URBAN TRANSPORT PLANNING; PARADOXES FOR THE 1980'S

Urban transport planning in advanced industrial countries faces a set of paradoxes. Since the late 1960s the emphasis has shifted from urban highway building to car restraint and public transport priority. But car ownership has continued to rise, fortified by the fact that real costs of driving have continued to decline after the momentary rise following the energy crises of 1973-4. At the same time, population and employment tends to leave central and inner cities which can support good levels of public transport, and to relocate in small towns and rural locations where this is almost impossible and where dependence on the car in consequence tends to be almost complete. The recent approach to transport planning stresses policies to meet the demands of individual household members constrained by time and space. This approach might in turn suggest fairly radical solutions to the problem of personal mobility, no longer based on the conventional public transport wisdom. (Author/TRRL)