TAG - Local Government Technical Advisors Group

TAG Agendas

TAG TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING, FRIDAY 30th November 2007 MINUTES

28th Apr 2008

TAG TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING,
FRIDAY 30th November 2007 MINUTES

Actions in bold italics

Present

Bob Barratt Acting Chair/ Wolverhampton
Bob Donaldson Sunderland
Phil Moore Medway
Anthony Radford-Foley Bracknell Forest
Kelvin Reynolds B P A
Satbir Gill Hounslow
Mike Tobin Haringey
Rory McMullan A C T
Tim Larner PTEG
Bob Bridges T f L Road Safety
John Elliott Secretary

1) Apologies
Pat Dunkley, Jon Freer, Garry Pickering, Mick Murphy, Matt Steele,
Richard McGuckin

2) Minutes and Matters arising from 21st September meeting.

4.e. Sustainability and Climate Change
The link to the papers produced in the City of London is as follows:
A copy of the adaptation strategy can be downloaded from
http://213.86.34.248/NR/rdonlyres/7347D392-3CF3-4344-8B2D-9AF9315E8801/0/SUS_climateadapt.pdf
Which can be found at: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/living_environment/sustainability/climate_change

5. Section 278 and 106,
Advice and co-ordination between authorities via TAG or LoTAG still have not occurred.
All members asked to contribute any knowledge/experience from their authorities to this and if Martin Lowe or Joe Weiss have any other information specifically please communicate to John Elliott for decimination via TAG bulletin etc.
Members of the committee were very interested in this subject and Bob Donaldson has also done some work. Bob will circulate anything on this front that is relevant to the group.

6.b ACT/CSS Working Group.
John Elliott advised that Richard McGuckin had reported that ACTO / CSS had failed to get through to him before the meeting but he will be attending the 30th January meeting and will report back to the March meeting of this committee.

8.a. TMA Implementation
The Halcrow questionnaire had been sent out again direct from Roy Fairclough. Response is low, any Authority able to respond please do so.


13.c.The LoTAG’s roads conference 2000
This was fully booked - nobody at the meeting had attended.

13.e. Sustainability conference in Plymouth.
Matt Steele was not available to feed back.

13.f. Green Light Group (Road Pricing)
John Elliott had received no information on the. Anybody knowing anything please let John know.


3. The Work of PTEG and current public transport issues.

Tim Larner introduced the PTEG team based at Leeds and the work of PTEG, the presentation is attached with these minutes.

PTEG operate in cities with populations of between 0.5 and 1 million for areas of 1.2 million to 2.6 million. There are other significant cities where a PTEG type approach would be appropriate and these include Nottingham and Preston. The main thrust of Public Transport including The Transport Bill was very much part of the discussion.

The main efforts required for public transport were not to take apart everything that had been created since the1985 Act and to start again, but to try and make it work with its limitations. While many TAG members around the table would have liked to see re-regulation of buses, probably along the London model, this was described as a sterile debate as it won’t happen (unfortunately!)

The threat to the Competition Act was still there and it was up to cities and Public transport executives to face that situation as it arose. It was important that we use the powers available, allbeit with their limitations, in order to develop public transport. The Transport Bill in its progression had now incorporated some of the main points of TAG and PTEG’s observations.

Other issues that came up were the top and bottom of governance is in place for public transport but the middle isn’t. The major bus operators have considerable ransom powers in all cities where there are bus stations as these are now in their ownership and finding new sites would be extremely difficult. Funding for buses through the government grant system is particularly difficult as there is nothing in the funding formula fitting the bus system. Integrating ticketing is developing and despite the developed oyster system for London this will need to migrate to the ITSO standards.

With The NATA Refresh there is a relationship with public transport funding. The present tax subsidies back to buses need to be changed to be more targeted towards generating passengers rather than bus miles.

4. Responses to consultations since last meeting.

John Elliott and Bob Donaldson reported on the LTP and Cycling and Tim Larner added on the latest state of the local transport bill.

5. New consultations Government / House of Commons Transport Committee / Reports Etc.

The NATA Refresh publication and Towards a Sustainable Transport System are now available.

There is considerable scepticism about the Government’s motives and about the methodology being suggested. Having established a method of dealing with regional priorities to then go back to a NATA assessment at D f T level seemed superfluous; if funding is going to be regionalised than the regions should decide on the way they prioritise schemes, and the whole edifice of the NATA system is called into question. Furthermore the more factors that get added into an analysis the more irrelevant the assessment and analysis becomes. It is also concerning that the matter becomes so complicated for local authorities general practitioners that substantial money has to be spent on consultants who have particularly strong interests in ensuring that there is a good work stream from these studies. Small authorities cannot spend money at the rate that is required in order to have some chance of getting money to spend on transport schemes.

John Elliott promised to do a response in January and circulate it through the team for any comments.

6. Election of Officers for Committee and any Constitutional matters.

Phil Moore was proposed to be the new chairman by Bob Barratt and seconded by Satbir Gill, Bob remained in the Chair for the meeting. Phil stressed the importance of trying to get a greater involvement in supporting the activities of the committee and pointed out his particular areas of expertise. Bob and others on the design, maintenance front input were critical for the future success of the committee. Attendance for the various boards had to be managed and Bob would endeavour to compile a list and forward to Phil and John for consideration. Volunteers would be sought.

7. Liaison and Joint working.
a. LGA (Caroline Green / Lyndsey Swift)
Caroline Green and Lyndsey Swift were not available at the meeting to deal with LGA. However they will deal directly with John and Phil as appropriate.

b. ATCO CSS Working group representation (Richard MCGuckin)
As reported above Richard McGurkin will be going to the January 30th meeting.

c. CSS Research Business Plan (Bob Barratt)
CSS Research includes carbon foot-printing in construction and maintenance of infrastructure, other work is carrying on carbon foot-printing in the use of the transport systems.

d. LTPN (John Elliott)
John Elliott reported he is still attending these meetings but would be very pleased if somebody closer to these activities within a local authority could take over this role.

e. Others
Anthony Radford-Foley reported on a new TRL document on sustainability, Anthony will read it and produce a note for later circulation.

8. TMA Implementation Progress including Civil Enforcement.
a. Progress.
The permit systems for utilities will commence from April ’08, this is not obligatory but authorities must have systems for recording utility works.

b. Parking and Civil Enforcement.
On decriminalized parking and other traffic offences Kelvin Reynolds updated the meeting on progress and used the presentation from D f T attached to the agenda.

Kelvin strongly suggested that only the matters that we have to complete by March 31st should be done, i.e. new stationery for tickets, differential penalties and details of appeals on the P C Ns.

If carrying out camera enforcement must gain approval for the cameras, town centre cameras that haven’t got approval can no longer be used. Clamping rules have changed as would the adjudication process. However there is a slight danger that the appeal/adjudication process could loop/feedback and consume considerable time with less successful outcomes.

The BPA had a ten point action plan with five key tasks:-
1. working with D f T on operational guidance,
2. develop codes of practice that support operational guidance
3. producing FAQs,
4. a new handbook and
5. a consumer guide to parking.

He also drew attention to the fact that all references to 1991 RTA had to be removed from orders. This could be done by an overriding order to the TMA Act but any overriding order needed to be careful not to put figures in or to refer to individual statutes - make it as general as possible so it doesn’t fall out of date in the future.

No change in uniform is required, the fact that the civil enforcement officers are parking attendants means that these are perfectly valid. There are required to be some changes to hardware and software and during the interim period the processing has to be twin tracked under the civil enforcement powers and the 1991 Act.

Obstruction powers are an option, they don’t have to be taken up immediately. From the differential penalty charges there are some impacts on budgets and work is going on to evaluate these.

John Elliott reported that he had responded on behalf of TAG to the D f T survey of understanding compliance. Kelvin Reynolds was yet to be approached by the D f T. John Elliott to send draft to Kelvin of his response.

9. Road Design and Maintenance including Liaison Group and Boards, Asset management Etc.

b. National Highway Indicators
The consultation on this meant that we were losing some very useful indicators on transport performance and particularly losing the trends which are critical in ensuring continued maintenance of the infrastructure.
While bus passengers is a very useful indicator for success of transport policy , local authorities have no powers in most areas on this and is not relevant to the performance of the local authorities.

11. Road Safety.

Bob Bridges very kindly stood in but was not able to be adequately briefed before attending. We apologise to him for this. He was asked if he could find any information from LARSOA to circulate.
He reported that Norwich Union is progressing with variable insurance which does require many of the tools required for effective road pricing. They are also considering intelligent speed adaptation amongst their own fleet. No representative from the AA or IAM Trust attended to update on the latest state. We did however promote the Euro Rap Conference.

12. Traffic Limitation and Travel Planning.

a. Essential guide to travel planning.
This has now been published however it has moved twice on the D f T’s website. As of writing these minutes the link can also be found through John Elliott’s own website, www.johnelliottconsultancy.co.uk

b. National Business Travel network
John Elliott reported on the NBTN and the first national meeting on 27th November. He reported his own involvement with the taxation group.

c. ACT
Rory McMullan reported on the ACT / Travelwise merger and the conference on 6th February. He also reported on the growth of personalised travel planning, which although resource intensive has shown to be very effective at changing behaviour, however it was getting a certain amount of bad publicity from certain sectors of the press.

In the discussion it was thought that it would be very helpful if approaches could be made to ISO standards so that ISO 14,001 did include travel planning as part of a major part of the process which organisations should adopt in order to get certificated. Rory agreed to research this and to discuss further with John Elliott and/or NBTN.

N) Dates of Next Meeting.

14th March 08 IHT London
20th June 08 Birmingham Airport.???
West Midlands no longer have an interest in this airport but Bob Barratt will research if this is an appropriate site and will come back to John Elliott.
12th Sept. 08 IHT London
28th Nov. 08 IHT London



JE 8-1-08