Transport East (UK): Transport and Economic growth

Transport East is the Transport Planning Authority for the East of England. Transport East is the Sub-national Transport Body for three counties and two unitary councils. The partnership provides a single voice for our councils, business leaders and partners on the UK’s transport strategy and strategic transport investment priorities, working in close collaboration with the government and the rest of the UK. For their 2020 Transport Strategy, they required a detailed and rigorous understanding of the role transport investment could play in meeting the economic, social, and environmental ambitions of the region.

Cambridge Econometrics led the development of a common evidence base as to the role of transport in enabling economic growth, the current “gaps” between reality and stated ambition in the region and the extent to which the impacts of COVID and Brexit produced opportunities or challenges to overcome these gaps.

This analysis allowed our client to articulate “best-case” and “worst-case” scenarios, and to better understand the role its own investment priorities would have in delivering wider regional ambitions.

Several narrative-driven scenarios were developed, which were modeled using Cambridge Econometrics’ Local Economy Futures Model, providing projections for population, employment, gross value added (GVA) and wages, along with resulting commuting movements.

These scenarios were used to look at the potential impacts of an increase in remote working on local wages, commuting patterns and demand for residential and office space across the region (at the neighborhood level), and inform a visioning exercise for the potential role of urban areas within a remote working/15-minute city concept.

Results showed that with careful planning, the growth in road demand from anticipated future population growth in the region could be fully offset by encouraging a higher level of remote and hybrid working.