The Sustainable Transport Study for Aberdeen:: a pioneering attempt at a 'multimodal study'

The current government has significantly reduced the scale of the road-building programme. Instead of new roads, where practical it wishes to see alternative, more sustainable, transport strategies pursued in attempts to reduce problems of traffic congestion. These strategies are to be evaluated within a new form of transport-assessment framework known as a multimodal study (MMS). A pioneering version of an MMS, the Sustainable Transport Study for Aberdeen (STSA), was published in 1998. Significantly, it was prepared against the backcloth of a proposal for a major strategic new road, the Western Peripheral Route. The authors consider whether the STSA provides a rigorous and objective examination of the full range of practical transport strategies for the city of Aberdeen in northeast Scotland, and consider how far it conforms in its scope and methodology to that advised in (subsequently published) government guidance on MMSs.