USING TRANSPORT MODELS IN SPATIAL PLANNING:

ISSUES FROM A REVIEW OF THE LONDON

LAND-USE/TRANSPORT INTERACTION (LUTI) MODEL

Alan Wenban-Smith
Urban & Regional Policy
Tom van Vuren
Mott Macdonald

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Context
Major transport investments are generally made in order to achieve wider
economic, social or environmental purposes1. A problem this sets for
transport modelling is that a worthwhile transport investment will necessarily
change the pattern of economic and social activity that the transport system
serves, and therefore the pattern of transport demand, generally leading to
more travel. The conversion of improved accessibility into other forms of
benefit thus means that traffic forecasts made by pure transport models
decline in accuracy over time. While such models may have land-use inputs,
in the form of independently predicted patterns of physical development
(usually policy-driven), this is not the same as accommodating the changes in
patterns of activity that result from the transport changes themselves.
An authoritative investigation of the link between transport and the economy in
the UK found that .. in general, the value of direct transport benefits must
decline if indirect economic benefits are to grow.2 However, since in a perfect
market the value of the ultimate economic benefit arising from changed
patterns of location is equal to the value of the initial time savings, regardless
of long and tortuous the processes in between, this problem has not until
recently received the attention it perhaps deserves.
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in indirect and longer-
term economic and social effects arising from imperfect markets notably the
economic benefits of urban agglomeration and the increasing social concerns
about urban decline. The new economic geography3 offers perspectives on
how transport improvements interact with the social and economic processes
concerned by changing the pattern of locational choices.
Because of this, it is becoming increasingly untenable for major infrastructure
projects to rely on modelling approaches that ignore these interactions, or rely
on initial transport benefits as the main means of testing value for money.
Where the justification of a project depends on strategic effects beyond the
transport system and in the longer term, the broader approach offered by
LUTI modelling is now seen as a way forward. However, the processes
involved are complex and techniques are still developing. In this paper we
explore the implications for planning systems as well as modelling techniques.

1.2 London LUTI model (LonLUTI) and Thames Gateway Bridge (TGB)
Transport for London (TfL) commissioned David Simmonds Consultancy
(DSC) to develop a London LUTI model (LonLUTI) to provide the top strategic
level of transport analysis supporting Londons spatial planning work4. The

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land-use/economic modelling in LonLUTI is an application of DSCs DELTA
package5. In parallel, TfL commissioned MVA Consultancy to develop a pc-
based version of the LTS transport model to provide the transport component
of LonLUTI. It was a requirement of TfL that LTS should be used within
LonLUTI with minimal change from its freestanding form.
A Peer Group comprising a mix of academic and consultancy experts6 was
appointed by TfL in March 2008 to provide an independent reference point on
the ability of the evolving model to meet Londons requirements. This paper is
based on the Peer Groups final report (January 2009), but the views here are
those of the present authors, not of TfL nor of the Peer Group as a whole.
MVA and DSC worked closely together to integrate the DELTA and LTS
applications into LonLUTI, and the outputs, graphs and maps presented here
are from DSC/MVA reports (with some modifications by us.
Within its broader remit, a crucial issue for much of the period of the Peer
Groups commission was whether LonLUTI could be used to support the case
for a major new river crossing, the Thames Gateway Bridge (TGB). TGB
would link the well-developed London North Circular route with the more
vestigial South Circular, about 10km east of Tower Bridge and 15 km west of
the M25 London Orbital (Figure 1). The key point at issue here was whether
there was a sufficient economic regeneration effect to a relatively deprived
local area to compensate for increased traffic in this part of London.
Figure 1: TGB context and predicted changes in am peak car traffic 2026

M25

N Circular

City of
London

TGB
Docklands

Taken from DSC report labels added

The urgency of this aspect of the work played a significant role in the
development of the model and the focus of the Peer Group Review. However,
in October 2008 the newly-elected London Mayor decided not to proceed with
the TGB proposal. This reduced the time pressures on making LonLUTI

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ready for use, but at the same time broadened the field of potential
applications of the model on which the Peer Group should comment. This
real-time context is relevant to our theme, because it is typical of the practical
pressures of decision-making on model development.

