Archived press release

UK Round Table and Government Transport Policy

4 June 1996

Today, Thursday 6 June, at a Press Conference [1] to be held at 11.15am in the Conference Room at the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Government-backed UK Round Table on Sustainable Development will release its latest report, Defining a Sustainable Transport Sector'.[2]

Charles Secrett, Director of Friends of the Earth and Chair of the Transport Sub-Group which produced the report for the Round Table to approve,stated

"This study is a hard-hitting analysis of what is going wrong with Britain's land transport policies and planning. The report lays out a number of challenging recommendations, which the Round Table urges the Government to adopt so that Britain's transport systems and travel patterns can become sustainable in environmental, economic and social terms.

New measures that we urge the Government to approve include

• setting national targets for reducing traffic levels over the short and medium term;

• developing traffic forecasting models and infra-structure appraisal techniques that can assess the full economic, environmental and social costs and benefits of proposed schemes;

• implementing new transport taxes to incorporate strong environmental and social criteria, and discourage unnecessary driving, pollution and resource waste;

• protecting designated wildlife and landscape areas such as National Parks, Special Areas of Conservation and Sites of Special Scientific Interest from damaging development schemes;

• setting statutory targets for reducing traffic pollution levels according to precautionary public health needs;

• setting targets for reducing acid precipitation and carbon dioxide emissions that take into account the needs of citizens in other countries for a fair share of terrestrial and atmospheric carrying capacity; and,

• for the Government to work with industry to develop and implement a cradle to grave' strategy for ensuring the highest practical recycling and reuse rates for materials use in vehicle manufacture, the development of energy efficient and pollution control technologies to the highest practical standards, and for the construction industry to greatly increase the use of secondary materials in road building and maintenance."

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] Press Conference to launch Defining a Sustainable Transport Sector report is at 11.15am on Thursday 6 June, at the Conference Room at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Great Peter Street, Westminster.

[2] The report has been endorsed and approved by the full Round Table, which includes senior figures from industry, Universities, Trades Union Congress, the Council of Churches, local authorities, environmental NGOs and Government. The Round Table is jointly chaired by The Rt Hon John Gummer MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, and Professor Sir Richard Southwood, Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

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