Road Safety

London's Vision Zero: Promising Progress, But Not Fast Enough

London launched its Vision Zero action plan in 2018 with the aim of no one being killed or seriously injured on the roads by 2041. They have recently released a new action plan.

Key Takeaways

• Although deaths and serious injuries are falling, they are not falling fast enough to hit the targets set:

• Casualties by mode are falling in every category, except cycling, where there has been a significant increase in cycle trips. However, the risk per cycle trip has dropped 23%.
• Around 80 per cent of people killed or seriously injured on London’s roads are walking, cycling or motorcycling.
• SUVs are 14 per cent more likely to kill people walking and cycling than other passenger cars, 77 per cent more likely to kill children up to 18, and 209 per cent more likely to kill children under nine.
• Just under half of all people killed or seriously injured on London’s roads are harmed in collisions involving a working driver or rider.
• Fatal and serious casualties fell to the lowest levels outside the pandemic-affected years in 2024.
• London is retaining the target of a 70 per cent reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured by 2030 compared to the 2010-14 baseline.
• There is a new interim target: a 65 per cent reduction in people killed or seriously injured by 2035, measured against an updated 2022-24 baseline.
• New challenges include increased delivery traffic, the surge of SUVs, and the introduction of new technologies such as e-bikes and autonomous vehicles.
• Key areas of focus:
  • Safe speed: Encourage the rollout of 20mph limits across borough roads. Improved education, increased enforcement, traffic calming measures, and an enhanced camera network.
  • Safe streets: Creating protected spaces for people walking and cycling, such as School Streets and ‘evening’ streets, reducing traffic around hospitals, and retiming freight so that heavy vehicles operate when fewer people are walking and cycling.
  • Safe vehicles: Further developing a robust evidence base on the risk posed by oversized cars and using our powers to address their impacts; exploring ways to improve the safety of vans and light goods vehicles.
  • Safe driving and riding for work: A new focus on tackling work-related road risk, building the evidence base, and raising standards across industry.
• The plan will allocate at least £150m each year to measures that create safer streets.

Comment

London already has some of the safest streets in the world. What makes London's plan different from many Vision Zero plans is its commitment to use interventions that work and to provide significant funding for them.

Far too many places have paid lip service to Vision Zero but, for political reasons, failed to put in the measures that will achieve it.

It is also good that they are flagging the issues with SUVs. However, it remains to be seen whether they will be able to take effective action to tackle this problem.

What Next?

Do your plans pull the right levers and provide the funding to see significant improvements in road safety?

Active Transport

Redesigning Streets for People: Key Lessons from the Active Cities Project

Between 2022 and 2025, the Active Cities project in the EU planned, developed, and implemented street interventions and mobility hub redesigns to increase and improve active travel. Now the project has published the lessons it has learnt in helping cities redesign streets for walking and cycling.

Key Takeaways

• The project used a 5-step framework.

• Create baseline data - capture the current state of activity, accessibility, safety, comfort, and enjoyment, assessed from the perspectives of people, places, and processes.
• Agree on a vision - A well-defined vision and clear objectives. Short- and long-term visions need to be “SMART” and “CONTEXTUAL” (Locally grounded, Situated, Democratic, Inclusive, and Equitable). A co-created vision with stakeholders ensures that everyone works towards a common goal, fostering collaboration and synergies amongst policies and practices with shared interests.

Deliver actions:

• Place: redesign and repurpose. Successful walking and cycling pilots are built on three essential elements:
  1. Supporting and encouraging people to walk and cycle,
  2. Creating safe, easy, and enjoyable places for active travel, and
  3. Embedding these modes into the policy process.
• To improve streets, investment is required not only to enhance the physical elements and characteristics of the environment but also to refine the processes that manage and maintain the user experience.
• This refinement involves a comprehensive review of the coordination, participation, decision-making, planning, testing, finance, regulation, and implementation of street schemes for walking and cycling.
• Process: Build capacity. To successfully plan and conduct street interventions, cities need to ensure they have a supportive strategic planning framework and strong governance.
• Monitor and evaluate - Good monitoring and evaluation enhance accountability and transparency, while helping future project design and implementation.
• Sharing outcomes - Share the results and lessons learned.
• Challenges and limitations.
  • A change of political leadership, or even one unhappy citizen, could create significant difficulty.
  • If possible, get help from organisations that are experts in citizen engagement processes and ensure the positive voices are heard and balanced.
• Lessons learned and new knowledge:
  • Many lessons are specific to each local context.
  • The deployment of low-key, modular, and flexible interventions proved to be the best way for the local councils to test, refine, and reach a solution that works for as many people as possible.
  • Break down street interventions into smaller steps, using elements that are as temporary as possible before committing to a permanent redesign.