1.3 Wider policy context

Although the term land-use implies the physical development of land (and is
used in this comparatively restricted sense in much UK planning literature and
legislation as well as in transport modelling practice) it is important to the
present purpose that it is understood (in the broader sense of this
introduction) to include in addition patterns of economic and social interaction.
The land-use activities modelled in LonLUTI do in fact include a wide range
of economic and social relationships as well as those involving development
of land and use of buildings.
At the same time, regional strategic planning in the UK now takes the form of
a Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS), which has been described in the following
terms: The Governments policy on spatial planning goes beyond traditional
land use planning to bring together and integrate policies for the development
and use of land with other policies and programmes which influence the
nature of places and how they function.7 In this paper we take a similarly
broad view of the role of transport planning.

2. VALIDATING THE LONLUTI MODEL

2.1 The changing uses of LUTI modelling

Conventional transport models are used not just to design for adequate
capacity, but also to argue for the allocation of scarce monetary resources. In
contrast, LUTI models have in the past been used in the formulation of
strategic spatial policy. Since spatial policy deals with more complex and
uncertain processes than transport investment, the application of LUTI models
has mainly been qualitative, contributing to the discussion of wider issues
rather than being used (as transport models tend to be) to prescribe
infrastructure or development locations. However, the increasing concern
with wider economic and social effects means an increasing demand for
quantitative use to support and evaluate major transport schemes like TGB.
LUTI models could be viewed simply as a means of improving traditional
transport models for such a purpose, by adding the element of locational
choices by households and businesses to the conventional transport model
choices of destination, mode and route. However, the extension that LUTI
models offer to our understanding of the economic and social motivations for
trip-making and locational choices comes at a price in complexity which
makes their validation much more difficult.
At first sight it might seem attractive to validate a LUTI model using similar
techniques to those employed to assess pure transport models. After all,
many of the underlying conceptual principles are the same, the methods in
use share a common base, and many of the same professionals are engaged.
In the UK, official guidance on the development and application of transport
models is advancing in this direction8. However, our review of LonLUTI

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suggests that such a transfer of techniques could be inappropriate, and even
potentially misleading.

2.2 The land-use and transport relationship in LonLUTI

LonLUTI combines 2001 base date activity data from Census and similar
sources with accessibility information from a conventional transport model9. It
then uses economic models of output, trade, labour and housing markets to
generate changing patterns of economic activity and settlement by broad
occupation groups for each year of the forecast (specifically matrices linking
normal workplace with residence location for particular groups eg white
collar workers and white collar jobs by zone).
The row and column totals of this matrix (zonal jobs and workers land-use
in the narrow sense) is fed into the transport model each fifth year, where is
translated into a pattern of commuting trips over a typical weekday
(segmented into time periods and outbound/return legs) and augmented by
other home and work-based journeys using factors derived from household
survey data. The transport model then converts this overall pattern of travel
demand into the volume of trips on each link by each mode, and updates the
accessibility changes that result from the changed demands placed on
transport networks.
Policy-driven changes in development (land-use in the narrow sense) can be
input each year, and changes in transport infrastructure in each fifth year.
Figure 2 illustrates, in summary form, the structure of the model, focusing on
the land-use components.
Figure 2: Structure of LonLUTI

