Presidential Roundtable summary: a national transport strategy for England

Senior figures from national and regional transport bodies and industry experts came together to examine whether England would benefit from having a national transport strategy.

The current fragmentation of transport planning and functions between different bodies doesn’t produce coherently planned networks and services.

This can lead to lower efficiency and missed opportunities to unlock wider social, economic and environmental benefits from infrastructure investment. The session discussed how a national transport strategy could help address those challenges.

It explored some of the questions that would need to be answered before developing a strategy for England.

These included identifying the right geographical scope, integration with other bodies and existing strategies, and how a strategy can be made resilient to political change.

A strategy would need to provide a long-term vision while enabling delivery of incremental benefits and being flexible enough to respond to uncertain future transport needs.

The discussion emphasised the importance of ensuring a national transport strategy is outcomes focused, place-based and user-centered.

This could be enabled by planning transport up from a regional perspective and ensuring a strong role for England’s subnational transport bodies in developing and implementing a national strategy.