The site is located in a highly sustainable location with excellent connections to a wide range of local services and amenities providing for all aspects of daily life. It also has access to public transport, which can be enhanced further through the development proposals.
There are numerous shops and services in the immediate surrounding areas and an even wider range of amenities in the county town of Maidstone, which are accessible for future residents and provide genuine opportunities for travel to/from these areas by sustainable modes of transport. Furthermore, the presence of Barming railway station immediately to the southeast of the site would facilitate commuting trips to London and other destinations by non-car modes.
The proposed development seeks to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by its excellent location, while remaining aware of and responsive to the local traffic context. It is acknowledged that some areas of the surrounding highway network suffer from peak hour traffic congestion. As such, simply promoting a car dominant development of this scale would not be desirable or acceptable. While some mitigation may be necessary at critical locations, it is considered that the long-term solution – in line with the vision for the development – is to facilitate and promote travel by sustainable modes wherever possible.
The development will be supported by embedded transport infrastructure. This will facilitate and encourage accessibility between the development and the wider area by sustainable modes of travel and provide means of access for necessary vehicular movements.
A Sustainable Movement Corridor (SMC) would be provided through the site between Hermitage Lane and Kiln Barn Road. The SMC will include a road for necessary vehicular access, new and/or diverted bus routes, and comprehensive and prioritised facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.
The SMC will continue from the junction with Kiln Barn Road, through the adjacent East Malling Trust Estate to the west, to a junction with New Road, East Malling. Importantly, and contrary to earlier proposals, this section of the SMC will prohibit general vehicular traffic and will only provide an onward east-west connection for buses, active travel modes and emergency vehicles, controlled via a ‘bus gate’.
Vehicular access to the site will be provided from two locations on Hermitage Lane and a third via Kiln Barn Road to the west. The most northerly access on Hermitage Lane will connect into a link road through the Whitepost Field development site by creating a fourth arm to/from the committed roundabout junction with Hermitage Lane.
The development proposals, aligned to the stated vision, incorporate at their heart a sustainable travel agenda. This is facilitated by a comprehensive Sustainable Travel Strategy which brings forward significant sustainable travel infrastructure, improved public transport service provision, and incentives to use sustainable modes. The package of measures is anticipated to benefit future users of the development and the wider community by encouraging greater use of sustainable modes of travel.
The strategy focuses upon the key routes between the site and key destinations in the surrounding area. Following an assessment of baseline conditions, proposed measures were identified to facilitate and improve greater travel by sustainable modes on these routes. These include the provision of the SMC and active travel improvements on Kiln Barn Road, in addition to a wide package of off-site improvements. The extents of sustainable travel improvements are shown in the figure below:
While firmly striving and setting the path to achieve the sustainable vision for the development, the supporting Transport Assessment also outlines a range of potential outcomes to account for the inherent uncertainty in forecasting the future. It demonstrates that the development proposals can be mitigated in a proportionate and appropriate manner within all forecast outcomes.