Dunton Hills Garden Village – Model development & impact assessment
- Client Name
- CEG
- Location
- Brentwood, Essex, UK
Challenge
SLR is engaged by CEG to provide transport advice for the proposed Dunton Hills garden village development, which will provide 4,000 homes on land south of the A127, as well as new schools, health facilities and 2,500 square metres of non-residential floorspace including restaurants, offices and shops. It is set to encompass the Dunton Hills Golf Course and Dunton Hills farm, linking Basildon and Brentwood boroughs near Thurrock.
Solution
Alongside the work carried out by SLR’s Transport Planning team, SLR’s Microsim team developed a microsimulation model capturing a large section of the M25, A127 and A13 in Essex. Given the strategic nature of the network and the large coverage it was imperative that the requirements of the local highway authority and Highways England were considered - the intention of the model was to provide a suitable tool to address the concerns of Highways England and Essex County Council, and be able to assess the effects of the large mix use development upon the key corridors.
The proposed development, Dunton Hills Garden Village, is allocated within the Brentwood Borough Draft Plan but the necessary off-site highway improvements had not been determined nor had the impacts be assessed in any detail.
A Model Scoping Report was prepared outlining the proposed approach to the base model development and agreed in advance of commencing the modelling tasks. A comprehensive survey specification was prepared, including ATCs, MCCs, JT surveys and ANPR data. The Prior Matrix was developed through the review of Census Travel to Work patterns and the ANPR data. The validation proved particularly difficult because of the unique behavior observed on the A127 corridor at the merge sections. To assist this process further journey time information was obtained via TomTom data, which allowed a more refined assessment of the breakdown of delay on the network.
Impact
The resulting model was used to assess the Dunton Hills development and highlight ‘hot spots’ where mitigation would be necessary. This has been an iterative process working closely with the engineers to develop the appropriate solutions.
