While much is said about transport and the need for investment in it, there is little information about the performance of transport systems across cities. This, coupled with current and likely future demand generated from the growth of city-centre economies, is an important assessment to make when deciding on investment in new transport infrastructure.
To what extent is the lack of transport a barrier to city centre success? And do all cities need additional investment in new transport infrastructure?
Transport infrastructure is the permanent fixed network of assets that allow for people and goods to move easily such as roads, railways, ports and airports, as well as the vehicles and facilities to make use of and maintain them. Investment in new freight transport infrastructure that frees up capacity for more passenger services on existing rail lines should be considered in response to the findings of this report.
This report does not look at the maintenance of existing infrastructure, but this should be supported by government in line with the NIC. This section looks at data from the NIC that aims to provide a sense of how quickly the transport system in a city links people to job opportunities in city centres see Box 6. This includes travel by private car and public transport, and combines it with data on how people use the existing transport system to access city-centre jobs to understand where transport may be holding back growth.
Centre for Cities uses primary urban areas PUAs in its analysis of economic activty and how it is concentrated. The minimum journey time is calculated from each OA to the defined city centre for i the public transport option and the private vehicle option, and. The public transport option includes average waiting time for peak services. These outputs are divided by the time it would take to travel in a straight line from the start point to the city-centre destination at 50kph 31mph. A connectivity value of 1 is equivalent to being able to travel at 50kph in a straight line from origin to employment destination in the city centre.
