Transport Planning

Discuss measures for assessing and measuring demand for travel

Transportation planning plays the vital role to safeguard the future of people of state, community and region. It refers all the strategies require to ensure the effective functioning of the transport and its objective to facilitate the people to meet their demands. Transportation planning requires the in depth research regarding the regional vision and goals. Regional vision and goals refers to the people travelling habits and their working habits too. For example people who work on daily wages in the local community itself do not need much transport facility (Huth and Lohre,2014).

If they are satisfied with the basic facilities present in their community regarding hospitals, grocery, etc then they do not prefer to expand their high earned money on transportation. They mainly use this facility to overcome the conditions which are not controllable like severe health problems whose treatment is not possible in the region itself. But now days transportation facility is not limited to just fulfill the basic requirements it serves the people in many other ways too. It helps the daily workers to earn more by moving from one region to another as every region has its own specific daily wages rate. Transportation has narrowed the walking distance between two regions which have facilitate the people and saved their time too.

Farmers are the backbone of the every country as they are responsible for the providing grains, fruits and vegetables without which none of the person can survive. In the highly populated countries like India and China farmers do not have much big lands for cultivation. Thus these short lands are the only surviving hand for them (Gonzalez-Feliu, Semet and Routhier, 2014).

These farmers just have the basic objective to cultivate as much as they require to fulfill their basic needs i.e. food, shelter and clothing. So they prefer to sell the crops to the regional middle man and avoid the transportation expenses and daily up down from their regions to other regions where vegetable markets are highly competitive market. So they like to avoid such conditions but these middle men earn high by buying the crops and selling it in high rate in market. Thus, transportation facilitate the farmers to earn high by selling their crops directly in the vegetable market by mere searching the areas to sell which is now easy through the social media platform. Social media platform allows the farmers to widen their scope by selling their, fruits, vegetables and crops on orders to other parts of the community. Thus, this platform have risen the need of transportation.

Transportation facility have flourished now days due to the developed technologies too. Few years ago, farmers used to avoid transportation not just because they are expensive but also they scare of their goods to get spoiled due to any unwanted calamity as their fruits and vegetables are perishable in nature and thus have limited shelf time if they are not refrigerated. Transportation facility allows them to sell their goods to different regions but if these goods are not reached on time to the market due to any damage of vehicles or traffic or damaged roads, farmers loose their hard earn money (Fernie and Sparks, 2014).

Thus, farmers preferred selling their goods to the middle men for this reason too. But as the technology developed it gave rise to the cold storage van which saves the perishable goods for long time in the refrigerators within the van itself. This have encouraged farmers to use the transportation facility now and thus the transportation facility is also flourishing in rural areas too.

In the developing countries, there are many backward sections in the society who are restricted to their villages and do not prefer moving from one place to another for the search of jobs. These people are mainly restricted to the daily wages work nearby. But now days government is taking effective steps for their upliftment by encouraging them to sold their traditional handicrafts prepared by them in the fairs to earn high. This has also encouraged the transportation facility to uplift the backward section by selling their beautiful art and crafts in various parts of the country and even world through social media platform.

The flourishing transport facilities have also gave birth to various environment problems which ultimately gave rise to transport policies in the country. Now days transportation have direct impact on the area’s economic health and quality of life (McKinnon and et.al., 2010).

The performance of the system affects public policy concerns like air quality, environmental resource consumption, social equity, land use, urban growth, economic development, safety, and security. These are the following reasons which gave rise to need of transport policy:

Air Quality: Developing transportation directly influence the region’s air quality. Therefore, the estimated emission of pollutants from motor vehicles is the one of the basic reason that gave rise to the transport policies. Now the government has made various strict norms to ensure that emissions from transportation investments areas per the levels set forth in state air quality plans. Therefore, Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), state Department of Transportation (state DOT), and transit operators need to have a clear understanding of the air quality-related transportation planning requirements. The term air pollution refers to emission of the pollutants like ozone and its precursors hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxides (CO) etc which directly damaging the ozone layer (Arefyev, 2012).

Ozone layer saves the earth from the harmful ultra violet rays that can cause severe destruction on earth’s quality of life.

Congestion Management Process: A CMP is required in metropolitan areas with a population greater than 200,000 as well as in urbanized areas to identify congested locations and determine the cause of the congestion which give rise to the pollution. This process helps the government to take effective steps to reduce the congestion through migration in the metropolitan cities and analyze its impact on the overall environment.

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Identify options to meet the identified needs and understand how these are assessed and appraised

Exeter is a city of England in UK which is governed and guided by the Devon country council. Transport is a major factor which contributes towards the climatic change by use of the fossil fuels. It is a very compact city.

