City Science was commissioned by LDA Design on behalf of Exeter City Council to provide transport-related advice to support the Liveable Marsh Barton Masterplan.
Overview
City Science was commissioned by LDA Design on behalf of Exeter City Council to provide transport-related advice to support the Liveable Marsh Barton Masterplan. Exeter City Council secured funding from One Public Estate to carry out a feasibility study to investigate the potential for public sector land at Marsh Barton Estate to be consolidated to enable a first phase of development to be brought forward under the Livable Exeter Programme.
Scope
Marsh Barton is one mile south of Exeter City centre and is a large trading estate, with over 500 businesses trading in the area (Exeter City Council, 2016). The site is a key part of the Liveable Exeter Vision, offering a significant opportunity to deliver new homes, community spaces and school sites, becoming a new town within reach of the city centre (Liveable Exeter, 2021).
This vision should respond to the Council’s commitment to become Net Zero by 2030 and wider legally binding Government Commitments relating to carbon reduction. The vision should establish the future role of Marsh Barton within the City and its hinterland building on the conceptualisation of Exeter as a series of linked communities established by the Liveable Exeter Vision. The vision should be supported by a set of ‘success factors’ which articulate those outcomes on which future success will be judged. Success factors will address social, economic and environmental outcomes and will be used to ensure that at all stages of the project process partners will be focussed on the integrated delivery of a broad suite of goals.
In line with the Liveable Marsh Barton Masterplan, the site was to be designed to prioritise movement by active modes and public transport ahead of private vehicles. However, there was still a need to accommodate private vehicle movements, including HGVs given the industrial nature of the neighbouring existing employment land uses. In addition, servicing vehicles and coaches will require access; particularly if the city-wide sports or leisure facility is proposed.
Our scope was to:
- Consolidate the future potential land use mix and develop an overarching place-based transport vision for the site.
- Estimate future travel demand to and from the site based on the transport vision.
- Identify overarching access arrangements to the site by active travel, bus and rail, alongside key potential connecting infrastructure to explore further.
- Identify overarching access arrangements to the site by private vehicles and freight, alongside potential approaches to parking provision and servicing.
City Science Response
We delivered a transport evidence base, to support the case for and form a preliminary sustainable transport network for a new residential and mixed-use development for Exeter’s currently industrial Marsh Barton. This included developing a cycleway spine, active network to the station and bus routing.
- We supported development of a vision for the Development and structure of the development framework.
- We developed a transport baseline review including a review of census, policy, proposed schemes, transport networks (including existing infrastructure, catchments & barriers) and multi-modal travel demand
- We investigated current industrial and potential development freight movements.
- We undertook a broad review of the active travel and public transport networks (including a greenway, new rail station, mobility hubs and park & rides), including potential network adjustments to integrate the development into existing infrastructure and use it as a catalyst to improve the transport network.
- We informed the overarching delivery framework, preferred development option and business case logic mapping.
Outcomes
Our inputs informed LDA Design’s paper to Exeter City Council, setting out an overarching development framework and preferred development option.