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2.3 Problems of calibration and validation
Conventional transport models are validated by seeking to reproduce the base
date position, adjusting model parameters to achieve a best-fit (calibration)
before running forward in forecast mode. The additional complexity of LUTI
modelling is a great deal more than the simple addition of locational choice to
the choices of mode, destination and route embedded in a pure transport
model. In particular, the complexity of processes represented and the number
of internally generated variables for which sufficiently detailed data of
adequate quality may not be available (eg rents and migration levels) makes
calibration and validation of a LUTI model in a parallel manner a practical
impossibility.
A different form of validation is comparison of the direction and order of
magnitude of modelled changes since the base date compared with the most
recent available observations. However this will be a limited time period
compared with the intended forecast period, and limited data allows only a
partial check on the realism of a few of the internal mechanisms. There was
thus a concern about lack of a formal validation/calibration process for the
land-use component.
The land-use component deals with greater real-world complexity than the
transport component, and requires greater simplification in its representation
of processes of economic and social change. That it is run five times to each
transport model run, partly reflects this degree of simplification but also that
while the transport component spends a lot of time converging on an
(arguably hypothetical) equilibrium across the whole transport system, the
land-use component finds only more limited equilibria and is more focused on
dynamic change.
A major issue for the review was therefore to find means of assessing the
credibility of the model that went beyond simply agreeing that the processes
that the model represents (primarily the operation of property and labour
markets) are sound in theory and the internal logic of the model makes sense.

3. TESTING THE MODEL

3.1 Reasonableness tests

After as far as possible satisfying ourselves that the theoretical structure of
LonLUTI was internally coherent, the Peer Group proposed two types of
reasonableness test as partial substitutes for the absence of calibration and
the potential weaknesses of validation:
Sensitivity to land-use changes: we looked at how model reacted to large
discrete land-use changes for example a doubling of the amount of
housing or of employment in a particular zone. The object here was to see
if the sensitivity of the system was in line with expectations in terms of
scale, persistence, and geographical extent of consequent changes;
Effects of transport changes: we looked at how the model reacted to major
changes in the transport system, including the removal of existing
provision (eg the Jubilee Line extension) and major changes in fuel duties
and toll levels. We were looking here for evidence of changing patterns of

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 rent levels, job and home locations and trip lengths that economic theory
suggests but a simple transport model could not have predicted.

3.2 Land-use changes

The land-use changes were relatively simple to specify and test, and lent
themselves to quantification. One example serves to illustrate the kinds of
results achieved: doubling the provision of housing in Canary Wharf
(Docklands) over the period 2006-2011. Figure 3 illustrates how a series of
related variables were affected (in these illustrations, the results of model
tests are presented as differences from the reference case).
Figure 3: Impact of extra housing in Canary Wharf above reference case

As can be seen the effect of introducing a large amount of additional housing

in this part of Docklands is to depress local housing rents sharply while the
additional housing is being built, and although there is a rapid recovery it is to
a lower level thereafter. The positive effects on industrial and office rents
reflect the increased attractiveness of the area to employers because of the
larger local labour market. These results are much as would be expected, but
the continuing longer term decline of housing rents and the oscillation of office
rents are not so easily explained. The former may be the result of a
continuing surplus feeding through, but the latter may simply be an effect of
the time lags built into the model. This encouraging broad correspondence
with rational expectations was typical of the results of the other land-use
sensitivity tests

3.3 Transport changes

We also tested for reasonableness the more general responses of the
modelled system to the stimulus of major transport change. In addition to
introduction of the TGB (with a toll level of 1), we looked at a number of other
stimuli of comparable magnitude:
removal of the Jubilee Line Extension (JLE), to see whether the major
positive effects on office rents on its introduction would be reversed;
cancellation of CrossRail, to see whether this would alter the strategic
balance between East and West London;
increasing the M25 Dartford Bridge tolls by a factor of 5 to see how traffic
would be diverted and what knock-on land-use effects would follow; and

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 increasing fuel costs by 20% above the standard DfT projections, to see
how the balance between inner and outer London might be affected.
An obvious problem with these tests (as with all statements about the future)
is that there is no correct answer against which to check results. The test we
set was therefore credibility: the results should be capable of a rational
explanation in terms of the inputs and external conditions. As a precaution
against bias each member of the expert team was asked to state in advance
their expectations of the likely effects of each of these reasonableness tests.
The results are discussed here very selectively, and only in so far as they
illustrate issues of LUTI model interpretation and future development.
Because the controversy around TGB centred on its regeneration effects (or
otherwise), the focus of the investigation was on changes in housing,
employment and rents, rather than on the anticipated effects on the operation
of the transport system. In future work or in different applications it may well
be worthwhile considering a wider range of outputs, and particularly additional
transport-related results. The LonLUTI model is capable of producing a very
large volume of outputs and a crucial area of choice relates to the selection
and presentation of such material (see Section 4.3).

