cannot be influenced (beyond control from inside, e.g. a municipal government) which may comprise the following factors; they are part of the PEST analysis:

Political influences - e.g. change of political direction due to elections;

Environmental influences - e.g. local and / or national strategies to be embraced;

Social influences - e.g. social expectations and socio-economic factors regarding results;

Technical influences- e.g. technological advance, e.g. speed cameras, laser guns, signal cameras.

From this starting point a strategy was composed to ensure that funds will be spent efficiently and not wasted on the 'baggage' of perceived road safety problems which tend to accumulate over a number of years, when little funding is available.

The principles of the strategy result from a broad discussion process with all interested parties. The outcome was:

• the SWOT and PEST analysis provided a general picture of what 'shape' the city was in to deliver the project and set out the external forces that affect delivery of the project. The most important problems were: inappropriate and excessive traffic speed is a dominant cause of accidents in the city; 57% of injuries occur on main and busiest roads. In addition, almost half the victims of accidents were pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists;
• in order to find this out, realistic targets were examined. Firstly, a headline target was adopted of reducing by 2002 the number of casualties by one third, from 479 to 319 casualties per year. Other specific city-wide targets were developed, for example to reduce the number of right-turn accidents, and the number of pedestrian accidents at junctions;
• the objectives cannot be achieved simply by treating single sites, it is necessary to look at problems on a city-wide basis, introducing mass action, accident remedial plans, improvements along routes and area-wide projects. Obviously, this cannot be done without involving people in the decision making process, and also, works need to be spread evenly over the five years of the project. It is hoped to achieve the desired aim by managing traffic on to the right roads, co-ordinating all work from outside agencies who can help in meeting the objectives, slowing traffic speeds and removing conflict between road users.

It was found that a good place to start the strategy was to identify the existing and proposed road hierarchy. The existing road hierarchy was indistinct in Gloucester, and traffic is spread quite evenly around the road network. The new road hierarchy which has been adopted is more clearly defined and splits roads into categories reflecting their function in the network. There are now three principal road types: first, there are main roads which carry traffic round the city. The next type are mixed use roads which serve the purpose of distributing traffic from residential areas to main roads. These mixed use roads also cater for pedestrians, cyclists and for frequent bus use and should discourage through traffic. The last road type is residential streets which are where people live. The final conclusion was that the Safer City work aims to support this new hierarchy of roads.

Activities

Firstly, the Safer City project aims to elaborate a consistent strategy and to raise public awareness among local residents. A safer city forum has been set up, to seek comments and feedback from representative groups of the city. The representatives take road safety messages back to their respective organisations and share their findings with colleagues, thus acting as an early warning system. The process of building a strategy included the following steps:

• a three-stage consultation process was adopted for residential areas. Residents and businesses were consulted with outline proposals, more detailed proposals, before these were finally advertised;
• a Community Action Safety Team (CAST), consisting of road safety officers, housing officers, volunteers from religious centres and health visitors, was set up in order to involve a great number of different people in road safety;
• media work: an advertisement was placed in the local newspaper on a monthly basis to share details about progress and how people can obtain more information;
• exhibitions and leaflet drops: individuals should have to get the opportunity to become involved in the development of proposals with exhibitions and through leaflet drops; the project also has an Internet page;
• technical groups were set up in conjunction with bus operators, emergency services, magistrates and cycling groups to help shape the future direction of the project.

Furthermore, the Safer City project carried out three surveys to get first hand knowledge. A visitor survey was conducted as a street survey with 100 visitors by interviewing people in the town centre, cathedral entrance and docks area during weekends. A business survey was designed as a postal questionnaire to the local business community. 150 replies were returned. A household survey was conducted by interviews in 391 households.

Partners

The Safer City project aims to involve a wide range of professional and local people in the management of the initiative. It therefore elaborated working procedures that take place at five separate stages:

• the project team: this unit is a small team of County Council employees with responsibilities for the analysis of safety problems, drawing up works programme, issuing briefs, budgeting, consultation and management of working groups and committees;
• the technical group: this unit has been set up to support the project team with assistance and technical advice. It is formed by members from the project team, the County Council's road safety unit; the City Council's Highways and Planning Department, the Department of Transport, the Transport Research Laboratory, the police, Gloucester Royal Hospital, the Stagecoach bus company, magistrates and Gloucestershire Health. It functions in four working groups which are concerned with speed management, consultation and media, traffic and accident data and education, training and publicity;
• the Safer City Forum: this forum is a voluntary body of around 50 local people from businesses, voluntary groups, transport operators, emergency services, magistrates, disabled groups, ethnic minority organisations etc. They send representatives four or five times a year to meet and contribute towards the aims of the project. The role of the forum is to comment on the progress of the project. In addition, this two-way flow of information is of outstanding importance for the acceptance of the project as a whole;
• the Safer City Steering Group: this body comprises five city councillors and five county councillors. As all members of this steering group are elected representatives it is important to involve them continuously in the planning and implementation process and benefit from their understanding of local issues. Their active participation and support for the Safer City project is vital to develop the annual works programme and to get support for the bid for related funding;
• area-based consultation: involvement of the residents also forms a cornerstone of successful implementation. Local residents are kept up to date by outlining the planning measures via exhibitions and leaflet drops. This form of communication raises the profile of road safety and contributes to wider acceptance of the project's aims.

Financing and resources used

The topic of road safety is fairly new in traffic policy. The Department of Transport has therefore created a special fund in order to introduce £ 5 million worth of road safety improvements over five years in one city, as a demonstration project. It invited bids from highway authorities which could meet certain geographical and numerical criteria, such as population and casualty records. Out of a total of 29 bids Gloucester was successful. The factors which helped Gloucester to win included that the city satisfied all the criteria and had £ 2 million worth of additional funding.

Results and impacts

As the Safer City project is breaking new ground it has to provide broad information to finalise what measures will be put into practice. As mentioned above three surveys were carried out in order to identify people's attitudes and perceptions concerning existing road safety issues. As a result there wasinformation available on special road safety issues as well as on general traffic- related issues.

Concerning road safety people named the following issues as areas for action:

• speeding is the major concern amongst residents in Gloucester. There is a demand to address the problem via highway engineering, education and increased police action;
• although there is a general support for the project, people are pessimistic that a great deal can be achieved;
• parking is a issue of great concern as street parking is increasingly becoming the rule in inner city areas;
• although there is support for cycling the general feeling is that the facilities for bicycle use are inadequate (no cycling routes in the city centre, few parking facilities);
• people from the business community argued that poor road signing causes problems and that improvement can be relatively cheap and cost-effective;
• the work of local road safety offices in school and playgroups was praised as a worthwhile contribution to road safety.

The surveys also produced some outcome concerning general aspects of traffic-related issues. People are aware of the following problems:

• the pace of residential development should be halted both on social grounds and until the road system can catch up;
• local residents do not often visit the city centre but use local facilities, out of town supermarkets or other towns such as Cheltenham for their needs;
• related to this, some city centre businesses argued that restrictions on parking, inadequate supply or charging too much for parking can have further adverse effects on the economic base;
• however, business people are also concerned about congestion for both private and commercial traffic and are therefore strongly in favour of better traffic management and new road building;
• there is a general lack of interest in Park and Ride schemes among the local residents;
• bus travel has a relatively low profile in the city centre area;
• more than 50% of the respondents welcome the Safer City initiative and would like to get further information on the project.

As the surveys reveal important information on the issues, they will be repeated annually as part of the monitoring process.

Barriers and conflicts

Due to the early stage of the project no information exist on barriers and conflicts as they are likely to occur as a result of the implementation process and / or the experience with new regulations.

Lessons learned And transferability

Coordinating all related road safety work and the enforcement of compatible land-use planning and development are the main issues of the Safer City's consistent approach towards meeting the agreed objectives. As the project is currently in the initial phase of implementation process there are so far no lessons to be learned on special topics of the new approach. However, after conducting the strategical planning phase, project mangers feel that it will be necessary to be able to measure success numerically and through public attitude surveys, so that lessons learnt (good and bad) can be shared with other authorities.

Source of Information

EA.UE 1998: Urban transport in central and eastern Europe. Policy handbook, Berlin

Gloucester City Council 1997: A Strategy for the Gloucester Safer City Project, Gloucester

Contact:

Cities:

Gloucester :

Gloucester is an ancient cathedral city with a population of around 105,000. It is the county town for the administrative area or county of Gloucestershire in the west of England. It is an inland port with a canal link to the docks area at the mouth of the River Severn. Important industrial branches include aircraft, agricultural and locomotive machine building and the food industry.

Population:

Project was added at 23.11.1998
Project was changed at 23.11.1998

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