[sustran] British Transport Policy

John Whitelegg j.whitelegg at lancaster.ac.uk
Thu Nov 26 18:04:56 JST 1998


Dear colleagues,

As there has been a lot of interest around the world in recent changes in UK transport policy I thought an up-date would be ofd interest.

In July this year the government published a radical transport policy:  "A new deal for transport:  better for everyone" 
(ISBN 0 10 139502 7) £16.50.  This transport white paper (as it is referred to) sets out a strong argument for reducing our car dependency, ending the "predict and provide" approach to road infrastructure, improving walking, cycling and public transport and using the land use planning system to reduce the need to travel.  It promotes integrated transport, decentralises powers to local authorities, gives them £750 million to spend over three years on transport projects, requires them to produce transport plans running for 5 years based on targets and objectives.  It proposes that local authorities should have powers to introduce road pricing and car parking taxation and keep the money to spend on improved public transport and other measures.

Now comes the bad news.  All of these proposals and ideas require legislation to make them work.  On Tuesday this week (24 November) the government announced its legislative programme for the next 12 months and all the transport plans have been dropped.  Nothing will be done to give the local authorities the powers they need.  They did not even merit a draft bill which is a device to signal that the legislation will appear in full next year.

So what does all this mean?  The word "on the street" is that our new labour government is so cosy with big business and with the newly won-over car-owning groups that it is running scared of doing anything that will disturb the rosy picture of a "healthy" car economy with freedom and high living standards associated with widespread car use.  The new transport minister (John Reid) has said he wants to widen access to the car.

We have all been very badly let down by a transport policy document that promised much and then delivered nothing.  It is very unlikely that any measures at all will be introduced before the next election (2002) and in the meantime we are covering the countryside in new homes (we plan to build 4.4 million new homes in the next 10-15 years) vastly expanding energy inefficient and car dependent suburbia, we are building new airport capacity (a new runway at Manchester and almost certainly a new terminal at Heathrow which will be bigger at 30 million passengers pa than Frankfurt) and we have an appalling (privatised) public transport system (one million complaints from passengers about rail travel last year), a 25% drop in bus use in cities and an appalling environment for pedestrians and cyclists.

The moral of this story is beware of policy documents that tell you what you always wanted to hear and beware of "new" governments (UK and Germany) that promise great things but are still deeply locked into economic growth, inequality, poor public services and a business friendly rather than people friendly policy.



John Whitelegg



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