Local Transport Plan Citizen Consultation

In the past, we have made assumptions about what the future might look like when planning transport, for example assuming that that car ownership and use would continue to grow. 

However, Covid-19 showed us that travel behaviours can change overnight, so when we plan transport we must consider that some things that we value now as a society, might be less relevant in future. 

Under this policy we commit to checking what we know about transport now and considering how people’s travel behaviours will change in the future. This will help us plan transport which is useful and meets people's needs while delivering value for money.

This will include looking at a future where more people work from home and commute less, for example. 

We will use trials and pilots to test new ideas and innovation in “real life”. This will help us test ideas, without committing to rolling them out, understand what works and collect data and evidence to help us make decisions.

That could include:

• Testing new modes of transport, such as our trial of e-scooters in Liverpool
• Pilots to encourage people to change how they travel – e.g. free trials or incentives.
• Pilots of tickets with different pricing options
• New technologies that can move people or goods in more efficient ways
• Measures to trial and evaluate the impact of schemes that reprioritise road space e.g. trialling a road closure or a cycle lane using temporary cones or barriers.
• New methods of collecting data

We will use technology to understand how, why and when people travel, so we can better plan services and share information to help people plan their journeys and avoid congested services or areas.  

We will provide charging stations to support the roll out of more electric vehicles and we’ll work with our partners to make sure there is enough capacity in the national grid to do this.

We will test sustainable fuels such as electrical and battery power, green hydrogen, ammonia, methanol and sustainable aviation fuel to move away from using petrol and diesel vehicles.

We’ll make sure there is a 5G network to support this work and move lots of data around quickly, to support new technologies such as real-time traffic monitoring. We could then use the information to change traffic signals to give freight and buses priority at traffic lights.

We will not roll out technology if we don’t believe it offers genuine value or doesn’t meet the aims of the Local Transport Plan.