Travel Plans - Cycle, walk, share, ride (Mark Jones)

The aim of an official Travel Plan is to support the Government's mission to achieve sustainable developments and reduce single-occupancy cars by suggesting the accessibility and benefits of alternative, greener and healthier modes of sustainable transport.

Under the Government's National Planning Policy, section 4 is about Promoting sustainable transport - green is good but sense and pragmatism must prevail. 

Getting the balance between objectivity and deliverability is the primary role of the TP Coordinator.

Paragraph 34 states:  Plans and decisions should ensure developments that generate significant movement are located where the need to travel will be minimised and the use of sustainable transport modes can be maximised.

Para 35 goes on;  ... developments should be located and designed where practical to:

•  accommodate the efficient delivery of goods and supplies;
• give priority to pedestrian and cycle movements and have access to high quality public transport facilities;
• create safe and secure layouts which minimise conflict between traffic and cyclists or pedestrians, avoiding street clutter and where appropriate establishing home zones.

And 36 gives us the Travel Plan: A key tool to facilitate this will be a Travel Plan. All developments which generate significant amounts of movement should be required to provide a Travel Plan.

Enter stage left - TP Coordinators, part of the JMS Group. 

 

Critically, the requirements of the Travel Plan don't end with addressing the issues in development and facilitating practical applications throughout, but communicating the benefits and availability of sustainable transport alternatives to the new home owners.

TP Coordinators (operating from the JMS offices in Chelmsford) offer the following Travel Plan services:

• Travel Welcome Packs.
•  Travel Plan Framework to support planning application.
•  Promoting sustainable modes of travel. Monitoring, surveying and analysing the performance of Travel Plans.
•  Liaising with key stakeholders such as local authorities & public transport providers.
•  Negotiate with local suppliers such as cycle stores.
•  Manage Travel Plan budgets and administrate incentive vouchers.
•  Organise Travel Plan steering groups.
•  Personalised Travel Plans.

This takes the responsibility and legwork away from the developer putting compliance with the NP Policy in the safe hands of a JMS Group service.

 

A generic leaflet (right) from TP Coordinators is intended to sew the seed of alternative transport as viable options for new residents.

It reads: 

Cycle, walk, share, ride

getting to know your new area, the healthy, friendly way.

And we suggest: 

Cycling is not just a healthy pastime, it’s a great way to get around your local area and to see sights you would miss when travelling by car. More and more cycle routes, parking facilities and safe learning schemes are being provided by local authorities who care about their communities. 

Hop on a bike and see for yourself - it’s practical, fun and healthy.

It’s not all Peter Kay and Sian Gibson when it comes to car share schemes. You can save money, cut Co2 emissions and make friends without having your own BBC1 sitcom. There are many regional and national schemes to join safely if you can’t make arrangements locally yourself. Just Google ‘lift share’ or ‘car share’ and your region and give it a go.

If you are able  - just walk. If you want to see more of your local area and its natural as well as urban environments, get a local map, join a local group, and get out there. Urban walking has grown into a huge and friendly ‘welcome all’ national pursuit. The dynamics of walking and the health benefits to be gained are vast and progressive. Just Google ‘walking groups’.

Park, hop on a bus ... and ride  - it’s as simple as that. Most towns and cities have good Park & Ride facilities to save you getting stuck in town centre traffic, clogging up the roads and breathing unhealthy emissions. If there isn’t an official Park & Ride, make your own. Find a suitable bus route with local parking and save yourself the urban hassle.

The leaflet includes some useful links to national schemes that may be useful to new homeowners who are also new to the area. These include:

http://www.traveline.info/

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

http://bikeability.org.uk/

 https://liftshare.com/uk

When it comes to creating a Travel Plan bespoke to a regional development, the plot thickens. Urban, sub-urban, rural developments have different considerations; different environmental impact scenarios to deal with; and different levels of accessibility to viable travel alternatives to 'the car'.

Let's take a brief look at Prospect Place, Framlingham.

 

There are no Park & Ride schemes in Framlingham, but links to Ipswich and Norwich may be useful. 

Suffolk on board is a fantastic website that has already thought through the needs of the communities within its area of responsibility (click the image right).

 

The same site provides detailed information on bus routes, which help Travel Planners and residents alike:

Well thank goodness for Google, taking the pain out of planning and research. Promoting walking as a healthy option is a good social responsibility, though has little impact of rural logistics. 

If you really are totally new to an area though and do want to take up or extend walking as a health option - this is the site for you:

 

The creation of a Travel Plan webpage for the development is essential. It should include walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing information for existing and prospective residents of the development, including the integration of real-time information links to bus services available on site.

Researching, packaging and presenting advice to the stakeholder, developer and residents alike is crucial to successful, effective travel planning. Every development is different. Every development needs expert support. 

If you would like more information on Travel Planning and the services of TP Coordinator, please call me, Mark Jones, on 01245 905886 or click the image below.

Brexit and its Creative Destruction (by Daniel Staines)

Creative destruction was a phrase coined by Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 and is, in effect, pressing the restart button – breaking down what you have and rebuilding with the purpose of improving on the original. In some ways this is what the recent Brexit vote has initiated – or so we hope.

Schumpeter wrote:

"The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism."

You have to throw out the past and undo the present to facilitate the future.

Whilst the phrase 'creative destruction' might be a paradox, evolutionary 'mutation' is an economic reality. In life, change is the only true constant. In business as in life, if you are prepared and able to manage change to your best advantage, then the sort of changes that Brexit-mongers preach should be seen as opportunity rather than tragedy.

Unfortunately, the press has a need to write stories to engage their readers and as such, there is a tendency to highlight extremes based on flimsy facts, manipulated statistics, 'creative quotation' and speculation. Indeed, as far as Brexit is concerned, it has not only been the press that has released unsubstantiated stories, but the Government, their Advisers and other bodies of otherwise industrial status.

 So what do we as JMS - mere Engineers - what do we do?

We carry on – we take advantage of our ability to rapidly alter direction, to absorb changing circumstances and maintain our ‘can do attitude’.

Presuming that Prime Minister May serves notice towards the end of this year (and the view of many is that this is a big presumption), it will be 2019 before we actually leave the EU. 

So what does that mean to JMS? Well, we don't export so we are not affected by changes in tariffs; our JMS Greece office and colleagues will continue to operate as normal there; the majority of our structural clients are non-bank reliant or already rely on funding from outside the EU (i.e. Turkey, India, China etc.) and our housing developers have already stated their position to continue as normal, having placed several large (500+ unit) sites with us.

A recent paper prepared by Vistage titled ‘Making sense of our current economic landscape -July 2016’, gives factual reasoning on the most likely path for the UK economy in the coming years. The report, written by the eminent economist, Roger Martin-Fagg, is economically explicit (so makes tricky reading). It covers trade and investment balances between the UK, EU and non-EU investors and economies between 1999 and 2014. 

Whilst frying the brain a little, the bottom line shows global confidence in UK stock, witnessed particularly across the 2008 financial crisis. The UK runs a trade deficit with the EU, but a trade surplus with the rest of the world.

Despite headlines reflecting reduced production in the service sector (probably just a 21 year temporary blip), given the weaker pound, unprecedented low interest rates and a continued shortage of housing, plus the fact that we are still a member of the EU with full access to regional funding and grants all point to sustainable growth in our economy ... I personally see more opportunities than gloom.

Over the past two years, JMS has both physically and financially doubled in size. We are in a sound financial position with a full (if not over-full) order book and a strategy for further sustained growth and geographical expansion. 

Both the London office and Chelmsford office have just signed contracts for new, larger premises and the Midlands office is knocking walls down to accommodate more staff. We are growing and we are exceeding our targets. A little European spat is not going to put us off our goal.

Some of you have seen the sign hanging over my desk – Lead me, follow me or get out of my way (based on a quotation from General George S. Patton). 

This should be the mantra of JMS – we led the field following the last recession by being pro-active and we will do the same in these unpredictable times.

Back to Martin-Fagg's paper for a minute. He describes economic growth as 'adding value to raw materials and intellect'. He then goes on to say: 'we have almost no raw materials, thus, we must add value to brain power.'

Adding value to brain power, experience to skill and accessibility to talent - it's what makes JMS different. We have a positive attitude driving deliverable goals.

We add value to every project we have been, 

are, and will be equally proud to support.

Spreading The Word

It seems that the only time we hear about projects that our colleagues are working on, is when something goes wrong. 

But why is that? What about all those other successful projects ?

Did you know, for instance, that Riadh has been designing a swimming pool for a world renowned singer, or that the Manchester office designed many of the stage structures for one of the latest spectacular productions in the West End.

Even Tom is unaware that a design he carried out on a London project has just won an award for the best development of 2016 in a Conservation area. And, few of you know that Mark Rust was instrumental in the multi-million-pound refurbishment of the Shaftesbury Theatre, which has been nominated for an another award.

Although, impressive, these just form a small portfolio of projects that you - Team JMS - are all carrying out on a daily basis. Whether it is simple lintel over a kitchen window or a multi-site development that Matt and David have been slogging over for two years, you all bring your energy and expertise to it. 

So tell us. 

Tell us the projects you are working on; the ones where you go home at the end of the day and think “I did a good job on that one”. 

We are not looking for the ‘headline’ projects, we are looking for those projects which make you feel good about yourself and what you do.

Just recently, Graham, pulled a new hotel project from the bag. The client was considering changing his whole design team but decided to keep JMS. Ian has been personally requested to project manage a development in London from a client we have never previously worked for. 

And, Ben got Thames Water Authority approval for a sewer diversion where a large London engineering consultancy said “not a chance”. 

What does this say about you and JMS?

It says: we're good and our clients know it.

It is not a matter of boasting about what you have done, it’s a matter of JMS boasting about what you - Team JMS - have done and can do. 

The majority of our clients come to us because they want to - they recognise what we do, they want to be part of what we do and we need to build upon our success.

So, let's use this platform to spread the word - tell us what you are doing; tell us about the projects, big or small; particularly where you have provided a solution that you're proud of. 

We'll make this part of the Project HEX remit so talk to them, talk to your team leaders.

Don’t keep it a secret as there are two types of secret; one that is not worth keeping and the other that is just too good to keep!