Mixed Use Retail Travel Plan case study Crown Estate, City of Westminster Background Many landowners across London look to submit planning applications to support the redevelopment and expansion of their portfolio of properties. As such they develop the same suite of documents for each planning application for sites which are often:

• Located in close proximity to each other; • Are looked after by the same Managing Agents; and • Already have range of good travel planning measures in place.

There is clearly value in developing a Travel Plan or Travel Plan Strategy to incorporate all buildings under the ownership of one landowner, particularly those who are committed to encouraging sustainable travel. This overarching document can be used to bring together all travel issues, measures and policy links that are relevant to the landowner as well as setting out a framework for monitoring and reviewing Travel Plans across their local properties. The document can also be used to feed into individual building Travel Plans that are required to support planning applications.

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The Crown Estate, Regent Street and St James’s Area Travel Plan Strategy This is an example of good practice Travel Plans for areas owned by a single landowner. The Travel Plan can be used as an umbrella document to support individual Travel Plans which are required to support the planning process. For many years The Crown Estate has been working to redevelop their Regent Street and St James’s portfolio of properties. At the same time they have been delivering significant public realm improvements (such as Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Two-Way) and implementing measures to encourage sustainable travel with a particular focus on encouraging trips by public transport and active travel modes. They also have developed award winning schemes to reduce deliveries: a retail delivery consolidation scheme which uses an electric lorry and reduces deliveries to participating retailers by 80 percent and, a preferred supplier scheme which reduces office deliveries and focuses them out of hours by undertaking last mile deliveries of commodities using a cargo bike. The Regent Street and St James’s Estate encompasses a mix of land uses but is predominantly retail and commercial. The area is extremely sustainable in terms of public transport, with each building within the Estate having a PTAL (Public Transport Accessibility Level, where 1 is poor accessibility and 6b is excellent accessibility) of 6b due to the vast number of bus routes which serve the area and underground lines which serve Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus.

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The Crown Estate recognised that for each planning applications submitted to support redevelopment proposals on Regent Street and in the St James’s area, it was preparing an individual Travel Plan for Westminster City Council (and in some cases TfL). These documents were more often than not extremely similar in terms of their content: policy background, site accessibility, travel plan measures and so on. The Crown Estate has therefore recognised the value in developing a Travel Plan Strategy for the entire Estate, looking to bring all their good work that has been undertaken to date into a single Strategy. The Strategy can also be used as an umbrella document for all future Travel Plans required by individual redevelopments within the Estate to support the planning process.

Estate Wide Travel Plan Measures The Strategy includes an overview of current measures which The Crown Estate has put into place, which include: • Providing all new developments with high quality, secure cycle parking within the footprint of

each building for the use of staff, along with associated facilities such as showers and lockers; • Providing on street cycle parking for the use of visiting cyclists to the area;

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• Ensuring a vibrant and walkable pedestrian environment by keeping the area well served with

Legible London signs which improve permeability and pedestrian wayfinding in the area, and developing high quality public realm schemes for the area;

• Providing Walking Maps of the area, using the Legible London base-mapping, which are utilised by each development;

• Embracing the London Cycling Campaign’s Safer Lorries Charter which aims to make lorry journeys and road usage safer for cyclists and pedestrians;

• Implementing a retail delivery consolidation scheme and a preferred supplier scheme which is designed to reduce office deliveries, with the last mile of the delivery being completed by a cargo bike or electric vehicle;

• Introducing innovative refuse collection systems which increase recycling rates to over 80 percent and which reduce the number of refuse collection movements by about 75 percent; and

• Providing all members of the Regent Street Association with a free Business Membership to Zipcar car club.

All sustainable travel initiatives are communicated through the Regent Street Local website which includes a travel section (information for all modes including car clubs and Barclays Cycle Hire locations) and a “My Building” option so staff can personalise the information they see to their specific travel requirements (http://www.regentstreetlocal.info/).

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Future Measures Several more measures and initiatives are planned to be developed and implemented to encourage sustainable travel to the area. Targets and Monitoring Estate wide targets and a monitoring regime have been developed to complement the Travel Plan Strategy:

• Targets are initially action-based such as providing all staff with travel information; until baseline data is collected to develop modal split targets;

• The targets focus on changing employee behaviour although some measures also target visitor travel to the area;

• Biennial monitoring of the Strategy will take place across the Estate; and • Surveys to monitor and inform the future direction of the Strategy will be based on the TRICS

methodology; the London standard for monitoring Travel Plans. With thanks to Atkins and their client, the Crown Estate, for providing this information.

Crown Estate 5 May 2014