3.4 Results of introduction of the Thames Gateway Bridge

Figure 1 (earlier) shows additional traffic crossing the Thames, and reductions
in traffic on the M25 Dartford crossing. While the accessibility of most zones
on either side of the river benefited from the new crossing, there was a
marked asymmetry in the changes in costs and flows, with locations South of
the Thames benefiting more and some places North of the river adversely
affected by induced traffic. In general this led to increased pressure on
housing and office space to the South. Figures 4 and 5 shows some of the
key results.
Figure 4: TGB largest employment changes over time by Borough

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Figure 5: TGB differences in office rents in 2026

Change
+4-8%
+2-4%
+1-2%
+0.5-1%

3.5 Removal of the Jubilee Line extension

Figure 6 shows some selected results of removal of JLE (in 2011). A
surprising result was that the large anticipated decrease in office rents in
Docklands (corresponding to the large increase when JLE opened) did not
occur. Examination of the transport model results matrix showed that this was
not anomalous in terms of the models workings: the public transport network
had sufficient alternative route capacity for the reduction in accessibility from
JLE closure to be less that had been thought most of the increases in PT
generalised costs to Canary Wharf from a given zone were only in the range
of 1 to 2 minutes. After opening of CrossRail in 2016, which was common to
both the test and reference cases, even this deficit was reduced.
The Peer Review Group was, however, concerned about the possibility of
distortions arising from the row and column totals of the OD matrix generated
by the land-use model being passed to the transport model. Doubly-
constrained in this way, the transport model could potentially generate a quite
different set of inter-zonal flows (the OD cell values) from those generated by
the land-use model and though logical in transport terms these might be
economically and socially improbable (eg the transport model could assign
workers to jobs from areas where relevant skills are scarce, reducing trip
lengths in the process).
Although comparison of the transport models OD matrix with that from the
land-use model showed that this had not happened in this instance, the
possibility cannot be excluded, and the wider implications of this problem for
model development are discussed in Section 4.1. Similar issues arose from
the CrossRail test, so this is not discussed further here.

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Figure 6: Effects of JLE removal

3.6 High M25 Dartford Bridge tolls

A five-fold increase in tolls on the Dartford Bridge led to job losses in London
and similar gains in the Rest of the South East (the City and Docklands were
the main losers whilst Essex, Hertfordshire and Norfolk gained). This was
interpreted as the result of traffic diverted through central and inner east
London, reducing the accessibility of these areas whilst Norfolk and Essex
benefited from less traffic joining the M25 from these areas. A compounding
effect was that, in the current model form, the existence of a control total for
the whole of the modelled area (Greater South East region) requires losses in
one area to be balanced by gains in another. This also has implications for
future model development and use (Section 4.2).

3.7 General fuel price increase

Increasing fuel costs by 20% above the official projections resulted in
substantial gains in employment and households located in London, reflecting
the expected differential effect on accessibility costs in areas of low and high

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car dependency. Again, the gains in London had to be counterbalanced by
losses elsewhere (Figure 7), which may be artificial (Section 4.2).
Figure 7: General increase in fuel costs -

