“Sometimes, these new places take 10 years to build, and we need to design them for the world of tomorrow, not using five or ten-year-old policies on sustainability and planning which lock in car dependency.”
Sustainable modes of transport are top of the priority list for Bristol-based Matt McFeat, an Associate Director at our Bristol office who this year notches up 24 years in the traffic engineering and transport planning industry.
Day to day the qualified civil engineer spends much of his time designing new or improved streets, shaping masterplans and providing transport planning advice to help his clients get planning permission.
One of his most high-profile projects is Brabazon, the vast new 3,675 home mixed use neighbourhood being delivered on the former Filton Airfield in South Gloucestershire by YTL Developments. He helped shape the vision for the new neighbourhood, which will be criss-crossed by new walking and cycling links with connections to improved off-site routes and will benefit from a new railway station, metrobus and bus routes and a range of town centre facilities, minimising the need for people to drive and giving homeowners a real choice about whether to own a private car.
So how best to ensure other developments follow Brabazon’s lead, where cycling and walking are the natural choice for short journeys, and public transport is accessible?
“A site’s location and its context has a massive influence on its sustainable travel characteristics. However, careful land use planning and early provision of high-quality infrastructure also have a significant role to play. I think local authorities need policies in place that clearly recognise the elements which make sustainable sites work and how these elements can be funded and delivered in a timely fashion so that the first and last person to move into a development has equal opportunities to use a bike or bus for their commute, the school drop-off, a trip to the shops or an evening out.” Matt replies.
“Too often sites are allocated or identified for development without sufficient consideration about how we will enable people to choose a sustainable travel option, with the delivery of the right infrastructure often requiring works which lie outside the control of most developers or land owners, meaning that sustainable and active travel provision is often delivered at the minimum level required to clear a hurdle in the planning process rather than delivering meaningful change in peoples travel options. At Brabazon the transport strategy benefited from early work undertaken by South Gloucestershire Council who prepared the Cribbs Patchway New Neighbourhood SPD which identified a range of off-site infrastructure and a method to fund it”
Having recently worked with Local Authorities to help steer policy development around sustainable travel and the role of transport within the climate emergency response, Matt believes that there is a real risk that we fall into old patterns of focusing on vehicle capacity and congestion because electric cars are being sold as a panacea to environmental issues.
“We can’t all just switch to electric cars because it’s not going to solve the problem. It will take a long time to transition 39 million vehicles to electric, and it is widely suggested that there isn’t enough energy generation to sustain a vehicle fleet of this size, let alone sustainable energy. There’s a clear need for electric vehicles as part of our transport mix, but their use should be focused on mid-range and longer distance trips where it’s harder for public transport to meet everyone’s needs. Even if we all rapidly move to EVs there is still a need to reduce vehicle miles driven by 20 – 50% in the UK in order to meet the net zero commitments: if we all stopped driving for all trips under 5 miles this would only reduce mileage drive by 15% so there is a long way to go.”
Matt thinks that Active Travel England, the Department for Transport’s new cycling and walking executive agency, will help the case: “As a statutory consultee in the planning process, it means there will be a level of scrutiny applied around active travel that we largely haven’t had to date, which has only got to be good for driving up standards. You don’t always get that push from officers, councillors or the public, so having another informed consultee in the process will be helpful.”
Matt grew up in Cornwall, and with his parents bringing up him and his four younger brothers alongside running a hotel 24/7 he quickly became aware that being able and prepared to walk and cycle to places was very beneficial.
“Growing up in rural North Cornwall with very limited travel options, my bike gave me the independence to go to places and see friends as I pleased. I took this freedom for granted at the time, but I now consider the ability to cycle a key life skill which I have passed onto my children.”
Although Matt has always loved cycling, a career in transport planning and street engineering was never part of the plan.
“I actually fell into it by complete accident. I originally went to university in London to study product design but it didn’t work out, so I ended up stacking shelves and working in my parents hotel for a while. Fortunately, my grandparents in Bristol spotted an advert in the local paper for an apprenticeship as a highway technician at consultant engineers Oscar Faber, which has since been bought by US engineering giant AECOM. I had no idea that transport planning existed, and I’d certainly never thought about how roundabouts came to be!”
The apprenticeship was a successful move in more ways than one. While there he met his future wife Philippa, with whom he now has three children. He has also stayed put in the industry and loves his job: “You get to shape the world around you. There’s a huge delay between us doing the work and it becoming a reality – it can be ten years. But it’s amazing when you go to places which you helped to plan or design, and they are working how you envisaged them to.”
At Oscar Faber Matt experienced the full breadth of the transportation industry, from helping to code a multi-modal strategic Saturn model for Bath, to counting cars in the rain and through to the detailed design and site supervision of a new signal controlled junction.
From Oscar Faber he moved to Colin Buchanan and Partners as Principal Traffic Engineer, mainly working on the design of significant intersections and the development complex VISSIM models for various locations in the Capital for Transport for London. It was also at Buchanan’s that Matt was first introduced to green travel plans and had the opportunity to work with a number of colleagues who were at the forefront of sustainable transport thinking in the early 2000’s who helped to spark his interest in sustainable transport. A move to Key Transport Consultants gave him wider experience of transport development planning, and an increased focus on local projects with local clients including Southmead Super Hospital and the development of parking and sustainable travel policies for both the University of the West of England and Bristol University.
He joined PJA’s Bristol office in 2016 not long after it had been opened by director Jon Tricker: “I’d heard about PJA’s founder Phil Jones, and knew he’d got a good reputation across the industry and that he’d been involved in things like the production of Manual for Streets. His name was attached to high quality design and active travel which interested me and it also looked like a great opportunity to grow a team.”
