Contact: Jon Foley, ext 7559 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 In February 2005 the County Council approved the allocation of £150,000 of the transport capital programme for 2005/06 to Local Transport Plan Monitoring/Initiatives. It is proposed that this amount be distributed as follows:

Local Transport Plan Monitoring £70,000

Business Travel Plan Partnership Fund £50,000

Other small scale Local Transport Plan Initiatives £30,000.

1.2 Additional information on these items is set out below.

2. Local Transport Plan Monitoring (£70,000)

2.1 It is proposed to purchase equipment required for monitoring progress towards meeting the objectives and targets to be identified in the second Local Transport Plan (LTP). In particular there is a need to firmly establish baseline information against which to assess progress towards the targets to be included in the next LTP.

2.2 The guidance for the second LTP issued by Government includes a number of mandatory indicators and also allows the County Council to identify optional indicators that reflect local priorities which it wishes to monitor progress against. The list of optional indicators is currently being finalised and discussions are ongoing with the Government Office for the South East (GOSE) about the requirements for some of the indicators, in relation to both baselines and the robustness of the data required. Therefore at this stage it is difficult to identify exactly what needs to be measured and hence what new equipment is likely to be required.

2.3 It is however anticipated that funding will be required in relation to the following:

(i) equipment required to further develop congestion monitoring through the use of information technology;

(ii) collection of traffic flow data, especially related to urban locations;

(iii) collection of data associated with the assessment of accessibility to town centres; and

(iv) pedestrian monitoring equipment to follow on from the initiative piloted in Winchester in 2003/04.

3. Business Travel Plan Partnership Fund (£50,000)

3.1 The Business Travel Plan Partnership Fund will run for its second year in 2005/06. Businesses with travel plans are invited to bid for matched funding for the provision of `on-site' transport infrastructure to encourage users of those sites to travel to work by a range of modes.

3.2 The County Council's Business Travel Plan Adviser is currently working with over 100 businesses and, during March 2005, they were invited to submit bids for the Fund. These will be considered against a list of agreed criteria and a report will be submitted to the Executive Member for Environment in summer 2005 recommending those bids which it is proposed should be funded.

4. Other Small Scale Local Transport Plan Initiatives (£30,000)

4.1 This budget will be allocated to the delivery of minor integrated transport infrastructure improvements not already identified within the transport capital programme for 2005/06. Funding will be used on items such as pedestrian and cycle signing and other small scale improvements to encourage use of alternatives to the car. The schemes will be identified during the course of 2005/06.

Recommendations

1. That the proposed allocation of the £150,000 Local Transport Plan Monitoring/ Initiatives element of the transport capital programme for 2005/06, as set out below, be approved:

Local Transport Plan Monitoring £70,000

Business Travel Plan Partnership £50,000

Other small scale Local Transport Plan Initiatives £30,000.

2. The budget is provisionally allocated to projects pending consideration of alternatives to achieve 2.5% efficiency savings on all projects and programmes, work with the local community and more detailed design work.

286/JF