What is Triple Access Planning? To mark the launch of ‘Triple Access Planning for Uncertain Futures – A Handbook for Practitioners’, Local Transport Today (TransportXtra) offered me a feature article slot to introduce TAP, explain its origins and give people an overview of the new Handbook.

You can find the article below.

The article is also available on LTT’s TAPAS website (https://tapas.network/) – ‘Transport & Accessibility Policy Alternative Solutions’ with its own discussion platform for subscribers.

The article is permanently available on the UWE Research Repository here: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11842915

So what is Triple Access Planning? Born from work in 2014 with the New Zealand Ministry of Transport, in contrast to Transport Planning in the paradigm of Predict and Provide, TAP is in the paradigm of Decide and Provide. It is vision-led (not forecast-led), it is access-focused (not only mobility-focused) and it accommodates uncertainty (not conceals uncertainty). It’s access focus introduces digital accessibility, alongside physical mobility and spatial proximity.

I hope new Local Transport Plans developed in England will draw upon TAP to help face up to stewardship over the future in a time of deep uncertainty and with an imperative to decide and provide a way out of the climate emergency.