Georgina, Jacob, and the Development Planning team have prepared a Transport Assessment to support a planning application for a drive-thru restaurant in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
Despite the nature of the site, it was key to demonstrate within the Transport Assessment that access could also be taken by active travel modes (walking and cycling) and public transport to ensure that the site is complementary to the prevailing policy agenda.
Our team works closely with our clients to establish a comprehensive and appropriate brief based upon our knowledge, experience, and application of Planning Practice Guidance (PPG). The PPG cites, particularly, the need for Transport Assessments, Transport Statements and Travel Plans to accompany planning applications for developments, particularly major developments.
Initially for this particular project, the impact of the drive-thru development was analysed through the use of the TRICS database and previously agreed trip rates which were submitted as planning applications for sites of a comparable size and nature. This helped to demonstrate and provide a particularly robust assessment and involved analysing turning count data to determine the peak hour movements on the adjacent highway network, resultant trip distribution to and from the drive-thru and also the use of NTM Adjusted Tempro Growth Rates to show the traffic growth to a design year 5 years post submission(in this case, 2029).
Following this, junction modelling software was used to demonstrate that the impact of the development at the site access junction is negligible and would not result in ‘severe residual cumulative impact’, which is the test set out in NPPF.
We look forward to seeing this project progress.
You can view more of our Development Planning work under the Projects section of our website. If you would like to discuss how we could help with your upcoming projects, please get in touch with our team.