Governance

"A lot has changed in urban transport over the past year," writes Lilian Greenwood MP, and Chair of the Transport Select Committee, in the foreword to the Urban Transport Review 2017.

In collaboration with Passenger Transport magazine, this Review features an in depth interview with our Chair Tobyn Hughes, our Director Jonathan Bray shares his key issues for 2018, and we profile some of the most significant changes to transport during 2017. 

Policy futures for urban transport sets out how, with more focused governance in place, the city regions are delivering major investment programmes including on public transport, highways and active travel, and smart ticketing. The report says that - with the right national policy framework - further and faster progress can be made, including:

• ensuring that the benefits of transformative technological change are maximised including new ways of paying for access to transport, connected and autonomous vehicles and data;
• that barriers between different sectors are broken down so that the benefits that transport can bring to achieving wider policy goals - in areas like health, employment and education - are fully realised.

‘Total Transport’ schemes pool resources and vehicle fleets from across the public sector which are currently used to provide separate mainstream, social services, education and healthcare transport provision. Through pooling and coordination a better overall service can be provided at less cost to the taxpayer. However, it is proving challenging to get NHS non emergency patient transport services to participate in such schemes despite the major savings that could accrue from doing so. This briefing explains the scale of the potential opportunity from Total Transport schemes which include the NHS.