Historic Towns Forum

Our marriage to the car has had increasing impact on historic towns over the past four decades and innovation in transport management has been at the heart of the work of the Forum since its earliest days.

'Parking and Park & Ride - as part of an integrated transport strategy' is the title of the conference which took place on 14 May 2009 in Winchester - an example of how P&R can work in smaller historic towns.

The Forum's 2000 'P&R' publication continues to sell well (in many countries!) but the technology of recent years requires us to reappraise this. A review of P&R is being undertaken in partnership with RPS, and a survey  will provide important new data, which will be disseminated at the conference.

Due to unpredicted demand  'Manual for Historic Streets'(2008) is now out of print but available on cd. This was launched at the conference in Durham 'Designing for movement: Transport and regeneration in historic towns' on 1 May 2008, in response to the 'Manual for Streets' (DfT 2007), which replaced DB32 as guidance to planning and highway authorities. This was welcomed by the Forum and the HTF full response and press release are available.

'Transport innovation in historic towns', a conference held in 2007 in Shrewsbury - the location of one of the original Historic Core Zones projects in 1998 - looked at some of the innovative ideas which have been pioneered by the Forum's member authorities and how they are using the Government's 'Transport Innovation Fund' (TIF) to implement strategies for improvement, not only to traffic management, but to the urban environment in which we live, work and play.

The 2005 Annual Conference, held in Oxford, explored 'Transportation and the historic public realm', bringing together two important issues.

A range of good practice guidance on this topic is available: click on the titles to view a précis and place an order

Articles relating to transport and traffic management: