‘Delivery on time and within budget needs common-sense solutions’: Experts call for a national transport strategy

Today the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Infrastructure (APPGI) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) have published a report presenting a series of recommendations to help streamline the planning and delivery of the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP), whilst also making recommendations for a national transport strategy.

The document, titled ‘Accelerating the delivery of the Integrated Rail Plan’, calls for a series of actions that push for action on delivering the economic growth and environmental progress outlined in the IRP, whilst shortening the delivery timescales.

The IRP was published in November 2021, and outlined plans for a £96.4 billion investment package set to transform public transport in the North and Midlands, promising ‘faster, greener and more frequent’ rail services. A year on, the finer details about many of the projects outlined in the IRP remain lacking.  

In a bid to get things moving, the APPGI and ICE launched a consultation seeking views on how the government and industry could mitigate the risks and accelerate the delivery of the plan. Formed by intelligence gathered from stakeholders across the sector, the paper provides a series of clear recommendations.

Speeding up rail delivery in the Midlands and North

The report notes that the government has argued that ‘the IRP will deliver similar or better improvements to rail services than the original plans developed for most destinations’, with claims that ‘many of the benefits will arrive sooner, and at a lower overall cost, but the strategy offers only approximate timescales for when this will be achieved’.

The authors, however, seem sceptical of these statements, noting that almost a year on from the publication of the IRP, there is no further clarity on when the public are going to see this hugely improved rail service that they have been promised.

With this in mind, and following extensive research from stakeholders across the industry, the following recommendations have been outlined in the report, which the APPGI and the ICE believe will significantly streamline the decision-making process, and bring much-needed clarity to the project pipeline and spending schedule:

• Develop the IRP into an approved pipeline of projects which industry, the supply line and other stakeholders can use to plan with certainty.
• Publish an integrated investment plan setting out a continuous programme of how and when the investment in the IRP will be spent.
• Prioritise meaningful engagement with key stakeholders, throughout the project lifecycle, including industry, subnational government and transport bodies, and the public.
• Develop a national transport strategy to strengthen strategic infrastructure planning and delivery in England.
• Use collaborative delivery models to enable delivery of the IRP schemes.

Further recommendations were suggested, to guide further decision making about the IRP. These focus more on environmental, economic, and social objectives than financial and delivery:

• Basing investment decisions on robust and transparent evidence to ensure the IRP delivers the intended environmental, economic and social outcomes.
• Aligning rail investment with the UK’s climate mitigation and adaptation needs.
• Ensuring rail investment should help reduce regional economic and social inequalities, and that specific  objectives are identified through community engagement.
• Ensuring that individual projects in the IRP must be developed in synergy with other active travel and public transport links, helping build a multi-modal transport network that is responsive to need.

Andrew Jones MP, chair of the APPGI and former transport minister, said, “The UK needs these projects to be successful, both to level up underperforming regions and to help the country meet its net zero objectives. Our recommendations provide a framework that the whole industry can work from. Once applied to the IRP schemes, a clear project timeline and spending schedule can be developed, allowing us to get to work on transforming public transport in the North and Midlands. Insight from industry professionals has highlighted their concerns on what is holding back delivery.”

National transport strategy

Whilst much of the report is focused on bringing some initial clarity to the IRP, it also examines the benefits of a national transport strategy.

One of the central recommendations is that of the development of a national transport strategy for England, looping together all the separate programmes into a more holistic view of transport planning. Such a strategy is already in place in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Much work has already been undertaken in a bid to strengthen the framework for strategic planning, however, transport planning remains fragmented, and this disconnected approach does not produce coherently planned transport networks and services.

Rachel Skinner, Executive Director at WSP, member of the APPGI Steering Group, and Immediate Past President of ICE noted in her foreword: “Delivery on time and within budget also needs common-sense solutions to issues that have undermined major infrastructure delivery in the UK for too long. Effective collaboration and stakeholder engagement at the heart of project delivery are key, as is the need to overcome shortcomings around the ways that we strategically plan and approve major transport projects in the UK.”

The plan outlines how bringing together various strategies, including the IRP, the Transport Decarbonation Plan, the second Road Investment Strategy, the cycling and walking investment strategy, and the Union Connectivity Review into an integrated strategy would make it easier to ensure that transport projects’ outcomes align with long-term objectives, like climate adaptation and making travel more accessible.

It also notes that a national strategy would give a far clearer method for evidence-based prioritisation of projects when assessing suitability for skills and investment allocation. With the nation facing a period of political and economic uncertainty, being able to simply assess these could help safeguard vital projects.

With user networks in mind, a more joined-up approach to transport planning would also have huge benefits for passengers. Multi-modal journeys would be more coherently planned under one overarching strategy, so passengers would not find themselves bounced between different schemes as they travelled across the country, or between rail and road transport.

Rachel Skinner said, “Planning and paying for major infrastructure projects is a significant undertaking. When you add net zero requirements and objectives to reduce regional economic disparity into the mix, the challenges only grow. A robust set of guiding principles that bring clarity to how we prioritise projects and guide investment will streamline the delivery of the IRP and similar projects and keep industry on track.”

You can read the report in full here.

Download article