What Vision-Led Planning Means for Transport People

NPPF

The National Planning Policy Framework is the overall instruction document for England’s planning authorities.

A new version was published in December 2024, and this is what it says:

This is important stuff. Vision-led transport planning is a very different approach from what we’re used to.

As we discussed in last week’s post, transport planning in the UK is typically infrastructure-led.

This turns the approach on its head.

To understand what this means, let’s look at what changes for each of the key stakeholders involved:

Planning Teams

These are the folk whose lives are going to change the most.

Vision-led transport planning means that there needs to be a vision to lead the transport plan. And, crucially, it’s not a transport vision - it’s a holistic place-based vision.

It describes the aspirations of local people (e.g. kids able to play out, able to reach local services on foot, easy access to work, a sense of community, an attractive streetscape), many of which have transport implications - but which go far beyond.

The vision is anchored in a future date. This is important. A vision is about the destination, not the incremental steps from today’s reality. It says that “By xxxx date, yyyy will be true”.

It’s not an intuitive process for most of us. Currently, we do transport planning the way we do our own career planning. We look at how things are, and think about the next steps from here.

Vision-led planning is like learning from Michael Heseltine.

For younger readers, Michael Heseltine was an ambitious young Tory who was famous for having written a career plan as follows:

25: Millionaire.
35: MP.
45: Minister.
55: Cabinet.
65: Downing Street

(he achieved every one of these goals, though he only made it to Downing Street as Deputy Prime Minister).

Vision-led planning is about setting out where you want to get to first, and then figuring out how to achieve it.

This means that producing the vision requires lots of iterative work with the transport team and local infrastructure owners. As the vision needs to be ambitious but realistic. What is possible by that date requires work to establish, but the process starts with defining what good looks like as an end-state.

I can’t emphasise this enough: the vision is outcome-based, not project-based. It doesn’t list schemes, it lists deliverable outcomes for residents and the economy.

Obviously to produce a viable list of outcomes, you’ll have worked through some schemes with the transport team that would deliver those outcomes, but the outcomes are key.

A role model here is General Eisenhower. A quote to keep in mind is:

Plans are useless but planning is essential.

What he meant by that was that the goal was to reach Berlin. To achieve that, he had a fully worked-up plan. He’d done lots of planning. But he wasn’t wedded to that plan. If circumstances changed, he’d adopt a different plan. As long as he reached Berlin.

While the vision will have targets, it’s got to be human-centric, not metric-centric. It describes the place as opposed to the numbers. That doesn’t mean there won’t be measures, but it’s got to be clear why.

So, for example, you might want very safe streets. You might want a target that there will be zero serious road deaths or injuries. Good target. But the why is because kids need to be able to play in the street.

You might want a high share of public transport journeys. But the why is that you want all residents to be connected to economic and social opportunities, regardless of access to a car.

Starts with the lives people want to lead and the economy you want to create.

The reason this is crucial is that when we create projects, we need to be able to articulate a rational explanation of why the project will lead to the outcomes. This is important because you need to be able to measure the business case for the projects.

We’re not going to do this using a traditional transport BCR. What we’re going to do is measure whether the projects will lead to the outcomes described in the vision. That’s why it’s so important to be able to be clear on the why.

For example, if we’re saying that everyone in residential areas needs to be able to access jobs and opportunities without a car, that’s how we’re going to measure the projects.

Two final warnings to planning teams:

1) Don’t allow your transport colleagues to simply pitch you the schemes they’ve always wanted to do. We’re doing vision-led planning. That means the vision is in charge.

2) Don’t simply hand over tracts of land to developers and allow them to build what they want. The transport plan only works if the housing that’s built is designed to deliver the vision. Just as you can’t deliver the vision without transport solutions designed to deliver it, so it also requires that the housing (or offices or retail parks, etc) are absolutely and rigorously designed to deliver the vision.

Transport Teams

The great news is that your job is about to become much more interesting!

Forget a lot of what you’ve learned so far, and focus on iterating and problem-solving to achieve the vision.

It’s a much more fun job!

However, there are certain things you’re going to have to do in order to make this work.

Firstly, step away from the models - they won’t necessarily help you. Most transport models were designed for the traditional predict and provide / incremental-from-where-we-are style of planning.

Instead, you’re working iteratively with your planning colleagues to create plans and projects to deliver the vision.

It’s at this point that you need to be imaginative about business cases.

Combined Authorities (and future Strategic Authorities) either have or are likely to have large capital budgets for transport schemes. So money is available. But we’ve got some hard-grained assumptions abot what we can and can’t spend money on.

Vision-led schemes DO NOT need positive BCRs based on the old way of doing things. This point can often worry people, so let’s be absolutely clear. Listen to my interview with Jonny Mood, Director of the National Audit Office, on my podcast. He couldn’t be clearer - you need to be able to demonstrate that the scheme delivers the vision, not that it ticks an old-style BCR benchmark.

That’s why your iterative work with the Planning team is so important - the schemes need to deliver the vision and the vision needs to be deliverable by the schemes.

