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Whatever Happened to Integrated Transport?
Author(s) -
Grayling Tony
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2004.00568.x
Subject(s) - sustainability , government (linguistics) , equity (law) , business , plan (archaeology) , supply side , intergenerational equity , crash , economics , public economics , finance , market economy , political science , history , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , computer science , law , biology , programming language
This essay examines the record of the Labour government on transport since 1997. It argues that Labour's plans have been overtaken by events, notably the fuel tax protests and the Hatfield train crash, and that the government has lost sight of its ambitions for an integrated transport policy. Transport is not an end in itself but a means to the end of wider objectives such as social equity, environmental sustainability and quality of life. Measured in these terms, the government's ten‐year transport plan is modest in scale and regressive in impact, and lacks and effective demand management strategy. The government should return to the principles of integrated transport. This requires a reformation of the ten‐year plan around the objectives of accessibility, liveability and sustainability, and new measures on both the supply side and the demand side of transport.