EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSPORT DEMAND STRATEGIES WHEN APPLIED TO HISTORIC CITIES

This paper reports on a research project which was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a range of demand management strategies applied to three case study historic cities: Cambridge, Norwich and York. The three cities currently suffer heavily from the adverse impacts of road transport, often exacerbated by restrictions on changes to their physical infrastructure resulting from the historic status of many of their buildings. They are cities where the pressures for environmental enhancement are particularly great. The effectiveness of the demand management strategies was assessed through the following means: (1) predicting the travel responses to, and the traffic and environmental impacts of the demand management strategies; (2) assessing the perceived and predicted effects on the urban economy of these travel, traffic and environmental impacts; and (3) investigating public attitudes to the demand management strategies and to their predicted effects. The outcome of the project was intended to be guidance on the potential for application of the demand management strategies, their future development and implementation of the enabling technologies. The cities have different levels of car ownership, congestion and economic performance and the results of the study were expected to be broadly transferable to other towns and cities of similar size and within the same range of economic circumstances. The research was timely in that it coincided with the increasing recognition that, particularly in sensitive urban environments, there is a need for measures that will reduce the overall amount of traffic. Documents such as the UK Royal Commission report on Transport and the Environment advocate a reduction in car use from 65% of urban journeys in 1994 to 50% by 2020. The work also coincided with the publication of the UK Government's White Paper on Integrated Transport, which recognized the need for selective reduction of traffic levels and enhanced the possibility that there will be wider implementation of demand management strategies in UK cities in the future. This study sought to provide further information on which measures would have most potential to bring about sufficient reductions in traffic, whilst at the same time avoiding other adverse effects either through public discontent or business dissatisfaction.