THE Labour government’s transport policy has failed completely in the 10 years since the launch of its landmark White Paper ‘A New Deal for Transport’ — including ignoring the need for rail investment.

That is the view of two leading academics, Dr Iain Docherty of Glasgow University and Professor Jon Shaw of the University of Plymouth in a book called ‘Traffic Jam – 10 Years of “Sustainable” Transport in the UK.’
 
In their book the two academics say overall traffic congestion has worsened in 10 years while the investment needs of the railways – particularly to increase capacity — have been “almost completely ignored.”

Dr Docherty said: “It is 10 years since the landmark White Paper 'A New Deal For Transport' which said that, for a long time we have been pursuing the wrong kinds of transport policies and that we should start to make them more sustainable – to use cars less, to walk more and to use the train more.

“Our detailed analysis of Labour's transport policies shows that they have been a big disappointment, at best a missed opportunity. It's a shame because the government came in with the right intentions but have done very little to promote meaningful change.

“Westminster's policy has failed with politicians there unwilling to take the bold decisions that are needed in order to tackle things like climate change and congestion.”

Prof Shaw said: “Our detailed analysis of Labour's transport policies shows that they have been a big disappointment – at best a missed opportunity. It's a shame because the government came in with the right intentions but have done very little to promote meaningful change.”

He and Dr Docherty say 200 kilometres of new roads are still being built per year despite Labour's pledge to make new road building “a measure of the last resort.”
New starts on road building projects are now outstripping those being completed, while the total number of kilometres driven by all vehicles registered in Britain has increased from 441 billion to 506 billion in the past 10 years.

When the 1997 transport White Paper was published, John Prescott said he would have “failed in five years time if there are not more journeys made by public transport and fewer by car.”

Although the amount of government subsidy in railways had risen from 34 per cent of rail receipts in 1998 to 51 per cent now, Prof. Shaw said that there was still under-investment in carriage capacity. “There has not been enough investment into capacity. The investment has been into broken systems instead,” he said.

On light rail, the authors say promises to build 25 new tram systems in Britain's cities have not been fulfilled. By 2004 only two new schemes had opened in Nottingham and Newcastle — and they point out that Alistair Darling had vetoed schemes in England when he was Transport Secretary, yet there was a new tram system being built in his constituency in Edinburgh.