The facts
Client: Cumbria
County Council Carlisle City Council
Location: Carlisle
Services: Interview surveys.
Journey time surveys, Manual traffic counts, Automatic traffic
counts, ANPR origin-destination surveys, Transport Modelling,
Project Management
Project Value: £280,000
Start/Completion: April 2009 — May
2010
The project
The
North West Development Agency, together with Cumbria & Carlisle
City Councils are in the process of developing ambitious
development proposals for Carlisle.
Traffic and congestion is increasingly seen as a
barrier to the achievement of these proposals and as a result
the need to develop a transport model that would address the City’s
transport issues was identified.
Capita Symonds was commissioned to develop a transport model
that would be capable of appraising and evaluating
different transport and development proposals incorporating road,
rail, bus, cycle and walk movements. The project was very much a
combined transport and public realm initiative aimed at making a
significant assessment of the movement of different modes of
traffic within Carlisle, and required a multi-disciplinary
technical team coupled with a robust project management
approach.
A highways model of the city and its main travel to work areas
was developed using SATURN. The model was successfully calibrated
and validated using traffic flow, screenlines and journey time
information to current DMRB/WebTAG guidelines.
The study involved a large amount of data collection
including:
- Household and face-to-face interviews
- Public transport surveys
- Journey time surveys
- Link and junction counts
- O-D surveys using ANPR
The model covers nearby urban areas with significant numbers of
trips to/from Carlisle. The model includes market segmentation and
a number of travel modes. A specific car parking element and
time period choice was also incorporated. VISUM was used for
the multi-modal element of the work.
The department for transport’s DIADEM computer program was used
to develop the demand and mode choice elements of the model. The
matrices were ultimately developed from a combination
of interview data and national Census Travel to Work data.
The strategic multi-modal model has now provided the client with
the ability to develop and assess a much more wide range of
transport and development proposals.