If focus is laid upon the aspect of quantity, there has been a substantial increase in the provision of public-transport within the Exeter. It has a well established network of cycles since many of the people prefer cycle to go fro m one place to another.

Considering the current situation of UK, the main issue being dealt with is the low investment done upon the transport sector. Since the past half century, a policy of 'predict-&-approach' was adopted. In that policy if the use of car was found out to be growing then, accordingly roads would be provided. But since then, demand regarding the space for roads has not been managed properly in Exeter. Also, the claim that the travel needs of people would be met by increasing use of cars was also not taken as challenge carefully. Henceforth, there has been a sharp decline in the investment over public transport.

Another major issue experienced by the city of Exeter in England is the experiencing of congestion on some major routes that too the entire day. This is particularly being experienced at the roads of Topsham, Heavitree and Alphington roads. This has led an adverse impact upon the quality of air at Exeter. This has further led to the fact that majority of 22% of CO2 emissions is because of the current transport system of Exeter. Usually this congestion occurs in peak time priods of either 8-9 AM or 5-6 PM.

Furthermore, because of poor connectivity and lower investment, people usually face problems in reaching to hospitals in case of emergency, on time. This has also led to increase in the missed appointment number in hospital. Also, the people in context to work-related areas are not able to reach their offices on time. Despite the increase of car use, problems have been consistently faced by people of Exeter since the demand for road space has not been met in proper way. The less amount of roads have led to increase in traffic jams which is overall causing pollution.

So, in order to know the needs of people considering the transportation in Exeter a survey was conducted and also the main aim of this survey was to have an idea about any necessary recommendations regarding the requirements.

Understand issues concerning model choice and behavior

Since the city of Exeter has been facing ample of issues regarding the congested roads as well as the problems concerning the CO2 emission because of which the people are facing some serious issues. So, definitely seeing the present situation of Exeter, there is a definite need of a model to be applied to the city. Henceforth, in order to do so issues have to be assessed and accordingly modifications should be introduced. So the chosen model for the Exeter is Travel demand Model which has been discussed below :

The travel demand model of Exeter town England :-

Transportation planning in Exeter could be classified in following four steps:

1. To identify Highway system component
2. To define transportation planning
3. To recall the process and purpose of construction planning design
4. To identify the 4 models of transportation

1.) The first step is to identify the present transport system available in Exeter, England and collect data and analyze the current situation of the system. Close examination of these data collected from different sources and surveys such as household surveys, workplace surveys, destination surveys etc through personal interviews and print out questionnaires helps to understand the gap between the demand and supply in the transport sector (Miler and Pac,2015). The total work area population in Exeter is about 1,24,000 which indicates that there is large number of job opportunities for people living in this region. This figure indicates that transportation system is quite efficient but massive use of energy is an issue. There is no use of renewable resources. Further, the increasing number of commuters is leading to more increase in demand of new routes and roads for managing the traffic situation.

2.) The next step is to develop the transportation plan keeping in mind the following essential elements:

Efficiency: Interactive wind powered lights that saves the electricity as it glows only when it sense any car on road, wireless electric vehicle charging which charge the electric cars when they travel on these roads and solar energy roads that allows the effective use of solar energy and saves the electricity and is even environmental friendly. The use of renewable energy sources shall help in managing the energy requirements of the transportation system of Exeter, England.

Quality: Quality here means the polluted free environment which do not had any adverse effect on the health of the people in the region. There is emission of congestion based effluents which is polluting the air of Exeter and creating harmful impact over the health of individuals. There is a need for city to become independent from congestion based fuels.

Equity: Demand transport model is also affected by the social, culture, economical and environmental factors like travel time, travel cost, waiting time, no of trips, comfort etc thus these should also be take into account while planning.

Now the planner need to design the constructive plan which requires in depth research of the plan and its completion period. This period may be short term that may take about 3 years with high cost or the long term plan of about 10 years which is more sustainable in the polluted cities like Exeter. Engineers are need to be called off with the quotations which develop the effective transportation plan and ensures the efficiency, quality and equity along with the optimum utilization of available financial resources. The engineer need to quote the following points in its plan:

Analyze the problems stated by the planner and find out the effective solutions to resolve these problems through his professional skills and experience. These problems may be related to congestion and improve safety .

Variety of designs and ideas need to be analyzed and discussed in the light of the present and futures prospects and choose the most effective plan that fulfill the ultimate targets of the planner for the benefit of the people of Exeter as a whole.

