Royal Air Force Museum, London - mode transport planning

mode transport planning were appointed by Royal Air Force (RAF) to support the planning application on their former military buildings in Colindale, north London. This development will form part of a renovated museum project, that opened to coincide with the centenary of the RAF.

Located at RAF Hendon, the 8.5ha site has close ties with aviation history. However, the RAF Museum needed to reconnect with its local community, as the surrounding area is undergoing transformation with major new housing developments coming forward.

The £23 million project is the realisation of a masterplan by Nex and landscape architects Agence Ter, won by international competition in 2014. The new exhibition and visitor facilities have been provided alongside landscaping and improvements to the museum’s connections with the surrounding community, where mode assisted with the introduction a new staff and visitor travel plan.

To help promote sustainable transport to the museum, mode transport planning produced a bespoke travel plan to outline the accessibility of the site by bus, London Underground and London Cycling Network. Additionally, it promoted the new ‘Ofo’ Bike share scheme currently being adopted in the London Borough of Barnet.

As well as this, unique measures were promoted as part of the travel plan for a museum site. mode undertook comprehensive visitor and staff surveys to understand current travel patterns to the museum, and to see what we could do to help encourage them to move to a more sustainable mode of transport. Our work included:

close liaison with the Royal Air Force museum team;
detailed discussions with the London Borough of Barnet;
detailed questionnaires to determine current staff and visitor travel patterns;
development of a mode shift target for the site for both staff and visitors;
review of parking arrangements and coach parking;
production of travel plan; and
graphic design of surveys and leaflets on behalf of RAF.

mode have also undertaken the exciting role of travel plan co-ordinator for the museum. As travel plan Co-ordinators, mode will continue to liaise with the London Borough of Barnet to keep the plan up to date with the evolving London Plan. Part of this will be to deliver sustainable transport incentives to both staff and visitors to the Royal Air Force to achieve a modal shift to away from single occupancy car trips.

As part of this project, mode has been asked to put together a technical guide for extending the initiative using the lessons learnt from the initial study. Transport for London then intend to roll out the principles to other parts of the strategic road network.