By Tom Austin-Morgan

In the ever-evolving landscape of mobility planning, the concept of Triple Access Planning (TAP) - encompassing physical mobility (transport systems), spatial proximity (land use), and digital connectivity (telecommunications) - has emerged as a cornerstone of future transport planning initiatives. 

“Historically, when the economy grew traffic grew,” explains Lyons, Mott MacDonald Professor of Future Mobility at UWE Bristol and CIHT VP. “But, with the digital age arriving in the 1990s, and especially since the pandemic, those lines parted.

“Why would you drive to and from a meeting when you've got the opportunity to do it much more quickly and efficiently, with a lower environmental footprint, digitally?”

Lyons says the pandemic shook the world up enough that siloed ways of thinking in the transport planning process have begun to be challenged and changed.

Conventional approaches to mobility planning, based on a forecast-led paradigm where transport planners predict the future of transport but often don’t follow up on or build towards it, have resulted in unrealised expectations concerning alleviating problems such as congestion and delivering economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

“That led us to a new transport planning paradigm which we called decide and provide,” says Lyons. “This suggests: ‘Let's be vision led instead of forecast led, but we also need to accommodate uncertainty.’”

Uncertainty in transport planning includes unpredictable change dynamics such as demographics, economic developments, locational choices, regulatory context, technological breakthroughs, travel demand, and stakeholder behaviour. 

Lyons and his team (made up of five academic institutions, seven European case study cities, two national transport agencies, and two consultancy firms) have undertaken a three-year project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, called Triple Access Planning for Uncertain Futures which has recently concluded with the publication of a handbook for practitioners on TAP.

He says these uncertainties can be explicitly considered in the plan, in terms of development and implementation.

“We can't just think in terms of road networks, bus corridors and frequency,” Lyons states. “Step back and ask, ‘How [do] people live their lives?’, ‘What part could digital play?’ This is also relevant to goods movement as well, particularly since the pandemic where online shopping boomed. That must be planned for unless we want to have safety issues arising from pavements being overrun with parked vehicles.

“You're not only looking at land use planning in a more thoughtful, joined up way. What about online hospital appointments? It's more than just giving people gigabit broadband connections in neighbourhoods that don't have it; ‘Can they afford it?’, ‘Do they have devices to use it?’, ‘Do they have digital literacy?’ That's a whole different sphere of expertise.”

However, Lyons explains this isn’t a revolution in transport planning, more it’s an evolution where looking through the lens of TAP can open opportunities in urban and rural planning. 

“It's about getting people to think across, outside, and between their silos, break down the barriers between their individual mental models and enable much greater receptiveness to different solutions, and maybe [act as] a catalyst for different conversations within an authority or with different stakeholders.”

As transport engineers and planners chart the course for future mobility, it’s imperative that digital accessibility remains at the forefront of their considerations. By embracing the principles of TAP and prioritising digital inclusion, they can pave the way for a more accessible, equitable, and sustainable transportation future.

Access the TAP handbook at CIHT

Glenn Lyons, Mott MacDonald Professor of Future Mobility at UWE Bristol; credit: Glenn Lyons