Integrated Transport

From Policy to Practice

Moshe Givoni, David Banister, Moshe Givoni, David Banister

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136965470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Travel is an essential part of everyday life and today most journeys are multimodal. It is the total travel experience that counts and integrated transport must reduce the inconvenience of transfers between modes. Most research and many publications on transport policy advocate sustainable transport, but the priority given to integration has been negligible. Yet integration is one of the most important means to advance sustainable transport and sustainability more generally.

While integrated transport systems are seen to be an ideal, there is a failure to make the transition from policy to practice. The authors argue that the achievement of sustainable transport is still a dream, as an integrated transport policy is a prerequisite for a sustainable transport system. It is only when the two concepts of sustainability and integration operate in the same direction and in a positive way that real progress can be made.

In this book, transportation experts from across the world have addressed the questions about what is integration, why is it so important and why is it so hard to achieve? The book provides an in-depth analysis of these issues and it aims to provide a better understanding of the subject, about what should be strived for, about what is realistic to expect, and about how to move forward towards a more integrated provision of transport infrastructure, services and management.

Chapter 1
The need for integration in transport policy and practice

Moshe Givoni and David Banister

1. Introduction

In almost every piece of research and publication on transport policy a combination of the words ‘transport’ and ‘sustainability’ can be found. Similarly, next to these words a combination of the words ‘transport’ and ‘integration’ will normally also be present. While the inclusion of the term ‘sustainability’ in the transport policy discourse can be traced back to about 20 years ago, following the publication of the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), ‘integration’ has a much longer history in transport planning. Since sustainability became the dominant paradigm in the transport policy and research discourse, priority given to integration has been almost silent. Integration, even if it is not explicitly recognized, is probably still one of the most important means to advance sustainable transport and sustainability more generally. The concepts of sustainability and integration need to be promoted as being complementary in transport policy and practice.

Although integration might be easier to define and agree upon than sustainability, there are many elements of integration that need to be pursued. There are also many barriers to overcome in achieving integration in practice. This book argues that it is very difficult to turn integrated transport policy to integrated transport practice, and that as a consequence, sustainable transport is still only an ideal. It is only when these two concepts operate in the same direction in a positive way that real progress can be made.

This book addresses the questions: what is integration, why is it so important, why is it so hard to achieve, and are we never likely to get to a truly integrated transport system or even just a truly integrated and coherent transport policy. It provides an in-depth analysis of these issues and it aims to provide a better understanding of the subject – what should be strived for, what is realistic to expect, and how to move forward towards a more integrated provision of transport infrastructure, services and management.

This introductory chapter sets the background for the in-depth consideration of integrated transport. In Section 2 a short overview of the need for integration is provided, and this is followed in Section 3 by some of the definitions of integrated transport commonly used in the literature. Section 4 describes the structure and content of the book, and the last section provides some further thoughts before the individual chapters take over.

2. What to integrate and why?

Integration is normally required where a system is made up of several parts and the elements need to complement each other so that the whole system can work more efficiently. Integration in this respect can be considered as physical, operational or managerial. The same approach can be applied to the transport network where the physical network consists of many sub-networks and a large variety of users, operators and governing institutions. All these elements need to be integrated to provide an efficient transport system that serves the transport needs of society at minimal (environmental) cost. Whether this integration is possible and how it can be achieved is returned to later.

The transport system is often described as the blood system of society and especially that of the economy. This is indeed a good description, as virtually every economic activity and most social activities involve the transport of people and goods from one place to another in some form or another. Alongside transport’s contribution to society, through its social and economic benefits, transport activities also entail a cost to society, mainly in the form of negative environmental impacts. The contribution of transport to climate change is probably the most important of these negative impacts, but other impacts such as air pollution are also substantial. Getting the ‘right’ mix of these components is a key element of sustainability. Without dwelling on the different definitions of sustainability, a transport system that can generate more or the same socio-economic benefits but at a lower (environmental) cost should be considered more sustainable.

As the transport system has grown and developed over time, and as new modes of transport have been introduced, specialization has taken place in which those involved with the supply, operation and management of the transport system have tended to focus on one or a limited sub-set of the transport system components. The current organization of the transport system became focused around a specific network (road, rail, air) and individual modes of transport. This specialization in turn and over time has become embedded in the institutions set in place to control and manage the transport system. From the supply aspect, the concept of the whole journey from the origin to the destination is often forgotten, as attention concentrates on the main section of the journey (for example the rail journey or the flight). So the need for multimodal travel to get from one place to another in most cases is often overlooked, and individual journeys are considered in a simple way as a single mode when many journeys involve more than one mode of travel.

This process or specialization (by mode) has taken place on the supply side of the transport system, but of course not on the demand side (i.e. from users’ perspectives). People and goods still need to get from one place to another and in what they perceive to be the ‘best’ possibility available to them. In other words, from the demand perspective the choice of mode (and therefore network) is made based on the overall journey, considering all the elements that are involved in travelling from the origin to the destination. In this assessment, the weakest part of the journey, or the most difficult one, is often outside the main mode used (e.g. getting to or from the rail station).

This mismatch between the priority of users to just ‘get there’ (they or their goods) and the priority of suppliers to meet this need, but only for a specific part of the journey and often only after a choice of mode and network has been made, means that sustainability objectives have been compromised. This specialization did not only take place within the transport system, but is generic to many sectors and other elements and systems which are part of the everyday socio-economic activity. For example, transport often plays a major role in determining the levels of demand for health and education services (at a particular location), but this important element in the overall decision is often ignored by the authorities in terms of where they choose to locate hospitals and schools.

The lack of a coherent approach to the supply and organization of the transport system results in two adverse effects which compromise the goals of sustainability as defined above. First, too much travel is being generated to achieve a certain level of socio-economic benefit or welfare, and this travel results in higher (environmental) costs. Second, the amount of transport or travel activities that is necessary to support the desired level of welfare, or desired level of activities that entail transport in some form, results in higher than necessary (environmental) costs. This outcome also results from the best use not being made of the available capacity on the transport system, as transport is not provided and consumed in the most efficient way. To make transport more sustainable, the amount of transport or travel needs to be reduced, and the level of transport activity that is still needed must be undertaken in the most efficient way.

One of the implications of the mismatch described above between the need to simply ‘get there’, and the focus of the supply on just one part of the transport system results in the car being seen as being more attractive than other modes of transport with respect to travel time and convenience. When wanting to travel people see just one transport network that offers different travel/transport possibilities to get from one place to another, and they will normally opt to use the least costly option (in terms of time, money, convenience and reliability). Where integration of transport sub-networks is absent on the supply side, it is not surprising that the private car is usually seen as being the more attractive choice, as it involves the use of only one of the transport sub-networks and it provides door-to-door transport. There are two downsides to this. First, in most cases the car is much less advantageous in terms of emissions of both greenhouse gases and air pollutants, a feature which at present is not part of the decision of mode and network choice. Second, car transport normally requires more capacity (for a certain level of demand), especially given that many car journeys are used to carry only one person. When the capacity to meet that demand is not supplied, congestion appears with further detrimental effects on the quality of transport and sustainability. This book will argue that better integration, in different forms and at different levels, is probably the most important requirement to change mode choice and to make all modes of transport more attractive.

Although integrated transport as a policy goal has a long history, this subject has not been central to the debate. Indeed integration has probably always been one element in public policy with respect to any matter and sector. As Pressman and Wildavsky (1984, p. 133, cited in Chapter 2 in this volume) write, ‘no suggestion for reform is more common than “what we need is more co-ordination”’. Even when integration did get the attention and priority it deserved, the results in practice were usually far from satisfactory, with the transport system being as fragmented (at the different levels) and as unimodal-focused as before, and usually with more infrastructure in place.

Two notable examples are the UK and EU official transport policies in recent years. In 1998 the UK government published a new transport White Paper called ‘A new deal for transport: better for everyone’, which is also known as the Integrated Transport White Paper, as it was based on the notion of integrated transport (DETR, 1998). One recommendation of the White Paper was for the creation of the Commission for Integrated Transport, which was supposed to bring together all stakeholders in the transport system. A few years later the UK government translated the integrated transport policy envisaged in the White Paper into a concrete plan known as the Ten Year Plan. Through better integration the White Paper aimed to reduce car use and increase public transport use. The minister responsible for transport at the time famously said, ‘I will have failed, if in five years time there are not many [more] people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It’s a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it’. Even before the ten-year period ended, it was apparent that very little modal shift had taken place from car to other modes, and that the transport system in 2010 is as disintegrated as it was in 2000 (Docherty and Shaw, 2008). Somewhat similarly to the UK, in 2001 the EU published a Transport White Paper at the heart of which was also the aim to achieve modal shift partly through a more integrated transport system (CEC, 2001), but there has been little subsequent evidence of modal shift.

There seem to be three main challenges to greater integration. First, the supply of transport needs to be integrated through realizing the role of the transport system to provide transport from place of origin (the house or place of production) to destination (work or shop). Transport should not be seen from bus stop to bus terminal or from one airport to another, as passengers rarely start or end their journeys there. Second, there is a need to integrate transport considerations into the decision-making (at different levels) concerning the location of all the activities that generate demand for transport in one way or another. A third level of integration is necessary if the two others are to get real priority, and that is integration of the institutions responsible for the transport network and activity, and those responsible or involved in other activities which require some transport.

These three levels of integration encompass integration of numerous elements within and outside the transport system and integration at different levels and in many forms.

Many of these myriad components of integration are considered in the different chapters of the book, and they are also captured in many definitions of integration. Some of these definitions are now presented and discussed.

3. Some definitions of integrated transport

There are many different definitions that can help in understanding the integrated transport system or integrated transport policy. At the basic level, integration will refer to integration of the different elements within the transport system. This would cover integration within one of the transport system sub-networks (e.g. the rail network). At a higher level this will refer to integration of several of these sub-networks (e.g. integrating rail and urban bus services). Integration within the transport network often relates to the terms ‘multimodal’ and ‘intermodal’, which are used interchangeably, but in general reflect the use of more than one mode of transport within one journey (of passengers or goods) and/or the consideration of more than one mode of transport (e.g. in transport policy). In relation to these terms, the EU recently adopted the term ‘co-modality’, which is defined as ‘the efficient use of different modes on their own and in combination, [which] will result in an optimal and sustainable utilization of resources’ (CEC, 2006, p. 4). Integration within the transport system strongly suggests a focus on the interchange or transfer element of a journey that consists of a chain of trips.

In this book, integration within the transport system is considered to be essential. But to achieve it, integration at other levels is required and thus a broader definition of integration is needed. Such an approach to integration is necessary to promote efficient trans...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 The need for integration in transport policy and practice
• Part 1 The main issues in integrated transport
• Part 2 Application of integrated transport policy
• Part 3 Assessing the potential benefits of integrated transport policies
• Part 4 The challenges in achieving integrated transport at city, regional and national levels
• Index