OBJECTIVES:
1. To resist any damaging land use or visual impact of new transport infrastructure and monitor adverse changes and poor maintenance of existing facilities. This is particularly important given the development proposals in the New Local Plan.
The group has studied traffic flows at key junctions and monitored the operation of traffic lights with the aim of feeding this information back to the authorities to improve traffic flow and reduce unnecessary pollution caused by delays. The new local plan will have huge transport repercussions for the development proposals including – removing Abbey Way, the proposal for a new motorway junction 3A and the development of the coach stop and re-sited park and ride at junction 4.
2. To study and encourage the provision of rail and road connections – local, national and international (usually understood as access to an international airport), in order to support the local economy, including attracting business investment.
Transport supports the economy: Good transport connections, at the local, national and international (airport access) levels are essential for moving people and goods reliably while saving time and energy, making desirable contacts, and helping to attract inward investment.
Local journeys are often staff getting to work, and so can commonly be of 1-5 miles and often involve buses or cars, but when staff travel farther rail could offer wider networks of choice, and is often preferred for comfort and speed. There is a huge volume of such traffic between High Wycombe and the Thames Valley. This daily heavy traffic helps to support the case for reopening the Bourne End link. Restoring this link would also assist using Crossrail to get to Heathrow and other airports.
3. In the key interest of sustainability, to encourage methods of travel which offer convenient services for work and social activities, and are such as to reduce reliance on the car, to help to conserve land and fuel. These will include public transport, car sharing, cycling and walking.
4. Take full account of the need to minimise CO2 emissions and atmospheric pollution.
Transport to protect the environment: This protection seems to fall into two main categories: conservation of valuable materials (e.g. land and fuel), and avoiding emission of CO2 and other pollutants. Hence the benefits of rail include land conservation, because a relatively narrow track could carry a train with a similar number of passengers as on 3–4 motorway lanes. Also rail does not require parking space everywhere, and rail’s steel wheels and rails use energy more efficiently than rubber tyres, so rail also helps tackle the concerns about climate change and the related need to minimise transport’s energy consumption.
Most rail journeys are longer than 15km, but there are millions of door-to-door journeys of less than 15km that must be done by road. They present problems of how to reduce the large number of short, local trips that require car travel of some sort for door-to-door journeys. In High Wycombe an innovative taxi/private hire firm is developing arrangements for sharing journeys which conveniently cover closely similar routes at similar times when seeking the destinations, thus using one vehicle instead of 2, 3, 4 or more, and helping to reduce congestion as well as emissions. A further advantage is that the vehicle requires very little parking space/time – only when picking up or setting down.