He and Jon started off the Bristol office in a small shipping container at Box Works near Bristol Temple Meads but outgrew it within a year. They now have an eight strong team specialising in transport development planning, active travel, placemaking and ground engineering based at Brew House on Jacob Street.
During his 24-year career, Matt says he’s seen steps in the right direction towards greener transport and more people-focused streets but hopes that more change can come quickly:
“We’ve got a climate emergency looming and we know that transport has a significant impact on the environment, yet around 60 per cent of all car journeys are less than five miles long – distances most people can easily walk and cycle but we are not delivering the enabling infrastructure quickly enough. If we can solve this short journey issue, then we’ll solve a lot of the problems around congestion and the amount of space given over to cars within our built environment and go some way to meeting the transport challenges around climate change.”
“There’s certainly a lot more appreciation for the need for active travel and a more sympathetic approach to traffic engineering, where we’re not just focussed on capacity and parking provision. It’s more about making streets that are places which allow everyone, young and old, to move around safely and independently, and which can help to improve air quality, and which benefit our mental and physical health. I think the idea that car is king in central urban areas is now passing and we are being challenged to think very carefully about how our limited public realm space can be made to work for everyone – whether travelling by foot, bike, e-scooter or by public transport – moving in and out of our towns and cities nice and efficiently”
“But in terms of the measures in place to drive more change, I think a lot of local authorities are falling short of where we need to be, often as a result of political leadership unwilling to make seemingly unpopular, but necessary decisions. It’s so hard to change the fundamentals of the way we live, but so much more can be done and must be done to end our reliance on private cars to safeguards our children’s futures.”
“One of my greatest joys is going on cycle rides with my family around Bristol and North Somerset, although cycling with children has certainly opened my eyes to danger that some drivers are prepared – often unconsciously – to impose on novice cyclists and the benefits of appropriate infrastructure.”
“During the Covid lockdowns I would often take advantage of the quieter roads to go cycling with my girls, and it was amazing how much more pleasant it was with the fear of conflict removed, it transformed the rural lanes near our house into quiet active travel lanes, where we could ride carefree and we were able to cover some significant distances. Once time limits on exercise were lifted my youngest, who was 6 at the time, happily cycled 20 miles in a day, and if she can do that most of us can.”
Project highlights
Project: New Brabazon neighbourhood on the former Filton Airfield, north Bristol. Largest brownfield site in the South West, delivering up to 3,675 homes, employment, community and leisure facilities, town centre and the new Bristol Arena
Client: YTL
PJA’s remit: transport planning, sustainable transport strategy development and street design advice.
Matt says: We’ve worked on this site every year since 2017. It’s not a typical development site and there has always been an aspiration from the client to do something different and ground-breaking here. There’s a real focus on placemaking within the development parcels and we’ve work hard with leading architects and landscape architects to design streets where the space for vehicles has been reduced to a minimum in order to maximise the space for people and planting. PJA helped to develop the vision for the site and it’s so satisfying to see our design codes and parameters being followed through to delivery.
Project: Torbay – public realm schemes at Station Square, Paignton; The Strand, Torquay and Torbay Road Paignton
PJA’s remit: transport, highway engineering, landscape and placemaking services to transform these spaces
Client: Torbay Development Agency
Matt says: We have been working with Torbay Council and the TDA on these schemes over the last 5 – 6 years, bringing these schemes from concept through to detailed design. It is quite an exciting time at the moment as the works to The Strand in Torquay are currently being tendered for construction and it will be great to see how it transforms the space around the harbour which is one of the jewels in Torbay’s crown. We’re also involved in the engineering of Station Square in Paignton, and we are leading on the design of urban realm improvements on Torbay Road, Paignton which is in an early phase of design and has just gone to consultation to seek input from the community. The TDA have been successful in securing Future High Streets and Town Deal funding which will allow the delivery of these scheme over the next two years.
Project: Buckover Garden Village: proposed garden village development which could provide 3,000 homes and up to 3,000 jobs in a new sustainable settlement to the east of Thornbury and north of Bristol.
PJA’ s remit: Transport strategy, active travel connections, street design, community engagement – PJA are also providing a range of land development services including flood risk and drainage advice.
Client: St Modwen and the Tortworth Estate
Matt says: We have been involved in the development of proposals here for the past couple of years and have provided a range of inputs to support allocation of the site through the West of England Joint Spatial Plan (JSP). Following the withdrawal of the JSP in 2019 we’re still at the promotion stage, but we’ve done some interesting work to develop the masterplan and to test the transport strategy. We have developed preliminary designs for the new streets and we have considered how the development integrates with the A38 which passes through the site. The development is built on 10-minute neighbourhood principles meaning that services and facilities will be within a 10 minute walk or cycle rider for everyone living or working here.
It’s a semi-rural site and so we’re exploring the opportunities to create sustainable connections including separate cycle facilities to the neighbouring town and to Bristol so that we don’t lock everyone into car dependency.
Project: North Keynsham, Bath and North East Somerset: low carbon transport strategy
PJA’s remit: Develop a low carbon transport strategy to enable development without increasing highway network capacity
Client: Bath & North East Somerset Council
Matt says: “We looked at retrofitting a high-quality walking and cycling network to the existing town alongside strategic public transport improvements, in order to take some existing car trips off the road network to free up capacity for a new development site with low levels of car ownership. Our approach is based on the idea of trip banking which means that if you can enable some of the existing population to use their cars less, you can free up highway capacity to accommodate some new car trips generated by a new low car ownership development in the same area. The net transport impact is a lot lower than it would be if you just bolted a new ‘business-as-usual’ development onto the existing town without considering wider connectivity. There’s a huge range of benefits, not just reduced traffic congestion and savings on building new roads and bigger junctions, but for health, wellbeing, biodiversity and climate resilience and it gives people more independence away from cars.”
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