4. IMPROVING THE MODEL

4.1 Relationship of transport and land-use components of LonLUTI

As pointed out above (Section 2.2) the land-use component of LonLUTI
generates an OD matrix for commuting, though in the initial implementation
only the row and column totals (jobs and workforce ie land-use in the
narrower sense) are passed to the transport model. As discussed in the
context of the JLE test (Section 3.5), there is a danger that the double
constraint thus imposed could force the transport model to make economically
and socially improbable adjustments to patterns of journey-to-work (changes
in individual cell contents of the OD matrix broader land use).
The land-use model has the facility to provide OD matrices and, in principle,
the patterns of economic and social interaction they imply should have
precedence. This is because the view of travel behaviour embedded in
transport models is essentially confined to factors within the transport system
(and calibrated to its base-year), while the crucial characteristic of a LUTI
model is precisely that it admits the possibility of dynamic responses to
economic and social change. However, on its own each component is to
some extent one-eyed: the transport model cannot see behind the changes
in travel behaviour that it describes, while the land-use model on its own
cannot factor into a revised set of locational choices the resulting changes in
access costs.
The aim of getting the major patterns of activity from the land-use model while
using the transport model to update consequent changes in accessibility was
not, however, straight forward in LonLUTI, because of the requirement to use
the pre-existing LTS transport model with a minimum of change (Section 1.2).

4.2 Scale sensitivity

The impacts of single schemes (even quite major ones, like TGB) on land-use
patterns were quite small. This means that the lower end of the scale of
project that can be tested using LonLUTI is set by the level of noise and the
presence of quirks, either of which may overshadow the effects sought. This
is however, a matter that should receive specific consideration in each
application, rather than representing an insuperable difficulty or defect.

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The upper level of policy scenarios that can be tested is constrained in
LonLUTI by the requirement to conform to input job and population totals for
the Greater South East (GSE)10. The constrained GSE totals create an
artificial redistributive effect, because losses from reduced accessibility in one
part of the GSE force compensating gains elsewhere and vice versa. This
means that larger scale changes cannot be taken at face value. For some
types of change (such as the fuel prices and toll levels tests reported here) it
may be possible to compensate for such effects when interpreting the results.
However, for changes that could affect regional competitiveness in a national
or international context this may be more difficult yet such effects may be of
the highest policy significance.

4.3 Form and volume of outputs

The sheer volume of output from LonLUTI is a problem in terms of using the
results to illuminate strategic policy development. Even selected results from
each test produced some 40 tables of zonal statistics (each for 25 individual
years and some 400 areas some 400,000 individual statistics). Clearly
there is a major issue in sieving such large volumes of material, identifying
and presenting summary statistics that tell a story while not oversimplifying.
While graphical and mapping techniques (as reproduced in this paper) were
found to be helpful, this is not a complete answer and the problem deserves
further study, because many of those likely to need to engage with the
strategic implications will require forms of presentation that bring out the
issues they are concerned with in ways that suit them.

5. THE NEED FOR LUTI MODELS

Transport problems arise as much outside the transport system as from within
it, and that the effects of transport measures are felt far beyond the transport
system itself. This gives rise to three broad reasons why conventional
transport modelling is not sufficient for either scheme evaluation or strategic
planning purposes.

5.1 Medium term: induced traffic

Long-term UK data show that increased trip lengths (implying changing
locational choices) account for the most of the observed growth of personal
travel11. A more diffuse pattern of locational choice by families and
businesses, leading to increasing trip lengths for all purposes, is thus the
major strategic cause of growing transport demand. Some of this induced
traffic is a side-effect of improvements in accessibility, but many of the social,
environmental and economic reasons for this change lie outside the transport
field and in the field of land use (broadly defined, as in this paper). For both
these reasons conventional transport models become significantly less
reliable after about 5 years, even as a means of predicting transport change12.

