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The Project Control Framework
This framework sets out how we, together with the Department for Transport, manage and deliver major road improvement projects.
Easy Guide to ASTs
Understanding the Environmental and Accessibility aspects of the Appraisal Summary Table (AST)
The AST Easy Guide
Appraisal Summary Tables (ASTs) are important documents as they summarise the performance of proposed transport schemes against a set of five objectives, and are used by Government in helping to decide whether a scheme ought to be developed. These objectives have several sub-objectives that report the overall effects of a proposed scheme.The AST is just one part of the overall Transport Appraisal process, but is a useful summary and therefore Highways Agency scheme ASTs are published on our website.
This Easy Guide is to help ASTs to be easily interpreted and understood by users of the Highways Agency website. We understand that some of the ethods and calculations used for transport appraisal are complicated, and the official guidance documents (available on http://www.webtag.org.uk) may be difficult to understand by everyone. The purpose of this guide is to allow those people interested in ASTs to gain a greater understanding of their role and content.
This Easy Guide looks at three of the five Government objectives on transport; the Environment Objective, the Accessibility Objective and the Integration Objective.
Background to ASTs
An AST provides a one-page summary of how a proposed transport scheme would help to meet Government objectives for transport. These objectives (and their subobjectives) are set out below:
| Objective | Sub-objectives |
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Environment - to protect the built and natural environment |
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Safety - to improve safety |
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Economy - to support sustainable economic activity and get good value for money |
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Accessibility - to improve access to facilities for those without a car and to reduce severance |
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Integration - to ensure that all decisions are taken in the context of the Government's integrated transport policy |
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There is only very limited space on the AST to record information about each subobjective. This is a summary of the information prepared for the scheme worksheet (or table) for each sub-objective, in accordance with the WebTAG guidance. Blank versions of these worksheets are available on www.webtag.org.uk.
The information for the worksheets is generated by separate environmental, traffic and economic assessments, which are carried out as part of a scheme's development. Sometimes this may include an Environmental Statement, which is the published report of statutory Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
For an AST example and a PDF version of this information please see below:
