Mayor's Transport Strategy: What and Why

The "Statement of Intent" for the New Mayoral Transport Strategy has now been released. In the posts in this series, we will attempt to summarise its content. The full document can be found here.

The new Mayoral Transport Strategy (MTS), which was announced in “Way To Go” back in November 2008 and of which this is the opening salvo, is timetabled to spend time before the London Assembly this Spring, and available for consultation by the general public in the autumn.

The intention is to publish it in "early" 2010.

A new strategy is needed, it is claimed, because although significant milestones have been reached in terms of road and rail improvements, Oyster and cycling, there are still a number of major areas on which attention needs to be focused – congestion, air quality and climate change being the three mentioned.

A new strategy is needed, it is argued, because of the number of key transport-related events that have happened since the last MTS was published back in 2001 – the Olympics, Crossrail and the new (newish – lets be honest) Thameslink project being namechecked.

The new MTS, it is claimed, is intended to be less prescriptive than the last, in order to provide the Boroughs with more input into the Capital’s transport solutions (such as through the changes to the Local Implementation Plan strategy we covered recently).

The Results of "Way To Go"

260 Responses were received in response to "Way To Go" - 107 from stakeholders, 138 from the general public and 15 from businesses:

In general, there was broad support for all of the Mayor’s guiding principles, in particular ‘keeping people informed’, ‘working with boroughs’, ‘integration of planning and transport’ and ‘developing Outer London’ (although some pointed out that this should not be at the expense of central or Inner London). There was support for protecting the environment, particularly in regard to CO2 emissions and air quality. The promotion of walking and cycling was welcomed across the board.

This "positive" response means that intention is to build the new MTS on the ideas laid down in "Way To Go" and the London Plan.

The MTS is intended to address the following goals, each of which we'll cover in more detail shortly:

• Supporting economic development and population growth
• Providing a better quality of life for all Londoners
• Ensuring the safety and security of Londoners
• Improving transport opportunities for all
• Tackling climate change
• Delivering the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games