5.2 Longer term: symbiotic relationship of land-use and transport

In the long term, land-use and transport have a symbiotic relationship,
expressed through long-term, indirect processes. This observation was first
made by the economist Colin Clark in a paper some 50 years ago13. The
central point of Clarks thesis was summarised by Peter Hall14 as follows:

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 he argued that at least since the first industrial revolution, two hundred
years ago the growth of cities had been shaped by the development of their
transport facilities. But these in turn were dependent on the evolution of
transport technologies. For each successive development of the technology,
there was a corresponding kind of city. However, the relationship was more
complex than that: it was a mutual one. The transport system shaped the
growth of the city, but on the other hand the previous growth of the city shaped
and in particular constrained the transport alternatives that were available. So
the pattern of activities and land uses in the city, and the transport system,
existed in some kind of symbiotic relationship.
Peter Halls 1994 paper identified four major episodes of divergence between
transport technologies and urban form over the last 200 years each leading
to a crisis for urban economies, the third and fourth of which are still in train.
These are summarised in Figure 8 (updated from Halls analysis).

Figure 8: Urban transport four technologies, four crises (after P Hall)

City type Technology Urban form Crisis
1. Pre-public Horse (rider, carriage, Strong centre Growth severely limited
transport city ( cart) Very high density by poor access to
Up to 1850) Foot Sharp cut-off labour
2. Early public Horse trams Strong centre Growth beyond ~1
transport city Steam railways Dense million limited by lack of
(c1850-1900) Radial Streetcar worker housing
suburbs accessible to the centre
3. Late public Electric & underground Strong and weak Congestion caused by
transport city rail centre cities* car reduces
(Europe 1900 - Motor buses Emergent subcentres accessibility and
?) Motor car and lorry Medium density agglomeration
emerge sprawl economies

4. Auto- Motor car, lorry Weak centre Unsustainable impacts

oriented city Massive road Edge city, regional on environment, and
(USA 1920- investment city fossil fuels; inability to
present) Public transport decline Lower density maintain agglomeration
advantages
*Hall (op cit) distinguishes large strong centre cities (eg London, New York, Tokyo) from medium-sized
weak centre cities (eg Birmingham, Manchester, Brussels)

5.3 Evaluation of transport

It is vital for strategic planning purposes to be able to evaluate the effects of

transport interventions in terms of value for money. For most of the post
WW2 period appraisal in the UK has been concerned primarily with Transport
Economic Efficiency (TEE). However, as noted above, transport
improvements tend not to have lasting effects on the performance of the
transport system itself journey times, congestion, etc. Rather, the benefits
are taken in the form of a wider choice by households and businesses of
places to live, work, locate and visit. The original transport improvement is
thus transformed into a new pattern of settlement, activity and movement, and
this in turn drives further physical development.

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The TEE appraisal of transport relies on the proposition that, in a perfect
market, the ultimate economic benefit would be equal to the initial user
benefit, however tortuous the path between. However the form that the
economic consequences take may be important to know (eg from economic
agglomeration or social regeneration perspectives) and there may well also be
important social and environmental impacts not otherwise accounted for.
Moreover, these impacts of the initial transport change will feed back into a
changed pattern of transport demand, so narrowly-defined transport
consequences (congestion, etc) will change.
Recent developments in UK transport appraisal reflect a growing concern that
transport needs to be seen in a broader light. The Eddington Review of
Transport15 pointed to the need for transport investment to serve the wider
needs of the economy. Parallel work on appraisal demonstrated the
existence of imperfect market effects (such as agglomeration economies) not
included in TEE16. Such effects can be very significant, in particular the
effects of transport on the generation of agglomeration economies such as
those associated with major cities.

6. CAN LUTI MODELS FULFIL THE NEED?

6.1 The kinds of problems LUTI models could help tackle

A transport model can deal only with transport, and therefore cannot deal
adequately with either changes in patterns of economic and social behaviour
or land-use policy. Two implications are:
if we are interested in patterns of behaviour and development (and we
probably should be) then the transport model gives us little help;
if we are mostly interested in effects within the transport system, feed back
from behavioural change will render even the transport predictions
misleading as soon as locational change starts to kick in.
In this situation, if we are looking beyond quite a short time horizon (5-10
years), and if we are seeking strategic guidance, we must use the best
available means of handling the land-use interaction. It must be at least as
important to seek to understand the long-term land-use consequences of
transport interventions as to predict the more transitory consequences within
the transport system itself.
The wider view of locational behaviour provided by a LUTI model is critical to
understanding the regeneration consequences of both land-use and transport
interventions. A transport model alone cannot tell us whether an improvement
in accessibility is more likely to help regeneration (because additional jobs are
attracted and then taken by local people), or hinder it (by allowing more of the
extra (and existing) jobs to be taken by people from further away (the two-way
road)). In terms of illuminating the regeneration issue it is at least arguable
that, if only one model was available, the land-use component of LonLUTI
alone (using a single set of modelled accessibilities throughout) could be more
useful than the transport model alone.