Comment

Whilst I commend the work of the Active Cities project, I think it is important to recognise that there are multiple pathways to increasing active transport. Some of the cities that have made the most progress in this area have used much less consultative and collaborative approaches. The key is tailoring your approach to your context.

Inevitably, politics was a significant challenge. Many of these interventions have traditionally suffered from loud critical voices amplified by the media and social media, whilst supporters have been much quieter.

Finding ways to ensure that quiet supporters are heard, including by the media, is an important part of smoothing the political path to success. Putting communications teams at the heart of these projects from the start will help in achieving this.

What Next?

How are you planning to increase active transport?

Transport Governance

What 50 Studies Say About Transport Governance

There are many different governance structures for transport/transit around the world, but which are most effective? This research reviewed 50 studies to try to answer that question.

Key Takeaways

• Fragmented transit systems create problems related to both the front-end,
  customer-facing functions and back-end service-delivery functions.
• At the front end, multiple fare types, uncoordinated schedules, confusing transfers, and inconsistent wayfinding create barriers for customers.
• At the back end, smaller transit agencies often lack the scale to maintain vehicles efficiently, hiring and training, route and service planning, and fare administration.
• Larger agencies often face higher unit costs due to bureaucracy, higher labour expenses, and less agility in responding to changing conditions.
• Optimising regional transit is not simply a question of “how many agencies?” but
  rather, “which functions work best at what scale?"
• Regional transit organisations around the globe have significantly improved user experience by coordinating and managing front-end customer-facing functions while delegating back-end service-delivery functions to smaller operators.
• Key features of these regional coordinators include clear mandates about responsibilities, transit-knowledgeable governing boards, and the power to coordinate fares, information, and planning across operators.
• Evidence on economies of scale (organisation size) and scope (organisation
  functions) in transit operations is mixed. Small systems often benefit from merging with similar neighbours, but these benefits diminish (or reverse) for large agencies due to greater administrative complexity and increased overhead.
• Contracting for service delivery can reduce costs through competition, particularly for larger agencies with high overhead and labour costs. But savings can erode
  over time if suppliers consolidate, contracts grow more complex, and monitoring burdens increase.
• Regions gain the most from:
  • Coordinating front-end, customer-facing functions such as marketing, fares, information, and service planning through a regional association or authority.
  • Leaving back-end service-production and delivery decentralised among sub-regional operators.
• This approach enhances riders’ travel experience, increases ridership, and improves cost efficiency.

Comment

This research aligns with my anecdotal experience. Central coordination of front-end functions is essential for customer experience. However, if this is combined with undertaking operations as well to create a large agency, the agency becomes unwieldy.

Unfortunately, a lot of the debate in this area is ideological - should operations be franchised or not? The evidence suggests the answer depends on organisation size. The larger the organisation, the greater the benefits of having someone else managing the operations.

What Next?

Are your governance arrangements designed to deliver the best outcomes?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​Motonormativity and Speed Limits​
• ​Paved with Gold: The Hidden Costs of Free Transportation​
• ​How Autonomous Vehicles May Change Morning Commutes ​

Podcast

Australian High-Speed Rail - the Business Case Clown Show

The latest Transport Leaders podcast examined the recently released business case for Australian High Speed Rail.

This podcast has been somewhat controversial, as we were very dismissive of the business case and made fun of how bad it is.

You can listen here.​

You can watch here.

Tool

Incorporating Uncertainty Into Long-Range Transport Planning

​This guide provides support for taking into account uncertainty in transport planning.