The town of Doncaster has undergone considerable changes in employment patterns over the last two decades. The closure of coal mines in the area has led to a decline in local employment in the mining industry, which has largely been replaced with new employment in service based and high technology industries. As a result of these changes the travel behaviour in Doncaster has evolved considerably. In the past, many of the local people employed in mining would often work at coalmines located close to their homes, now workers tend to travel further by cars to new employment areas in the town centre. Consequently, levels of traffic congestion have increased on urban roads in the town centre and adjacent inter-urban motorway network. In order to mitigate the impact of the severe traffic congestion the localauthority, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, has adopted a strategic accessibility policy within the urban area. This note presents the findings of a study in Doncaster, England, where various access strategies wereconsidered to evaluate a package of measures targeted at reducing trafficcongestion within the urban area. The various access strategies have beendeveloped in consultation with the key stakeholders in the town includingthe Local Authority, the Passenger Transport Executive, local bus and rail operators, business community, and local interest groups. The various access strategies assessed the merits of providing park and ride facilities at the edge of town, reducing the quantity of long stay parking within thetown centre, redistributing parking locations, improvements to bus services through the provision of quality bus partnership contracts, and the creation of bus corridors on radial routes into the town centre. The strategies were assessed using an assessment framework approach which included thedevelopment of a CUBE Voyager multi-modal transport model to evaluate thebenefits and disadvantages of the various strategies. The main findings of the study are that the preferred urban access strategy required an integrated package of public transport improvements, local road improvements, and park and ride facilities in order to mitigate the impacts of the changes in travel behaviour and traffic congestion on urban roads and adjacent motorways. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Samenvatting