East Midlands Mayor’s Transport Plan
The Mayor is preparing a transport plan for the whole of the East Midlands – Derbyshire Nottinghamshire, Nottingham, and Derby – for the next 15 years. The first consultation on her plan is now closed – HVCA’s response to it can be seen here. We were strongly supportive of its aim and policies, and particularly the Mayor’s three transport priorities. The first priority is ‘To make travelling by public transport easier and more affordable’, the second is to ‘Connect communities by giving people travel choices that go beyond reliance on the private car, improving health’ and the third is ‘A reliable system – repairing our highways’.
The first two priorities chime closely with HVCA’s work to improve rural bus services by adopting Swiss-style public transport – Switzerland in the Peak District [link] – and to reduce the impact of car journeys through offering better walking wheeling and cycling facilities – Derbyshire’s Active Travel Masterplan. Both priorities need to be joined up to create a well-connected travel system that offers genuine choice to using the car not only for residents but also for visitors to major local attractions such as the Castleton caverns, Mam Tor, the Derwent Dams, nature, and trails.
The Mayor is particularly keen to reduce congestion and connect communities through reliable public transport that allows young people to travel independently. Her plan has made a good start on achieving those outcomes. The only drawback will be the amount of cash she has available to invest in them. The East Midlands has been awarded £2 billion for transport projects over the next 5 years, but the majority of it is capital (£ 1.97 billion: £76 million revenue), which cannot be spent on improving bus services. That requires revenue funding but the 5-year grant only allowed £76 million revenue. For her Bus Service Improvement Plan, the Mayor has also received £21.8 million revenue each year for the next 3 years.