3.) After the selection of the transportation project the next step is to work on the cost effectiveness and other legal and political consideration required to implement the plan into reality. The planner need to discuss and analyze the feasibility of the project and calculate the cost and benefit proportion in the light of toll charge, site location selected for the project and other revenue cost forecast. Inventory and land use is also need to be analyzed. Land use requires the detail assessment and forecasting in terms of population, employment, economic, social and land use activities.

4.) The next step is to analyze the zone or area where traffic will flow and then decide the number of trips required and this helps the planner to analyze the total traffic in certain time, the distance need to be covered and the cost required to fulfill the specific demands (Lorenc, 2013).

5.) Last but not least the planner gives the contract to the contractor to implement the project improve the existing transportation system. The planner need to also analyze the speed per vehicle in the zone based on business, residential and commercial activities carried on nearby and its accessibility. Further, it includes the parking studies too to facilitate the transport users and do not cause any chaos later.

Transport system should ensure the easy accessibility with the other modes of the transport like rail, airways and water transport. Road transport should be planned in such a manner that it links all the other three modes of transport so that people can easily reach and access the same (Szymanek, 2011).

Rails, airways and waterways are the effective modes of transport to move the goods as well as passengers from one part of country to another , thus there should be an effective highway system with clear, stable and controllable traffic pattern.

Transportation planning too requires the regular review and monitor the plan framed and implemented to assess whether the proposal made by the planner have bought the significant benefit to the community or not.

The application of this model i.e. Travel Demand Model involved certain issues. These include excessive time consumption for conducting the research. There is no clear guideline that specifies correct application of all the aspects of this model. This made it difficult for introducing relevant content for this aspect. Another major issue which was faced in application of this model is developing financial estimates and cost effectiveness of the overall project. It wasn't so easy to estimate the costs accurately.

Understand the links between the transport planning and the provision and operation of passenger and good transport

In today’s globalization transport plays the effective role in every human’s life. It can also be called as backbone of the economy of every country. Transport is the life line of every sector now days without which any activity starting from the agriculture to industrialization can not operate nor completed. Some of the basic benefits are as follows:

It facilitates the cities in wealth creation. Mobility of the goods and passengers from one place to another has become very easy now which allow them to trade and even export their specialized goods to another part of the world and expand their business which ultimately leads to enhance their profitability and even economy of the country. Because of the current issues faced in model of Travel Demand, the corporation of Exeter has introduced ample of modifications. The convergence of a total of 5 railway lines have assisted in building quick connections. This includes the connection between Exeter to London & North.

Every region has the limited jobs as compare to the population exists there, thus, transport planning has contributed to decrease the unemployment rate in the region. Some people do not prefer living far from their family due to some critical condition at home, so they need to leave their jobs which affects their income but with the development of the transport the time and distance between the job and home destination have reduced which facilitates them to take care of their family members and also maintain their income. Furthermore, in addition to this there has been a substantial increase in the employment rate in the various sectors of Exeter such as the hospitality and many more with an annual increase of nearly 8%(Jodejko-Pietruczuk and Plewa, 2012).

Transportation has played the vital role in decreasing accident and mortality death rates as the ambulances provides the basic treatment to the patient on the spot and take to him to the hospital on time. It has facilitated the people of community to call of the ambulances when they are alone at home and critical accident takes place. Also, in addition to this, the people of Exeter are able to reach out their destined places on time. Since the routes have been facilitated, people are able to avoid the congested routes. The daily traffic experienced in the Exeter has faced a substantial decrease of over 5% since the past 5 years. Furthermore, an analytical tool of TEMPRO has been developed by Dft. TEMPRO utilises the data of census in addition to usage of demographic-data, car-ownership data and information regarding workforce-planning as well.

It is further estimated that future-growth will be substantially observed by the Skypark as well as Science Park. On the basis of current data to be obtained, Exeter has highly obtained their infrastructure of roads, and have been consistently aiming towards improvement of their journey as well as freeing the roads from the main problem of congestion.

Today travel and tourism sector is flourishing and contributing high in the economy of every country. Thus, transport system plays vital role in every sector and thus transportation planning has direct impact on every human in the community.

Conclusion

The above report concludes that transportation planning is the life line of the every sector now days. In today’s globalization transport plays the effective role in every human’s life. It can also be called as backbone of the economy of every country. It also helps to analyze that the transportation planning of the local community requires the in depth research to develop the effective Travel Demand Model and implement it efficiently keeping in mind all the aspects that directly affects the model like environmental, cultural, social and political factor. It also explains the model to understand various issues related to transport which signifies its importance. Thus, this process requires the in depth research and study to analyze the current and future travel demand of the people and meet those demands keeping in mind the environmental factors and traffic de