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30 Apr 2025

The ACT has welcomed the announcement of a parliamentary inquiry into e-bike products not meeting safety regulations, which has been launched “in context of dangerous low-quality e-bike...

28 Apr 2025

The Labour Government’s new Employment Rights Bill is set to be in force this year and the new regulations will impact high street retailers up and down the country.

25 Apr 2025

ACT parent company Bira welcomes the Chancellor's announcement of plans to create a level playing field for British businesses against unfair international trade practices.

15 Apr 2025

Retail Crime Remains Alarming - Bira's Latest Survey Reveals Urgent Need for Action

11 Apr 2025

Bira has cautiously welcomed the Prime Minister's announcement this week on plans to put 'thousands of Bobbies back on the Beat' with a new neighbourhood policing guarantee.

11 Apr 2025

Cycling UK has called for greater, targeted investment in cycling infrastructure across the UK to help more women feel safe and confident to cycle, with the charity urging Government to commit...

10 Apr 2025

Graeme Stickells, Head Trainer at South Africa’s only Cytech training centre Torq Zone Academy, is recovering from a life-threatening hit-and-run incident — and a crowdfunder has...

9 Apr 2025

Seven in ten cyclists in the UK have had their bike stolen, with the average cost of a stolen bike at £612.80 bringing the total estimated cost of thefts to £2.4 billion, according...

8 Apr 2025

MPs from multiple parties are pushing for Cycle to Work scheme to be expanded to include more people, including pensioners and freelancers, with the aim of encouraging more people to cycle.

2 Apr 2025

New regulations around recycling, known as ‘Simpler Recycling’, will soon require non-household municipal premises, including businesses, schools, and hospitals, to separate food...

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DfT announces a shift towards public transport and active travel

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News

cycle pathDecarbonising transport: setting the challenge is the latest document to be published by the Department for Transport (DfT) late last week, stating the current challenges and steps to be taken when developing the transport decarbonisation plan.

The document describes how the Government intend to work with others to develop a transport decarbonisation plan in order to reduce transport emissions and ensure the challenge to reach net zero transport emissions by 2050 is met. The document also reviews existing climate policies in transport as well as existing forecasts of future transport emissions from each mode of transport, plus as a whole.

"Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities," writes Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in the foreword. "We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network."

The document goes on to list, "Accelerating modal shift to public and active transport," as the first of six strategic priorities for the plan, which seeks to deliver a net zero emissions transport system.

To achieve that, the DfT says it aims to...

  • Help make public transport and active travel the natural first choice for daily activities
  • Support fewer car trips through a coherent, convenient and cost-effective public network; and explore how we might use cars differently in future
  • Encourage cycling and walking for short journeys
  • Explore how to best support the behaviour change required
 
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities. We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network."
 
"Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities"
 
 
Mr Shapps said the shift in emphasis away from driving - where possible - could improve people's health, create better places to live and travel in, and also promote clean economic growth.

Cycling UK policy director Roger Geffen commented: "It's absolutely amazing. This makes Grant Shapps the first government minister in the UK to talk about traffic reduction since John Prescott tried (and failed) to achieve this aim in the late 1990s.

"There are some holes in the document, but it suggests that the government really does seem to be taking climate change seriously."

Former Commons Transport Chair Lilian Greenwood said the contents were, "incredibly welcome if the rhetoric matches the reality," but pointed out that would require a significant change in investment.

"Right now all our energies are on tackling the coronavirus but when we come out the other side we have an equally serious emergency because emissions from transport have to be tackled if we are serious about turning around the future of the planet for coming generations.

"It's great if the first choice is to be public transport and active transport - but that does mean the government has to change radically investment."

​The transport decarbonisation plan will be published in later in 2020.

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