Transforming Preston City Region Transforming Cities Fund Bid – Strategic Outline Business Case (Sobc)
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TRANSFORMING PRESTON CITY REGION TRANSFORMING CITIES FUND BID – STRATEGIC OUTLINE BUSINESS CASE (SOBC) LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL NOVEMBER 2019 Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) [Page Intentionally Blank] Preston TCF Bid Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) Transforming Preston City Region Project No: B2327FT8 Document Title: Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) Client Name: Lancashire County Council Project Manager: Daniel Bimpson Document history and status Version Date Description 1 20/06/19 Draft SOBC for DfT review 2 10/11/19 SOBC for Internal Review 3 26/11/19 SOBC for DfT Submission Preston TCF Bid EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TRANSFORMING PRESTON CITY REGION TRANSFORMING CITIES FUND BID – STRATEGIC OUTLINE BUSINESS CASE (SOBC) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL NOVEMBER 2019 Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) Background As part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy and the National Productivity Investment Fund, the Transforming Cities Fund (TCF) aims to drive up productivity through improved connections between urban centres and suburbs. To do this, the fund will invest in infrastructure to improve public and sustainable transport connectivity in some of England’s largest cities. Encouraging an increase in journeys made by low carbon, sustainable modes is a key objective of the Fund. Additionally, the Fund aims to support wider cross-cutting priorities such as: • Improving access to work and delivering growth • Encouraging the use of new mobility systems and technology as part of the Grand • Challenge on the Future of Mobility • Tackling air pollution and reducing carbon emissions • Delivering more homes • Delivering apprenticeships and improving skills This report presents the Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) to support the TCF bid for the Preston City Region as part of a co-development arrangement between Lancashire County Council (LCC) and the Department for Transport (DfT). The document is structured around the HM Treasury Green Book “Five Case” model and with specific reference to DfT Guidance for Transport Business Cases, while also being informed by discussions with DfT since Preston’s shortlisting in December 2018. Strategic Case Economic Context Preston City-Region is Lancashire’s powerhouse and generates more high-value jobs than local residents are able to take-up. A total of 800,000 working-age people live within a 30km radius and 25% of the UK's total workforce within one hour's drive-time. The City-Region has become a net attractor of workers, 35,000 each day. This adds demand to Preston's transport network, which manages 400,000 daily work journeys. The proposals outlined in this businesses case aim to transform the attractiveness of public transport and active travel to commuters, including improvements to the local rail network, in order to unlock the latent productivity in the City Region and drive agglomeration, investment, jobs and international competitiveness. The TCF proposals for Preston City Centre aim to fill in the gaps between these anchor points to create a coherent, highly walkable and integrated transport network across the City Centre, underpinning transformed connectivity to, from and between major employment and housing sites across the City Region, delivered through a network of bus priority and active travel corridors. The TCF programme will connect this area with the rest of the City Centre completing the remaining gaps in cycling and walking provision, and will provide faster and more reliable bus journeys to and from the bus station from across the City Region, to ensure an interconnected sustainable transport network. A key driver of the TCF programme is the need to better integrate the UCLan campus and area of the City into the heart of a fully connected and sustainable Preston. The TCF programme interventions have been targeted along these routes to maximise the benefits and best manage the impacts of Preston’s growth. As the heart of the City Region’s transport networks, the City Centre is of additional importance for interchanging Preston TCF Bid 4 Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) to other nodes within the public transport system. Significant investment in sustainable and active travel through TCF is therefore urgently need to ensure that planned growth is matched with improvements to alternative travel modes to transform travel patterns and embed sustainable choices. Preston’s most deprived communities have been deliberately integrated into the interventions proposed by the TCF programme to maximise the economic, and labour market benefits of the TCF package. The TCF programme provides the opportunity to deliver this early integrated transport provision through the delivery of integrated transport improvements to the City Centre, improved access to Preston Station by sustainable and active modes, and an enhanced cycle hub at Preston Station that will embed sustainable choices in accessing the station in advance of HS2’s arrival. Existing Issues: Congestion Commuting is dominated by car travel - 75% of journeys to work, compared to just 9% for public transport. The City-Region is an integrated economic geography with high-value employment clusters and residential districts around its city core, but its economic corridors are poorly served by public transport. The adjacency of the city- centre and River Ribble funnels road journeys onto limited north-south radial crossing points and a single east- west spine through the city-centre (A6/A59 Ringway). This and high car-usage leads to serious congestion and air pollution. As Preston is a major employment hub, it acts as a large net importer of labour from Lancashire and elsewhere with a net inflow of around 23,000 commuting trips. Private car is the main method of commuting. The percentage of people driving to work by car (59%) and as a passenger (7%) is significantly larger than rail (1%), bus (11%) or walking and cycling (16%). These commuter movements take place in the context of a highway network that is reaching capacity in a number of places. The limited capacity of the road network, together with the very high traffic demand, results in significant traffic congestion in and around Preston. Congestion is especially severe at peak commuting times, but these times are getting longer and spreading as more and more people change their travel arrangements to avoid the ‘rush hour’. This congestion results in: • Lengthy travel times by bus and poor bus service reliability. • Poor quality walking and cycling opportunities, environments and as a result, low levels of usage of sustainable modes • Poor public realm, poor perceptions of safety and high level of severance for active modes • Limited accessibility and restricted job horizons, especially for those reliant upon public transport • Reductions in the effective labour market of the City and key employment sites • Losses to the economy through travel delays and constraints on business growth. • Frustration to motorists. • Worsening of local air quality, including at several identified Air Quality Management Areas. Preston TCF Bid 5 Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) Without intervention, the congestion and resultant constraints on the local economy are predicted to worsen over time. Existing Issues: Bus Existing bus-priority and bus-advantage infrastructure in Preston City Region is extremely limited, with only a small number of bus lanes and bus gates in central Preston, primarily around Fishergate, and recently introduced. In the rest of the City Region, buses must share road space with private vehicles, and are affected by the same capacity constraints and congestion. The high levels of congestion, without priority, results in poor bus journey times and bus reliability, as well as increased running costs for the operators as additional vehicles and drivers have been required to maintain timetables on key routes during peak hours, which are in turn passed onto to passengers in the form of increased fares which further suppress patronage. This impact is illustrated in research carried out by one of Preston’s two main operators, Stagecoach 1, which demonstrated that a 10% decrease in operating speeds would result in a 5% - 5.6% fall in patronage, whether services were maintained with increasing costs passed on to customers or service frequencies reduced. The TCF programme interventions have been targeted at the areas of the bus network where the most delay occurs, particularly around Ringway and on routes approaching the City Centre. Existing Issues: Cycling and Walking Echoing the decline in bus patronage outlined above, Preston has experienced historical falls in walking and cycling as motorised traffic has increased. The modal share of cycling in the 2011 Census was 1%, showing a decrease from 2% in the 2001 Census. Although the number of people walking is higher in Preston (16% in 2011 Census) there is still substantial scope for growth given 37% of journeys in Preston are under 2km. The Preston Guild Wheel is a 21 mile "Greenway" that encircles the city of Preston, linking the city to the countryside. It is both a walking and cycling route, and TCF investment in walking/cycling corridors will directly link into it on the radials around Preston to provide a transformed, accessible radial/ orbital network across Preston and its suburbs and communities through TCF investment. Cycle corridors with higher number of people currently cycling are included in the TCF corridor improvement proposals. The TCF programme will provide a new gateway crossing