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6.2 Implications for use of LUTI models in evaluation
While LonLUTI provides quantitative outputs, these involve many more
assumptions about behaviour than the corresponding outputs of a
conventional transport model. It is conventional practice (endorsed by official
UK guidance) to use transport model outputs fairly directly as inputs to both
design and appraisal processes. While this may be an acceptable
approximation where limited changes and timescales are involved, it is of less
validity where longer term, broader and indirect effects of the transport change
are under consideration, which is what LUTI models are for.
There was much discussion within the Peer Group of whether the problems
that have been encountered with LonLUTI (outlined in Sections 2, 3 and 4)
are such as to negate its usefulness. One point of view was that unless
calibration and validation could be achieved to the same standards as a pure
transport model, the LUTI model should not be used in its present form for
evaluation purposes. However, we need to remember that a pure transport
model (like LTS), while being more satisfactory in respect of calibration, is less
satisfactory in terms of its ability to forecast change more than 5-10 years
ahead. Official UK evaluation policy requires a 60 year evaluation period, so
such a model is clearly unsatisfactory in this respect.
We recognised the scope as well as the need for further development, but
also that endless further elaboration is likely to bring diminishing returns: the
complexity of real systems will always be greater than models
representations of them. The real value of LonLUTI (like other models,
including LTS) may not lie so much in providing answers about the future, but
in offering means of systematically exploring the evidence, allowing us to
anticipate unintended side effects and to frame the critical questions.
We thought it clear that an informed policy perspective for the development of
transport and/or land-use for London requires the kind of capability
represented by LonLUTI. However, on the longer strategic timescale and
broader canvas discussed by Clark and Hall (and inherent in the Eddington
recommendations) it is clear that a wider view of the role of transport in
regional competitiveness is needed, but that this cannot be explored without
replacing the constraint on regional population and employment totals.
The key recommendations made by the Peer Group for improvements were:
Changing the way in which the transport component is used, so that it is
used primarily to assess the transport implications of the changing patterns
of interaction (ie the OD matrix cell contents by mode) calculated by the
land-use component17. Subsuming transport mode choice into the land-
use model, and estimating travel demand arising from other journey
purposes (presently done by the transport model) would involve a
substantial amount of work, and is not a short-term fix; and
An area for potential model development would be some kind of elasticity
analysis, so that if (for example) overall accessibility in the modelled area
improved, employment could increase (eg through agglomeration as
postulated by Eddington) rather than merely be redistributed (as required
by the present constraint to GSE totals).

