TfN Transport Strategy: Economic Growth and Transport Demand Scenarios

Working with its local partners and central government, TfN now needs to develop the future travel demand patterns that will result from the transformational growth scenarios set out in the NPIER, and develop a coherent evidence-based narrative to show the contribution of transport investment to economic growth. The outputs from this commission will play a critical role in evidencing that narrative and supporting the development of Integrated Transport Strategy.

The main deliverable from the commission will be a range of multi-modal travel demand scenarios to inform TfN’s developing evidence base, strategy and scheme development processes. These scenarios will need to consider and co-exist with existing travel demand analyses that have been developed by TfN’s partners over recent years which are used to inform their respective strategic planning processes, such as:

- Network’s Rail market studies for their Long Term Planning Process
- DfT’s Road Traffic Forecasts 2015; and
- The Strategic Economic Plan that Highways England is developing as part of the evidence base for the Roads Investment Strategy.

The TfN multi-modal travel demand scenarios will need to feed into the revised TfN Integrated Transport Strategy that is due to be published in spring 2017. The initial outputs of this commission will be required by the end of 2016 to inform the development of that Strategy and enable TfN to feed into industry strategic planning processes at Network Rail, Highways England and other bodies.

To develop the above scenarios, TfN would like to commission analytical consultant support for two stages of work:
- Stage 1: developing the evidence base, future economic scenarios and associated patterns of multi modal travel demand between economic areas, using the NPIER as the starting point for more a more in-depth assessment of how transport investment can unlock the potential growth through transformed connectivity and access to labour and product markets.
- Stage 2: applying these scenarios to inform the travel demand assumptions of the transport industry planning processes, including Network Rail and Highways England.

Given the need to combine economic analysis with experience of integrated transport planning, joint bids from more than one organisation are acceptable, provided a lead organisation is named as the single entity to contract with TfGM/TfN.