East of Plymouth infrastructure study

Devon County Council, the Highways Agency and Plymouth City Council jointly asked and provided the funding for the transport consultants Faber Maunsell to carry out a study of the transport infrastructure for the East of Plymouth. The report, along with the technical drawings, can be downloaded from the documents table below.

The Council acknowledges receipt of this study and accepts that the report has, in considering the original objectives, fulfilled the brief, however the report and its conclusions do not represent Plymouth City Council policy.

The report has not identified which infrastructure improvements are required for each individual development, but it does provide a useful basis for understanding the requirements to improve the entire eastern transport corridor to enable the planned developments to be delivered.

We may adopt parts of the proposal, however for the purposes of securing Government funding, the development and further testing of options will be required as part of the major scheme bid to be submitted to the Department for Transport (DfT) in 2008.

This will involve the following areas of work that need to be undertaken to ensure that the infrastructure package works and the analysis behind the package is reliable and robust, which will involve a programme of public consultation. This further work will need to address the timing of the infrastructure improvements against the construction of each individual development. Therefore, the following technical work on the eastern corridor will need to be undertaken to build on the East of Plymouth infrastructure study:

Background literature review

This was completed in line with the available literature at the start of the study. Since the study started, a number of new documents have been prepared, namely, the emerging Regional Spatial Strategy, DfT Circular 02/07, and papers written by the Highway Authorities to assist in the Examination in Public for the North Plymstock and Sherford Area Action Plans. Also, we now have a transport assessment for the Sherford Redtree proposals and the Sherford Refined proposals. Any future work would also need to take these into account.

Transport implications of growth and proposed developments

The report has set out the implications of the car trips from the proposed developments and uses the PARAMICS micro simulation traffic model, alongside a separate trip suppression and mode choice model, to assign the trips onto the network and produce forecast traffic predictions across the network. Any future work needs to refine this process, look at key junctions in more detail and optimise the traffic forecasts at these junctions. This will ensure that forecast predictions are robust.

Highway and public transport infrastructure requirements

The report has identified a series of infrastructure improvements across the study area and sorts these to the east and west of Laira Bridge. These improvements need to be tested in detail to ensure that they can accommodate the predicted traffic forecasts and need individual junction analyses to ensure that each improvement scheme is robust and sufficient.

Implementation of infrastructure

The report has undertaken capacity assessments of the proposed assessments using the PARAMICS model. To ensure that this is robust, any future work will require individual junction assessments to refine the proposed improvements and ensure that it can work efficiently with the forecast traffic levels.

Develop long-term strategy

The report shows a long-term strategy for the area and a possible way for funding the improvement. The purpose of further work is to determine to what extent the option contained in the infrastructure study meets the schemes aims. The major scheme bid process will need to consider whether this is the best option.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

	East of Plymouth infrastructure study part 1.1 - introduction, literature review. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 551KB
	East of Plymouth infrastructure study part 1.2 - proposed developments and traffic growth, transport modelling. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.72MB
	East of Plymouth infrastructure study part 1.3 - highway and public transport infrastructure, implementation of infrastructure, summary and conclusion. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.66MB
	Appendix A - cost estimates. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 176KB
	Drawing 1100 - master overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.45MB
	Drawing 1200 - west of Laira bridge overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.48MB
	Drawing 1300 - east of Laira bridge and Plymstock overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.55MB
	Drawing 1400 - Billacombe Road and Elburton Road overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.61MB
	Drawing 1500 - bus rapid transit overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.46MB
	Drawing 1600 – deep lane overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.09MB
	Drawing 1700 – Embankment Road overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.18MB
	Drawing 1800 – Forder Valley and Marsh Mills overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.24MB
	Drawing 1900 – Manadon interchange overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.32MB
	Drawing 2000 – Sherford new community overview. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 1.46MB

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