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

The current government has significantly reduced the scale of the road-buil ding programme. Instead of new roads, where practical it wishes to see alte rnative, more sustainable, transport strategies pursued in attempts to redu ce problems of traffic congestion. These strategies are to be evaluated wit hin a new form of transport-assessment framework known as a multimodal stud y (MMS). A pioneering version of an MMS, the Sustainable Transport Study fo r Aberdeen (STSA), was published in 1998. Significantly, it was prepared ag ainst the backcloth of a proposal for a major strategic new road, the Weste rn Peripheral Route. The authors consider whether the STSA provides a rigor ous and objective examination of the full range of practical transport stra tegies 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.