05 September 2011

We live in a built environment designed primarily for car users – offices, factories, hospitals, health centres, housing. This is a result of location decisions over many decades when oil was cheap and seemingly inexhaustible, climate change was less recognised as the greatest threat we face and the projected dire consequences were so remote they could be ignored, and the reduction of carbon emissions hadn’t become a key target (and European obligation) of government policy.

One might have thought that the new circumstances urgently facing us would have resulted in a change in planning development and location policy in order to reduce car use and contain carbon emissions. But of course that has not happened. The following paragraph is how I expressed it when I raised this problem last year.

If the government is serious about action on climate change and specifically the need to reduce carbon emissions from transport there will have to be more joined-up thinking so that the impact of developments on traffic-generation and car-generated emissions is accorded a higher priority in location decisions (rather than being the justification for new and improved road connections, often paid for by the developer). National targets for countering climate change should have a greater impact on the piecemeal, uncoordinated and often competitive decisions of local planning authorities.

An example I quoted – and wish now to update – was the new Forth Valley Acute Hospital, then under construction at Larbert to replace many of the services provided at Falkirk and Stirling hospitals. It is now fully functional as the Forth Valley Royal Hospital (so called because opened by our gracious Queen – God save her (and very few of her family!)) The hospital in Falkirk is a stone's throw from the town centre, and in Stirling is fifteen minutes walk, adjacent to main bus routes and with a frequent daytime service direct to the entrance.

The new hospital is within walking distance of few patients, visitors or staff. The average length of journey for these patients, visitors and staff has significantly increased, as has the time spent, working hours lost and general inconvenience of longer journeys. Inevitably more and longer car journeys are taking place. The 1,500 car parking spaces planned for the new hospital were quickly found to be inadequate, particularly for staff, and have had to be increased. The inevitable substantial increase in car miles will just make our carbon reduction targets more difficult to achieve.

And it’s not just cars. A lot more people are travelling longer distances by public transport and additional bus services are now operating. According to NHS Forth Valley there is a bus arriving at and departing from the hospital nearly every minute through the day (not the same bus). Many of these are new services, which were unnecessary before the hospital was built. Six new routes to the hospital providing regular links to communities in Falkirk and Clackmannanshire are being operated by Forth Valley NHS, and normal bus operators have put on, diverted or increased services. FirstBus, for example, have recently doubled the frequency of services from Stirling to Falkirk/Edinburgh via FVRH to every 10 minutes to meet additional demand. And NHS Forth Valley has admitted there still aren’t enough bus services to the hospital!

I will resist the temptation at this point to go on to other examples. There’s just too many. However, the proposed relocation of Aberdeen’s football stadium from Pitoddrie, a stroll from the city centre, to a greenfield site three miles out at Loirston, devoid of much in the way of regular public transport, would have been a fine case to write about.

It has taken many years to create our car-friendly, carbon-creating environment. It will take many years to significantly reverse the trend. But if we don't start, it won't happen at all. The government has to change the terms of the trade off between climate-change goals and other social and economic policies. Higher petrol prices, higher fuel duties, road pricing and all the exhortation in the world will not be effective in stopping, far less reducing, the inexorable rise in road traffic, in a physical environment where car use is so often not a choice but a necessity.

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