The need for people to travel and the way in which they can travel has changed dramatically in a short period of time and, early on during the Coronavirus crisis especially, there was a sense that this change had the potential to be more permanent than temporary and contribute to the ‘Building Back Better’ agenda. As lockdown starts to ease though and traffic starts to flow again, or rather to not flow again, what is the sense of that change now? Is the window for a fundamental modal shift from car to two wheels and two legs closing? Has the planning system, or at least the regulatory regime, helped or hindered that? What might the lasting impact of the pandemic be on travel patterns and how will the planning system have to respond to that?
Sam Stafford puts these questions to Brian Deegan (Design Engineer at Urban Movement), Vanessa Eggleston (Partner at i-Transport) and Paul Smith (MD of Strategic Land Group and a person who rides a bike).
Twitter handles: @samuel_stafford, @bricycle and @paul_slg. Vanessa is on LinkedIn.
Some accompanying reading.
The latest on the cycle lane at the end of Paul’s street.
Manchester’s Cyclops Junction.
https://news.tfgm.com/news/manchester-opens-uks-first-cyclops-junction
The Urban Design Group’s survey on street design practice.
http://www.udg.org.uk/content/street-design-uk-pilot-survey-2018
‘The end of the rush hour?’ Vanessa’s blog.
https://strategiclandgroup.co.uk/2020/06/09/the-end-of-the-rush-hour-guest-post-by-i-transport/
Robin Lovelace’s Rapid Cycleway Prioritisation Tool.
The International Transport Forum’s Decarbonising Transport initiative.
https://www.itf-oecd.org/decarbonising-transport
Some accompanying listening.
Crosstown Traffic by Jimi Hendrix
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners.
Sam is on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford), and his blogs can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter and buy a t-shirt).
The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected].
Why Fifty Shades? Well, planning is not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
