Local Sustainable Transport Fund - Application Form Applicant Information Local transport authority names: Stoke-on-Trent City Council (co-ordinating authority) and Staffordshire County Council Senior Responsible Owner name and position: Pete Price: Assistant Director – Technical Services, City Renewal Directorate, Stoke-on-Trent City Council Clive Thomson: Commissioner for Transport and the Connected County, Staffordshire County Council Bid Manager name and position: John Nichol: Strategic Manager Transportation and Engineering, Stoke-on-Trent City Council Nick Dawson, Group Manager Transport Planning and Strategy, Staffordshire County Council Contact telephone number: John Nichol: 01782 236178 Email address: [email protected] & [email protected] Postal address: Civic Centre, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 1HH Website address for published bid: www.stoke.gov.uk/ltp SECTION A - Project description and funding profile A1. Project name: North Staffordshire Sustainable Transport Package A2. Headline description: The adopted Core Strategy, LTPs and consultations with local employers and the LEP all confirm that North Staffordshire is blighted by worklessness and deprivation whilst the local economy and environment suffers the effects of congestion, carbon emissions and poor bus journey times. Local travel patterns are dominated by short car trips, despite a reliance on sustainable travel modes for many journeys. Focussed on a cross-boundary economic growth corridor, the package will help to connect local residents, particularly employees, job seekers and people in further/higher education to the opportunities available at two universities and colleges, the University Hospital and significant employment areas. This key corridor will be enhanced with traffic management, bus priority, improved bus services, passenger information and safe pedestrian environments. Parallel cycle routes will provide greater travel choice and complementary Home to Work initiatives will further enhance accessibility for job seekers. Directly related marketing and promotion will take place and travel planning will be boosted at the destinations benefiting from capital investment. A3. Geographical area: The North Staffordshire conurbation, also known as the Potteries due to its reputation as the World Capital of Ceramics, lies between the West Midlands and North West conurbations. It has direct access to the M6 and the West Coast Main Line, has a population of over 342,000 and faces significant socio-economic and transport challenges. Many of the travel problems in the area are caused by the unique polycentric structure of distinct settlements, unlike other British or Continental Cities, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Unique polycentric structure of the Potteries We have focused the package on journeys within an east- Tunstall west economic growth corridor that spans across the North Staffordshire Burslem Economic Growth County/City boundary as shown in Figure 1. It targets Corridor City Centre Newcastle increasing demand for travel to growing employment, retail Fenton Keele UHNS Stoke and education destinations at Keele and Newcastle in & UniQ Longton Staffordshire and the University Hospital, University Quarter, Stoke Town and the City Centre in the Unitary Authority area British City: small centre Continental City: bigger North Staffordshire: seven town surrounded by suburbs centre with less affluent centres of Stoke-on-Trent and of Stoke-on-Trent. Stoke-on-Trent City Centre is the largest with local centres suburbs Newcastle-under-Lyme retail area, Newcastle-under-Lyme Town centre is a complementary historic market town and Stoke Town centre is a key administrative centre located close to Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station. Figure 8 in C1 shows these key destinations together with the location of the mutual supportive scheme elements, and a detailed description is included in Appendix 1. A4. Type of bid: Small project bids Tranche 2 bid A5. Total package cost (£m): 8.590 A6. Total DfT funding contribution sought (£m): 4.998 A7. Spend profile: £K 2011 -12 2012 -13 2013 -14 2014 -15 Total Revenue funding sought 0 612 987 968 2,56 7 Capital funding sought 0 89 2 824 715 2,431 Local contribution 0 1891 1177 524 3592 Total 0 3395 2988 2207 8590 A8. Local contribution The North Staffordshire Sustainable Transport Package will make much better use of our existing transport assets and in particular our new developer and City Council funded Bus Station in Stoke-on-Trent City Centre. It seeks to improve and grow patronage on the existing commercial bus services. The package will add value to our cycle infrastructure recently improved through our cycle town work and also the new Lyme Valley cycle route funded by Links to Schools. Significant local contributions to the scheme elements, as detailed below, will be funded from our Integrated Transport Block (ITB) allocations together with over £2.7m from our own resources, development contributions and European funds. The total local contribution set out in A7 includes only quantifiable elements. The actual local contribution will be greater than this amount as the LSTF elements will unlock further contributions, both financial and in kind which will deliver greater transport and wider economic benefits. Scheme Element 1: Traffic Management and Bus Travel To support this scheme element we plan to invest £285k towards the Station Road & College Road improvement – the University Boulevard. Over £300k from our ITB will improve traffic management and bus access improvements at the City Centre end of the corridor. This is in addition to the ITB and City Sentral developer contributions to provide bus access to the new bus station. We will also prioritise our works identified through our Punctuality Improvement Partnership to support the traffic management parts of this element. £240k of County Council funding will improve bus accessibility to Newcastle town centre to support this scheme element. £200k of new bus facilities are to be provided by Keele University with £225k of Section 106 funding towards improving bus services from the current phase of expansion of the science and business park at Keele. £600k of County Council funding will support the Staffordshire young person’s concessionary fare scheme in this area making access to the improved bus services more affordable for young people. The success of this new scheme was recognised at the Guardian Public Service awards where it won the Transport and Mobility award. The LSTF funded parts of this element will enable our bus operator partners to implement improved timetables and invest in fleet improvements, smart ticket machines, and vehicle tracking technology to further support the package. Scheme Element 2: Encouraging Cycling and Walking We will prioritise £88k from our ITB funded cycling permeability programme to support this element tackling issues identified through our cycle town work, together with over £30k towards enhancing NCN5 in the City Centre. This will complement wider expansion of pedestrianised areas and public realm improvements as part of the regeneration of the City Centre. £75k of County Council ITB funding for pedestrian crossing facilities will be prioritised and £500k of LTP, Newcastle Borough Council and developer contributions towards Newcastle Town centre public realm, bus station and sustainable access improvements will support improvements for walking and cycling. This includes expansion of the pedestrianised area enabled by LSTF funded parts of Scheme Element 1. Cycle parking and infrastructure will be provided in the UniQ to support the package as part of the construction of the new St Peter’s Academy and redevelopment and public realm improvements of the Staffordshire University campus providing the right conditions for Smart Choices work. Scheme Element 3: Smart Choices This element will help to grow our new Home to Work project that has started to provide transport initiatives to help unemployed Stoke-on-Trent residents to access employment. The project is specifically designed to overcome transport barriers such as cost and shift patterns that make access by public transport difficult. The project seeks to provide bespoke travel plans that provide support ranging from walking and cycling plans through to bus passes, taxi fares and bicycle hire. The project is being delivered by the City Council’s Home to Work team working with partners including Job Centre Plus, Jobs Enterprise and Training (JET) and local employers. Over £700k has been approved from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and LSTF funding will be used to unlock this funding stream in full. £55k of County Council Wheels to Work funds will also help County residents’ access employment. We will prioritise our Workplace Travel Plan Grants and the work of our Travel Plan Officers to support this element. Travel planning work with schools will be supported by Michelin with bikes and helmets funded by the Road Safety for Young People in Europe (ROSYPE) and also by our locally funded cycle training of £2k per year together with our LSTF funded Bikeabilty. The County Council will also contribute £546k towards sustainable school travel. Sustainable transport promotion by our partners as part of their Travel Plans at the key destinations and schools, and also by local cycling and community groups, will also support this element. A9. Partnership bodies We have developed partnerships with a wide range of local bodies. Their role in delivering the package is