Regional Funding Advice
Railway dawn - RFA could transform regional railways. Photo (c) CPRE
Since 2005, the Government has consulted the regions on priorities for regional investments. This process is now called the Regional Funding Advice (RFA) - the ‘A’ previously stood for Allocation. RFA concerns capital investment, such as new stations, new buses and bus priority measures, not subsidy (or ‘revenue funding’), such as running services later or reducing fares.
In March 2009 the Government approved funding for the period from 2009 to 2014. We called for funding to be transferred from damaging road and Park & Ride schemes to bus, tram and rail upgrades.
In June 2009 regions started planning for their RFA bids for 2014 – 2019 and beyond. We believe that programmes of small schemes across regions could offer many more benefits to a wider range of people than just traditional large infrastructure projects, as well as being easier to deliver. There needs to be more emphasis on these types of packages, with at least 10% of RFA budgets going on measures for walking and cycling. Packages could include:
- smart cards, like Oyster cards in London, but for all public transport across whole regions;
- new fleets of minibuses and taxibuses offering demand-responsive services;
- cycle hire schemes like Velib in Paris for all towns in a region with over 50,000 inhabitants, and
- new and upgraded walking and cycling routes, overcoming the barriers of busy roads and filling the gaps between Rights of Way, to create new networks of safe routes between villages, workplaces, towns and stations.
Regional assemblies are in the process of being abolished. Their functions are being taken over by Regional Development Agencies and Leaders' Boards. Our regional groups lead our campaigning on RFA bids in their respective regions.
More information
> Campaign for Better Transport: RFA briefing (July 2009)
> Campaign for Better Transport: Driving transport down a carbon cul-de-sac (March 2009)