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6.3 Implications for the use of LUTI models in strategic planning
The economic and social circumstances surrounding the use of LonLUTI will
change in important ways over time (and at present are changing particularly
violently). The relationships within the model, and the external constraints
under which it is run, may need to be reviewed in this light. The implication is
that the model may need to be used within a planning process that seeks to
manage uncertainty (eg by testing alternative economic and social scenarios
and responses to them), rather than one that plots a path towards a desired
(and stable) end. The longer-term and more strategic the purpose, the more
important this becomes. Such an approach might also help bridge the serious
present gap between strategic transport and spatial planning in the UK18.
The experience of national and regional plans that attempt to commit to
targets and measures that are too specific has not been happy, and transport
has been particularly prone to producing this kind of end-point plan.
Unexpected events can render such plans redundant, and to the extent that
their continued existence inhibits a flexible response to new problems and
opportunities, even damaging. If the regional strategic planning process is to
be worthwhile, it needs to employ a style of planning that offers a clear sense
of direction, but at the same time is more robust and more flexible19.
The problem of appraisal also remains intractable: the apparent certainties of
conventional transport appraisal can be seen to be illusory (because of feed-
back to the transport system from outside transport), but while LUTI models
offer ways of exploring these effects they bring with them increased
complexity and uncertainty. It was noted as long ago as 1997 that The
extraordinary consequence is that the largest and most important effects of
transport play little or no part in the appraisal of transport projects20 Credible
precision about value for money is unlikely to be the output of a transport
model any time soon.
In principle, in both planning and appraisal, the outputs of conventional and
LUTI models should be treated as pieces of evidence, with their weight
reflecting the extent to which the model paints a reasonable and consistent
picture of how things work. Perhaps the best perspective is that attributed to
Leeds Institute for Transport Studies: models are to be used, not believed.

Association for European Transport and contributors 2009 15

Notes

1
Department for Transport (2006), Eddington Report on Transport. (the UK
Government response re-states the top rank enjoyed by economic objectives)
2
Department for Transport (1999), Transport and the Economy, Standing
Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA), para 23
3
M Lafourcade & J-F Thisse (2008) New economic geography: a guide to
transport analysis, Paris School of Economics, Working Paper No 2
4
the model covers the Greater London, East and South East Regions, not just
London (the area which is covered by LTS is much smaller)
5
DSC in collaboration with MVA Consultancy (2009): Land-use/transport
interaction modelling of London Final Report; unpublished report to TfL. For
other descriptions of similar applications of the DELTA package, please see A
Dobson, E Richmond, D Simmonds, I Palmer, N Benbow: Design and use of
the new Greater Manchester land-use/transport interaction model (GMSPM2)
(ETC, 2009); Simmonds D C and O Feldman (2009) Modelling the economic
impacts of transport changes: experience and emerging issues in the UK,
paper to the International Transport Economics Conference, Minneapolis;
6
The Group comprised Prof Mike Batty (UCL), Prof Marcial Echenique
(Cambridge), John Swanson (Steer, Davies & Gleave), Tom van Vuren (Mott
Macdonald) and Alan Wenban-Smith (Urban & Regional Policy Chair)
7
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2003), Planning Policy Statement 11:
Regional Spatial Strategies, (1.6), reiterated in Planning Policy Statement 1:
The Planning System Delivering Sustainable Development (2005)
8
Department for Transport Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB)
and web-based transport appraisal guidance (WebTAG).
9
In this case the long-established LTS model (Transport for London)
10
The three NUTS2 regions of London, the South East and East England
11
Department for Transport (2008), Transport Statistics GB. Analysis by A
Wenban-Smith shows 55% of increase in motorised personal surface travel is
due to longer trips (evidence to Climate Change Commission)
12
Department for Transport, WebTAG 2.7.1, para 1.8.6
13
Clark, C (1957) Transport: maker and breaker of cities, Town Planning
Review 28 237-250
14
Hall, P (1994) Squaring the circle: can we resolve the Clarkian paradox?
Planning and Design 21 579-594
15
Department for Transport (2006) Eddington Report on Transport
16
Department for Transport (2006), Transport, Wider Economic Benefits and
Impacts on GDP Discussion Paper
17
This would reflect the reality that the selection of places to live or work is
determined, at least in part, by the availability of a particular mode of
transport. In the UK a further difficulty is that the officially preferred hierarchy
of choice is for trip distribution to take precedence over mode choice.
18
Department for Transport (2004), The integration of regional transport
strategies with spatial planning policies, report by MVA (especially Chapter 6)
19
J Robinson (1986), Paradoxes in planning, Long Range Planning Journal,
Vol 19, No 6, pp21-24: a pertinent discussion by a former Shell UK executive
20
A Wenban-Smith (1997), submission to SACTRA (ibid), quoted at para
10.10

Association for European Transport and contributors 2009 16