The NZ Transport Agency has a mandate to provide an effective, efficient, safe, responsible and resilient transport system that supports a thriving New Zealand. These objectives are broad and complex. Measurement contributes to understanding of how the NZ Transport Agency (the Transport Agency) and other road controlling authorities (RCAs) in New Zealand balance objectives and deliver transport for all road users. Within the land transport system, roads and roadsides have link and place functions. These contribute in different ways to meeting the broad objectives for transport. Measurement of link performance has a strong and clear history. Link performance is measured with traffic volumes, composition and speed data, collected extensively and effectively throughout the network. Measurement of place function is much less routine in New Zealand. Defining what is meant by place function, and clarifying how its performance can be measured, enables transparency in communicating how competing objectives for land transport are balanced. Measurement of place function also helps to prioritise investment fairly by providing data to support sound decision making. This research project was carried out from July to December 2014 in New Zealand, based on local and overseas literature. The purpose of the project was not to provide a means to directly trade off link and place function, or to establish targets or level of service thresholds for place performance. The aim of this research was to identify performance measures for the place function of state highways and arterial roads in an urban context. The aims of the literature review were to: • provide an historical perspective to the design of roads and public places, and how this has changed in the last century • discuss the current approaches to road design and planning in New Zealand • present an overview of how place function is considered in academic literature, regulations and guidance documents from the perspectives of urban design, land use planning, transport planning and traffic engineering, with a focus on relevance for urban roads • disseminate the literature into workable definitions of link and place • identify useful indicators and measures for place function to trial in the case studies. Place and its measurement is a complex topic spanning several disciplines. From the perspective of planning and design for transport, a sense of place is increasingly recognised as important, in particular in planning and design for walking. However, transport system planning and design has largely focused on roads and motor vehicles in recent decades. To provide context, this review summarises literature from urban design, land use planning, road design and transport planning. Place is present at the crossover of all four of these disciplines, as well as others. Figure 2.1 provides a simplified summary of the way urban design, land use planning, road design and transport planning interact. Place function can be considered from any of these perspectives individually, and all domains have perspectives to offer when considering ways to measure place. The purpose of presenting the literature summary by these headings is to provide perspective for different practitioners and researchers, and to highlight that these differences in approaches can be used to provide the indicators that are both meaningful, from different perspectives, and relevant as transport industry metrics. Transport industry practitioners can then understand and evaluate place function alongside the more traditional and better understood evaluation of link function. (Author/publisher)
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