DfT announces a shift towards public transport and active travel
Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News
Decarbonising 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
"Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities"
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.