Before the last fifteen yearsIt is only in the last ten or 15 years that issues relating to sustainability have started to be noticed seriously. If we look historically at the situation just after the end of the Second World War, which is not directly relevant to the module, we can see just how different the issue of environmental concern was. At first policy-makers were driven primarily by the economic success of canal building and railway building and little or no regard was given to how construction would affect the environment or the people living in it. Lack of media on the topics is probably a key factor why no one bothered to assess the impact on what is essentially a finite resource (the environment). It was not until the start of the 20th century that concepts such as road safety [gloss.] , smog and pollution [gloss.] started to be recognised, although the government did little to tackle the problem. By today's standards the problems were small, but nevertheless important if a sustainable transport policy was to be adopted in the UK. As more and more roads were built and more cars filled them, the effect on the environment was starting to be noticed as huge swathes of countryside were swallowed up.
Emergence of environmental concernAs the video 'The Rise and Fall of the Motorway' explains, the public inquiry [gloss.] became the means by which people began to voice concern over the environment. It was the Buchanan Report that highlighted some of the environmental dis-benefits that roads have, but did not imply that road building was 'bad'. Early research in the 1970s came to the conclusion that if capacity was not provided then to some extent demand would change, i.e. the idea of changing travel behaviour [gloss.] . By the end of the 1970s government policy had started to promote alternative means of transport such as buses and trains.
By the 1980s the transport sector of the UK had dramatically changed, with much of it privatised or deregulated. Many ambitious road schemes had been cancelled and the decade also saw the growth of environmental pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. These groups, along with a growing proportion of the public, rallied the government to reconsider its stance on road building.
Question...?Do you think that the 1989 'Roads for Prosperity' Programme was a good idea?
Adapting transport policy to the environmentIn the 1990s, however, there was much change. Various government reports were published throughout the decade and they all suggested much the same ideas. Road building and car use could not go on as they had, and cleaner, greener methods of transport [gloss.] should be promoted. In simple terms this means 'get out of the car and onto a bike, bus or train.' The 1992 Rio Earth Summit was also an important milestone, in that it led to the production of the Agenda 21 legislation. Agenda 21 took into account a wide range of issues relating to transport, such as demographic and technological change when it encouraged worldwide governments to re-think their strategies. In simple terms concepts such as the role of women, migration and changing employment patterns of the population were considered when transport policy [gloss.] was formulated.
Several reports over the next three years further cemented the UK Sustainable Development Plan, including Transport and the Environment by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which set targets and objectives for reducing environmental impact; a SACTRA report Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic criticised the government's traffic forecasting, and suggested, not for the first time, that new roads induced traffic, an idea which will continue to be debated for some time.
In 1996 the government's Green Paper "Transport – the Way Forward" signalled an important change in policy, away from roads and towards integrated planning and measures to reduce traffic growth, by making efficient use of existing infrastructure, reducing car dependence and investing in public transport [gloss.] .
The Environment – green, with non-polluting wind turbine!
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Transport Issues
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