3.2 Terminology

Practitioners will be used generically in this document to describe those charged with carrying out any exercise for which STAG provides the framework. This acknowledges that the individuals and organisations involved will in fact vary considerably. Decision Makers is again a generic term describing those who receive the report of the appraisal exercise and who either make funding recommendations, release monies or give approval to proceed. The term study area is used in general to describe the geographic area which the practitioners must consider in their deliberations. These simplifications should not hinder understanding of what follows.

The term stakeholders is used frequently in this section and STAG more generally. It should be understood to refer to all individuals and organisations which stand to be affected by the conclusions reached. This definition naturally includes governmental bodies with responsibilities relating to a study area. Stakeholder involvement is discussed more generally in the Participation and Consultation sections of each section.

In this and subsequent sections, a distinction needs to be made between two classes of objectives:

• The term planning objectives will be used to describe those objectives established or adopted by the practitioners for the purposes of the study in particular (the task for which they are using STAG); and
• The term STAG Criteria will be used to refer to the five appraisal objectives established in Scotland's Transport Future and retained in the National Transport Strategy; these are environment, safety, economy, integration and accessibility and social inclusion; these have a national level perspective as they sit below that Government's Purpose and reflect the Government's need to balance the needs and resources of different areas and communities.

Established policy directives can also be considered to be an exogenously given set of objectives. These will be used to describe existing objectives to which the practitioners should take cognisance of during the STAG Process. By definition, establised policy directives will have been set by a third party or, if set by the body undertaking the appraisal, are independent from the exercise in hand. Established policy directives may be national, regional or local and may be more or less precise; examples are:

• National targets for road safety, cycling and road traffic reduction; and
• Local targets for the control of road traffic set under the Road Traffic Reduction Act

Planning objectives will typically be local in scope but it is quite possible for the geographic compass of planning objectives to be greater than that of certain established policy directives relevant to a given exercise. For example, a transport corridor study may well have to be conducted with awareness of the existing objectives (i.e. established policy directives) of the local transport strategies for several areas through which the corridor passes.

Practitioners should take cognisance of the Government's Purpose and National Transport Strategy (NTS). The associated strategic outcomes and indicators, including the Government's National Outcomes, outlined below, should be recognised during the Objective Setting process and should contribute towards the appraisal of options.

A number of other words and expressions are frequently used to describe objectives. Examples are:

• Goals and aims, which are generally used in describing strategic objectives;
• Targets, which normally refer to measures and indicators in which objectives can be expressed; and
• Thresholds, which might be minimum requirements or "hurdles" which an option must pass.

Different authors will also use terms such as "criteria" and "indicators" to describe the thing measured, such as the number of accidents. Sometimes, a hierarchy of objectives is proposed which goes from a general or strategic statement of an objective (for example to "improve safety") to increasingly specific aims (for example "to reduce traffic accidents by 25% in the study area by 2005"). In this guidance, a single term (objectives) is used throughout, on the assumption that it will generally be clear what is meant.

Practitioners can, if they wish, create more complex structures, especially where the achievement of final or strategic "outcome" objectives requires the achievement of intermediate objectives and/or targets. As discussed later in the section on Monitoring and Evaluation, the use of such a hierarchy is generally useful in establishing a monitoring framework and for formal evaluation, and hence should be considered at the objective setting stage. Simplicity, clarity and adherence to SMART principles (see Section 3.4) will ensure that there should be no difficulty in terms of either precision or understanding of objectives.

In addition to objectives, three other classes are defined and used particularly in this section, but more generally in this document:

• Problems;
• Constraints; and
• Uncertainties.

There are many terms used to describe the outcome of transport planning activities, including strategy, programme, plan, scheme, project and option. More generically, the terms measure and intervention are also used. In STAG, the term ‘option' is used until implementation, and thereafter the term ‘project' is appropriate for monitoring and evaluation.