Happy New STPR!

I’m a big fan of Scotland’s current approach to transport. Given the Scottish Government’s commitment to the country being Net Zero by 2045 (5 years sooner than the UK Government’s legal obligation of 2050), it set a bold target of achieving a reduction in total car kms travelled per year of 20% by 2030 compared against pre-pandemic levels. It then published a Route Map to indicate how it would get there (which I reviewed in a LinkedIn article this time last year).

While it was too late for my Christmas stocking, the latest key policy publication from Transport Scotland is STPR2 – the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (dated 28 December 2022). This sets out investment plans for the next 20 years. The first STPR was published in 2008.

I saw that the Final Summary Report for STPR2 ran to 48 pages so thought I would take a look to start the New Year – a spot of continuing professional development if you like (see the new Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) CPD guidance). As you’ll see below, I didn’t find the Final Summary Report satisfactory so found myself having to dig deeper to try and get the clearer picture I was looking for.

What is STPR2?

STPR2 doesn’t quite trip of the tongue, does it? It can also be a bit tricky when governments’ publish a series of different documents to get a clear picture of how one relates to another.

The Route Map covers the period up to 2030, while STPR2 covers a period out to 2042; yet the former does not appear entirely subsumed within the latter – indeed the Route Map document “includes a range of non-transport policies interventions, including the provision of good connectivity and digital access to services” [emphasis added]. I’ve reproduced below the key image from the Route Map (p.8):

We’re told that STPR2 is a core part of the second National Transport Strategy’s (NTS2) Delivery Plan. However, the latter is produced annually. In the first of these STPR2 gets several mentions, presumably because producing STPR2 is a key stepping stone in delivering NTS2. In the second Delivery Plan (published in June last year) mention is made of the STPR2 Delivery Plan (a delivery plan for the delivery plan?).

My head’s hurting a bit now. I’m going to have to avoid any direct quotes from the STPR2 Final Summary Report (see p.46), but I think I am allowed without permission to quote from the STPR2 web page: “STPR2 provides an overview of transport investment, mainly infrastructure and other behavioural change recommendations, that are required to deliver the National Transport Strategy priorities and objectives of the Review” [emphasis added]. That seems to make things a bit clearer – so, as I understand it, STPR2 is only focused upon transport investment and is predominantly focused upon envisaged spending on ‘stuff’ rather than on a wider investment in measures such as fiscal and regulatory ones which could also be key to reducing car kms and in turn achieving Net Zero in 2045. So this is a major part of delivering NTS2 in terms of future expenditure but not the full investment picture.

What’s in the document?

The objectives or priorities for STPR2 are those of NTS2:

• Reducing Inequalities
• Taking Climate Action
• Helping Deliver Inclusive Economic Growth
• Improving our Health and Wellbeing

There is also a fifth STPR2 objective recognising the need to address safety and resilience of the transport system.

In essence the document sets out a series of 45 recommendations for how to deliver on these objectives, grouped under six themes. Each recommendation is a shortlisted investment option – but a strategic option, in most cases an option to be considered nationally with varying applicability of options across the different geographic regions of Scotland. More appraisal detail would follow in due course with STPR2 at this stage being reflective of the Strategic Business Case. It is also made clear that STPR2 is not a funded plan (or indeed costed it would appear).

What long-listed options were considered?

How to arrive at the strategic priorities for investment? We are told in the Final Summary Report that derived from widespread engagement activities came 14,000 ideas, from which 2,800 options were long-listed. Further boiling down got this to 1,400 standalone options. These were then grouped into 80 option types. These in turn were reduced down to the 45 recommended options. The Final Summary Report does not explain much more than this.

Such detail can, however, be found in the STPR2 final technical report. On page 49 is a tabulation of groupings of the 1428 standalone options. The greatest share of these (20%) concerns active travel. Shares for rail and road are next largest at 14% and 13% respectively. Since these are groupings of standalone options I’m not clear how the following groupings can all be mutually exclusive: bus, rail, public transport, mass-transit. What is public transport when it’s not bus or rail, and what is mass-transit when it’s not public transport? I’ll have to leave that there as that would require more digging than I have time for.

We’re told in the Final Technical Report that we can find a full list of out of scope options in Appendix A. In actual fact, Appendix A only runs to two and a half pages and is not a full list but rather a summary of the sorts of options that have been deemed out of scope because they are not within the gift of the Scottish Government (alone) to deliver. Without the full list we don’t really get a sense of how much else might be bubbling away out there beyond the 45 STPR2 recommendations. Top of the types of out of scope options are local roads and car parks. The delivery of digital connectivity is out of scope; and funding, fares and subsidies are out of scope, as are changes relating to legislation and regulation. Also out of scope are committed projects (but we’re not told which these are in this short Appendix, although there is mention of the A9 and A96 dualling at the end of Appendix F).

So, I’m left with the following frustrations: (i) I don’t really know what sorts of suggestions and in what quantities came forward that might have been relevant to addressing the NTS2 objectives but which were sidelined as ‘out of scope’; and (ii) the Scottish Government seems to be fighting to address its laudable targets with one hand tied behind its back because of dependence upon Westminster.

I’ll also add a third frustration on options: the main Final Technical Report has a meagre three instances of the term ‘biodiversity’. The term is non-existent in the Final Summary Report. Yet on 19 December 2022 the latest United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) drew to a close with agreement reached on “halting and reversing nature loss, including putting 30 per cent of the planet and 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030”. We are in a nature emergency and I might have hoped to see some biodiversity options offered up to ensure our transport systems - and the land-take they represent and affect - are being invested in to help reverse nature loss. Perhaps we will hear more on this in the time ahead.

Uncertainty

The term ‘scenario’ does not exist in the Final Summary Report; the term ‘uncertain’ only appears three times. I find this disappointing, especially since in the Final Technical Report there are details of the scenario analysis undertaken for STPR2 to deal with uncertainty. Not important enough to mention in the Summary Report? Having recently reviewed the UK Department for Transport’s new 2022 Road Traffic Projections, I’m inclined to think this IS important. What I want to know is how scenario analysis has been used within the STPR2 work (to date). More is said in the Final Technical Report and – when you dig even deeper – in its Appendix F (‘Approach to Scenario Planning’).

What we do know is the following. Six scenarios were initially developed – three different spatial economic growth futures and for each of these two travel behaviour variants. It was found that the differences due to travel behaviour variants dwarfed the economic variation. As a result only two travel behaviour scenarios are considered for STPR2 appraisal: a high growth one where there is no policy ambition to reduce car km travelled; and a low growth one where the policy ambition is in place. Appendix F tells us more about the assumptions made for each scenario.

I was amused to see the high growth scenario include an assumption that by 2050 40% of the car fleet would be made up of fully autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile the DfT’s technology scenario assumes 50% of private cars on our roads are fully autonomous by 2047, and at full or near full saturation by 2060. It’s uncertain I guess! In the low growth scenario for STPR2 it is assumed that fully autonomous vehicles don’t even make it to market by 2050. Just a thought – since the take-up or not of autonomous vehicles is within the gift of government to influence (once they are technologically feasible) why are we entertaining future high traffic growth scenarios that are being enabled by autonomous vehicles?

What I’m currently unclear on (but looking forward to being enlightened about) is whether or not and how these two scenarios have influenced the homing in on the 45 recommendations set out in STPR2. My understanding is that the low growth scenario is reflective of achieving the 20% target for reduction in car kms by 2030 and national decarbonisation of Scotland overall by 2045. That being the case this is both a possible and preferable future and one dependent upon policy interventions of the sort STPR2 is addressing. It’s a ‘do something’ scenario when set against the high growth ‘do nothing’ scenario. Or is it? Is the intention to assess the 45 recommendations, or have they already been assessed, against the high growth scenario to see to what extent these shape the future towards the low growth one?

In any case, I remain frustrated that the Final Summary Report (and possibly even the Final Technical Report) has not been seen as an appropriate place to make this clear (or clear enough for me at least).

Ambiguous score card

In the Final Summary Report a table is presented which lists the 45 recommendations and indicates which of the five objectives each recommendation ticks. Most of the recommendations tick most if not all of the objectives. I assume this is telling me overall that this is a strong shortlist that is well-aligned to the objectives set. I’d be fine with this if I better understood the appraisal process including the handling of uncertainty (as considered above), and if this table gave me enough of a handle on why ticks are awarded or not. Here are some examples of head scratching from me concerning this table:

• Why does investment in demand responsive transport and mobility as a service not address the safety and resilience objective when smart, integrated public ticketing does?
• Why doesn’t zero emissions vehicles and infrastructure transition support sustainable economic growth?
• Why doesn’t decarbonisation of the bus network support sustainable economic growth while decarbonisation of the rail network does?
• Why does Future Intelligent Transport Systems tick all the objectives but Intelligent Transport Systems renewal and replacement only tick three of the five? If we are renewing and replacing them, surely they become Future ITS and tick all the boxes?!

The 45 recommendations

Most of the Final Summary Report goes into more detail concerning 45 recommendations grouped into six themes. I read through all of this and it provides a helpful picture of the overall investment priorities (at least those mainly focused infrastructure investment and within the gift of the Scottish Government to deliver). Some of the thoughts I had in reading related to the issues I have already considered above. Some remaining points for me are as follows:

• Improving active travel infrastructure may be a necessary part of encouraging more walking, wheeling and cycling but is unlikely to be sufficient, which still leaves a gap to be filled from beyond STPR2 I would assume.
• Influencing travel choices and behaviour more broadly relies (within the gift of STPR2) principally on infrastructure and service improvements – i.e. investment in carrots rather than in sticks.
• Improved access to affordable public transport once again may be necessary but may not be sufficient to achieve the levels of behaviour change implicit in the 20% target for reducing car km travelled by 2030.
• The Final Summary Report gives us no sense of what behaviour changes are being assumed to happen as a result of the investments above or indeed what changes in use of modes beyond the private car would marry up with a 20% reduction in car kms per year being achieved in seven years’ time (notwithstanding that STPR2 is looking out beyond 2030).
• I’m left wondering how much heavy lifting is also being expected from the non-transport options and the out-of-scope transport options that are not reflected in the 45 recommendations?
• Given STPR2’s focus on infrastructure, the decarbonisation theme is predominantly technology-fix in nature, focused upon reducing and removing tailpipe emissions from transport when used (albeit that options in the other themes could help in reducing car kms and hence emissions).

Closing remarks

You’ll have seen from the above that I find myself with some unanswered questions. Overall, I feel I now have a better familiarity with STPR2 and how it finds its place within the bigger picture, but I’d like to be clearer (hopefully comments in response to this article will help!).

I remain a fan of Scotland’s approach to transport and perhaps I underestimated the time needed to fully get my head around what STPR2 represents. The challenge I throw down at the end is this. The UK Government was found wanting last year by the High Court in that its Net Zero Strategy was deemed unlawful – it was not sufficiently clear how the strategy would ensure compliance with the legal decarbonisation requirements. I wonder whether or not if the Route Map and STPR2 were together put to a similar test they would pass it?

Keep blazing the trail Scotland – this is difficult territory but the appetite of Transport Scotland to get to grips with it continues to be a source of inspiration for me.