Even though you can build a business case out of the vision, that doesn’t guarantee the funding.

Vision-led planning doesn’t create a magic money tree - a scheme that costs £80 million in the old way of doing things will still cost £80 million in this way of thinking.

So you also need to think imaginatively about costs and revenues.

Can you deliver the scheme at a lower cost than would be done traditionally? Look at the Very Light Rail scheme in Coventry, which is in the process of proving a method for delivering trams at a quarter of the normal UK cost.

Look at tram-train schemes in Sheffield and Cardiff, that are creating lower-cost models for connecting places onto the national rail network.

Look at the traffic circulation plan in Ghent which made the whole city centre largely car-free at low cost, simply through a handful of street closures.

The examples are out there but a traffic model won’t help you find them: so focus on the real world.

As well as being imaginative about the project, you also need to be imaginative about the funding.

Does your vision include new housing? I expect it does. Can you fund some of the transport with land value capture? You can hear how this was successfully used on the Northumberland line on my podcast.

Moreover, it’s likely that the vision will be generating fare-paying customers. Assume them in business cases: and don’t be too cautious. The Northumberland line has seen five times as many passengers as forecast, which means a much higher proportion of the cost could have been covered by land value capture if that had been assumed.

Be entrepreneurial about funding your solutions to deliver the vision.

Now, the warning for you: you’re going to have to become a really good ring-leader.

Do you remember the episode of Yes Minister in which Jim Hacker meets representatives of the road, rail and aviation industries? Each one lobbies him for funding, claiming that only their mode can deliver the country’s transport goals.

That’s your life in future.

Previously, you’ve been able to sit back and see what National Highways or Network Rail dropped from the sky onto your patch, and then react.

That won’t do going forward - you’ve got to proactively work with each to work out what they can do for you to deliver your vision.

It’s complex and iterative because they’re talking to every other authority at the same time.

That’s OK - iterative is fine.

Just be demanding on behalf of your vision.

Infrastructure Owner and Transport Operator

OK, this is the tough one. Vision-led planning requires a real change in approach for infrastructure-owners and operators.

As I wrote about previously, the vast majority of transport investment in recent decades has been initiated by Network Rail, National Highways (etc) trying to solve legitimate problems (generally insufficient capacity for demand).

This has resulted in more and more infrastructure being concentrated on fewer and fewer corridors, while the places where people live are connected by bleak strips of tarmac unserved by (meaningful) public transport.

Infrastructure owners have a vital role in initiating, developing and delivering projects.

But these projects need to be initiated to deliver the visions of the places they serve.

This is a complete reversal of how infrastructure owners currently plan their projects.

Currently local places are expected to react to centrally-created plans. “Oh, Coddleswap station is getting direct trains to the City of London thanks to the Thameslink Programme. What can we do with that?”, “Oh, the Northern Hub means we’re getting faster trains to Manchester. Cool”, “Oh, the Silver Ring roundabout is getting an upgrade. Shall we put a business park there?” etc

In future, the infrastructure planning needs to be much more bottom-up and connected to local places.

Obviously, each infrastructure project can’t meet everyone’s needs. But it needs to be designed around the place-based visions.

It means infrastructure owners need to be much more connected to the visions emerging in their vicinity. That’s a new job.

As an infrastructure owner, if you have a need yourselves (e.g. capacity) be (highly!) imaginative about coming up with ideas to solve your problem that also achieve the visions of the places you interact with. 

Also, remember that you can use your own real estate to deliver the local vision. Maybe you can reduce demand on a rail line at peak times by using local land for new employment?

And, if you’re Network Rail or TfL or a bus company or a Combined Authority transport team, remember that the local vision is likely to be about getting you more customers.

Approach it in that spirit! Be imaginative and flexible about creative ideas to make it work.

DfT

The most important change required is from DfT.

They need to be willing and able to apply the spirit of their own Government’s framework and approve schemes based on the vision.

That means doing exactly as the NAO require (do listen to Jonny Mood if you haven’t done so!) and judging not based on the DfT’s own appraisal methodology but on whether the scheme achieves the objectives that the local vision has set. It’s not for central Government to overrule the vision, as long as it’s broadly consistent with Government policy.

This is a big change as it requires civil servants to accept that you do sometimes have to judge between apples and pears, because some places want apples and others want pears.

See yourselves as the clearing house of experimentation. Some imaginative business case methodologies will fail and others will overdeliver. Can you help smooth the risk and reward for authorities without feeling the need to apply a central methodology?

This is a big change but will make you one of the most powerful agents of positive change in the sector.

What it all means

Vision-led planning - done right - could lead to dramatically better transport outcomes.

The danger is that a sector used to models will attempt to create models to deliver it.

Vision-led planning isn’t about models: it’s about… vision.

The task now is for everyone in the transport ecosystem to focus on the skills necessary to make the most of the opportunity.

Those are the skills of collaboration, iteration, experimentation and long-term strategic thinking.

Step away from the model…