Carbon Assessment Tool query and support
Hi,
if anyone else is currently using this tool to look at future scenarios then I'd love to hear from you and how are going about it. At the moment we are creating our business-as-usual scenario. The immediate query I have is on intervention BC1 Area-wide travel planning/ mobility management which is defined as 'Long-term management strategy to promote and encourage sustainable travel choice in specific neighbourhoods or localities'. Initially I thought it referred to low traffic neighbourhoods but that is covered in PC5 - LTNs. What does BC1 refer to then?
I'm sure other queries will occur. Be good to know which officers at other local authorities are working on this.
Cheers,
Kieran
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Hi - good question - i think you will need to pass that back to WSP as the policy levers are based alot on WSP professional judgement about the scale of effect. I think it very important that if the tool is used and reported to stakeholders, members, that it is crystal clear what judgements have been applied.
Caveats too - for example with the BC1 example you just gave, you don't know what scale this would practically look like on the ground in your authority area, whether it would be successful, whether it would be affordable. Does BC1 look like a £1m pa. scheme to get the effect judged to be had by WSP in the tool? Or a £10m pa. scheme? More? It isn't a criticism of the playbook tool - we did all this already at KCC using our own county-wide modelling traffic forecasting and emissions forecasting, and had to apply similar levels of judgement in that process about what the effect of things could be.
The key thing though is we are completely clear about what we have assumed the effect in non-emissions terms are e.g. this scenario would get 10,000 extra cycle trips a day, or 5,000 bus trips a day, and the effect on emissions would be in the region of x, y, z etc. What we have found though is that it is EV take up rate in Kent which by far and away has any significant effect on emissions, and that is principally driven by central government policy.
So our message is there is not a great deal we can do that has a significant impact - we can achieve smaller wins, but we need government to provide funding in the first instance. We can't shift journeys to bus and cycling and walking without government telling us what money we are going to have and therefore what scale of change we are likely to be able to drive. So we have set out a range that we think is realistic compared to our BAU - see pic.
We are looking forward to using the playbook further in the future. Hope this helps Kieran and hope your use of the playbook goes well. Post again with what you did and found - very keen to see.