Building a plan...or just planning to build?

Many city and regional planning exercises begin with a big map on the table, a pack of marker pens in hand, and a predetermined conclusion that new infrastructure will be needed.  

It’s not surprising that people instinctively jump to a mapping exercise: building new roads, bridges, tunnels, subways or light rail transit is an exciting prospect that can help improve mobility and reduce congestion and crowding. However, if we jump straight to identifying infrastructure as the “answer”, we may be missing a major opportunity to deliver benefits more quickly and affordably.

On a number of planning studies undertaken by Steer Davies Gleave over the past decade, we have worked with our clients to think not only about whether big-ticket infrastructure might be needed, but also about how to get better value out of what is already there, typically through changes in policies or operations, to deliver many of the same benefits.

One example is where a system is facing peak period congestion, and pricing could be used to change behavior enough to spread some of the demand to the shoulder periods when spare capacity might be available. This could be done either through increasing prices at the “peak of the peak” or, possibly less controversially, offering deeper discounts for travel at non-peak times. This has its costs, but they may be much lower than building whole new transit lines to increase capacity over a short distance for a short period.

Another example might be where levels of service have been improved to boost ridership but passenger numbers haven’t risen as expected. The issue may not be the level of service in isolation, but how it is packaged and integrated with other parts of the journey. In order to build an attractive system, all components need to complement each other, and we work with all our clients to plan, design and deliver fully integrated network solutions. This means thinking of every component of a transit trip, from finding information on routes, schedules, connections and fares, travel to and from stops, the waiting facilities and environment, means and ease of payment, safety, security and comfort (is a seat available) of the trip itself, and accurate signage and information throughout the journey.