Farnham Town Centre options appraisal

Challenge

Surrey County Council (SCC) appointed SLR’s Microsimulation team to assist in the testing of scheme proposals within Farnham Town Centre. The remit included the assessment of a selection of options designed to improve walking, cycling and public transport provision within the town, which assist in the delivery of the masterplan and vision for Farnham.

Alongside the impact assessment of the proposed changes to the town centre network, the microsimulation also focused on the knock on effects on the wider highway network surrounding the town, and worked alongside SCC to test highway mitigation schemes designed at minimising any residual traffic impact, whilst enabling the optimum solution within the town to be delivered.

Solution

The study area was situated within Farnham town centre and the highway network directly surrounding the town. It was established that the existing Paramics model of the study area would provide the most realistic effective method of recreating the congestion and interaction of vehicles between junctions within the study area, along with capturing the impacts of the scheme implementation. It was considered that a micro-simulation model would provide the most reliable means of informing the town centre strategy.

The microsimulation team worked alongside Phil Jones Associates, Atkins and SCC to identify and assess the implications of delivering a selection of town centre options. We updated the existing Paramics Discovery model of Farnham town to address outstanding audit comments from SCC before applying the model within the study.

Impact

As well as assessing the highway implications of different network configurations, the model demands were used to assess the implications of changes in routing within the study area, particularly with regards to the demand for car parking within the town centre, as well as reporting how public transport journey times were expected to be affected by the scheme proposals.