Lonely cul-de-sacs beckon if new housing developers ignore public transport

It is simply lazy thinking to allow an Americanisation of our towns and cities by ignoring the need for public transport

Public transport should be included in housing plans from an early stage (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Take a look at a typical brochure for a new housing development. For each home, there will be a garage, an off-street parking space, a promise of quiet, leafy streets. You’ll see a boast about short driving distance to parks, schools, shops. There will be little, if any, mention of public transport.

If you’re lucky, a housing developer might tell you the nearest train station is only a few miles away. But I would bet a large sum that you won’t be told anything about the mode used for 60 per cent of all public transport journeys in the UK – the bus.

Buses are crucial arteries linking Britain’s communities. They’re vital to social inclusion and to the economy. Every £1 invested in local buses pays back between £3 and £5 to local communities. Yet they’re oddly overlooked in the way we plan our towns and cities.

Nobody disputes the need for Britain to build more homes. The Government reckons we need an additional 300,000 a year to meet demand. We need to be smart, though, in where we put them, and how we design new estates to avoid a relentless reliance on the car.

An analysis of 20 new residential developments by a campaign group, Transport for New Homes, found that many are being built without footpaths and with very little green space, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that all the residents will go by car for even the shortest of journeys.

The cul-de-sac is the design a la mode of many developers – a dead-end street off a meandering central artery which is often too narrow for a bus to negotiate. Even if people want to walk out of the estate to catch a bus, pedestrian and cycle infrastructure is inadequate, with as much as 40% of total land area devoted to the needs of the automobile.

Only one of the 20 new estates – Cranbrook, east of Exeter – had a railway station built, after years of lobbying by the local authority. Many are being placed next to bypasses or link roads, or to out-of-town shopping centres and edge-of-town leisure facilities.

This type of planning creates soulless environments – pedestrians are a rare site, and those who do want to stroll to the pub might find themselves walking along the grass verges of motorways. And it’s environmentally problematic: 30 of our towns and cities have air pollution that breaches World Health Organisation limits, aggravated by the worst traffic jams in Europe.

A double-decker bus can take as many as 75 cars off the road, and an increasing proportion are adopting hybrid power or “clean diesel” fuel. Nearly one in four UK households has no access to a car. Even in families that do have vehicles, the youngest or oldest often have little independence, relying on relatives for lifts if no public tansport is available.

Unfortunately, on urban extensions and greenfield estates, bus infrastructure is rarely being given significant funding, which is in line with a wider pattern of neglect as councils tighten their belt: local authority support for bus services has dropped by 46 per cent since 2010 according to the Campaign for Better Transport, which has begun a laudable “Save our Buses” initiative.

It was encouraging to see some recognition of the importance of public transport from Philip Hammond in the Budget - pledging £650m to back town centre high streets, he insisted that some of the money needed to be used to improve public transport access. Not a bad investment, given that bus users make 1.4 billion shopping trips each year and spend £27bn.

At a time when loneliness is at the forefront of our political debate, those without access to a car are either excluded from these new communities or left with a prospect of being totally isolated. It is simply lazy thinking, and reckless planning, to allow an Americanisation of our towns and cities, with planners lighting candles at the altar of the automobile.

Go-Ahead now employs somebody with a specific remit of liaising with local developers on bus access. As a bus operator, if we can’t serve these new areas, it will only mean that more cars are on the road, contributing to congestion and lengthening commuting times.

It’s vital that public transport experts are brought in at an early stage in designing new estates. There are innovative solutions to be had: dedicated guided busways are becoming common in the Netherlands, providing swift, segregated paths to town centres. And park-and-ride schemes can be a positive half-way solution where housing is genuinely remote from urban areas.

Once built, a new house can, and should, last for a hundred years or more. We must consider these developments are part of a broader philosophy on what type of communities we want for the next generation. If we don’t, we may end up trapped in very lonely cul-de-sacs.

David Brown is chief executive of The Go-Ahead Group, one of Britain’s biggest public transport operators