PJA was commissioned by East Herts District Council to prepare the Transport Assessment to accompany the planning application for this development.
East Herts District Council have aspirations to redevelop an area of Bishop’s Stortford town centre to provide a mixed use cultural quarter. To facilitate this, the existing ‘Causeway’ car park on the site will need to be closed.
East Herts District Council therefore plan to build a new 581-space multi-storey car park on the site of the existing ‘Northgate End’ car park. This would lead to a total uplift of 197 spaces. Alongside the proposed car park, the council also intend to build a multi-use games area, 396sqm commercial space and 15 residential units.
The main challenge that PJA identified was ensuring the safe and efficient operation of the A1250, which runs between the proposed multi-storey car park and the proposed cultural quarter / town centre, particularly in relation to modelled queue lengths and pedestrian connectivity.
Extensive modelling was undertaken by PJA using LINSIG to assess the increase in queue lengths associated with the development proposals when compared to a ‘Do Nothing’ scenario. PJA concluded that, whilst junction would operate over capacity in both scenarios, some arms performed materially better in the ‘with development’ scenario. Taking into consideration background traffic growth, the modelling results showed that the impact of the proposals could not be considered severe in the context of Paragraph 32 of the National Planning Policy Framework.
Following lengthy discussions and the preparation of a number of technical documents by PJA, Hertfordshire County Council Highways accepted the conclusions of the assessment work and stated that they do not wish to restrict the granting of planning permission. The planning application for the scheme has been submitted and is awaiting decision.
