In 2007 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 below:
We acknowledge receipt of this study and accepts that the report has, in considering the original objectives, fulfilled the brief, however the report and its conclusions don't represent our policy.
The report hasn't 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.