18th November 2005

Gloucestershire Local Transport Plan 2006 – 2011

Response by the Gloucestershire Green party

Many of the objectives it would be possible to agree with - however the funding distribution means many of these proposals will fail to achieve the objectives.  In brief about 60% of the money goes to road maintenance and improvement, with most of the improvements aimed at increasing junction capacity at a few sites. Only 25% will be spent on measures to improve walking and cycling facilities whilst a mere 2% will be spent on bus improvement and  about 5% for traffic management measures to improve the flow of traffic.

In 2004 the draft plan was still far too tame but had support from many quarters and was heading in the right direction. However, in May 2005 the new administration was elected and they have changed the priorities of Plan and seriously undermined attempts to promote sustainable transport.

Gloucestershire Friends of the Earth recently outlined three of the key changes that have been made to the plan:

- Taking £10M from the £29M allocated for investment in integrated transport improvements to add to the road maintenance spending (from £64M to £74M);
- Replacing Park and Ride schemes with spending on road capacity improvements, so that much of the remaining integrated transport budget will be spent on road improvement;
- Changing the major scheme bid from one which would significantly improve bus services to the creation of a Gloucestershire Parkway Station on the outskirts of Gloucester which will remove half the Cross County Services from Cheltenham.

These changes mean that millions being spent on engineering solutions, will lead to the virtual abandonment of demand management and the removal of most bus improvement measures. For example, the latest proposals mean cuts to personalised travel planning which is very effective in Quedgley, where residents are given personalised advice about how they could reduce their use of the car, making them aware of bus services, cycle routes etc that many people are unaware of.


What does Gloucestershire Green party want?

The Local Transport Plan should meet the needs of the whole community by dealing with problems at source rather than attempting to build our way out of problems like congestion. That means taking climate change and the forecast rises in oil prices seriously and letting it inform every aspect of the Plan.

The main thrust of the Plan should be investment in a fully integrated public transport system, with good provision for rural as well as urban areas. The Plan should explicitly acknowledge that to carry on doing what has been done in the past, with minor adjustments, will not produce a long term solution to any of the problems, and that radical changes are necessary to avoid transport chaos and all that will go with it.

This includes:

1. Traffic reduction
A reduction in traffic volumes is essential not only to reduce our contribution to climate change but also to improve people’s quality of life by reducing air pollution and noise. We do not believe this Plan will achieve a reduction in traffic. We would strongly urge that Professor John Whitelegg's report "How local authorities can reduce traffic" (April 2003) are taken into account and acted on. See the report at:
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/reports/2003/1traffic%20reduction.htm
Similarly the South-West Green party Transport Strategy (2004)has some useful suggestions:
http://southwest.greenparty.org.uk/transport2004.htm
There are many schemes other than public transport that can be implemented to reduce traffic. These include Car Clubs, car sharing, HGV reduction schemes, Minibus sharing, 'Safe Routes to Schools', parking fees and more.

One obvious move would be to replace road improvement schemes like the Tewkesbury Northern Relief Road (Cost £2.2m) with increased investment in integrated transport that meets people’s daily needs – that means better public transport services and better information about those services.

2. Congestion
Investigate what impact a Congestion charge might have on Gloucester and Cheltenham. Since Professor Whitelegg's report, mentioned above, the success of the scheme in London warrants we give this approach our attention. However Greens would only offer support on the conditions that cheap public transport was part of the plan.

According to the Confederation for British Industry, traffic congestion costs UK business literally tens of billions of pounds every year. The pollution from all this traffic contributes heavily to the 12,000-24,000 annual UK deaths from air pollution. Health impacts from road traffic have been estimated to cost the UK over £11 billion a year. And road transport directly contributes up to 25% of the greenhouse gases which are causing catastrophic climate change. It is absolutely essential for social, environmental and economic reasons that we reduce road traffic. A Green Party report shows that the UK could cut road traffic by 20% within a decade – a much better prospect than the 17% traffic growth envisaged in the Labour government’s 10-year transport plan to 2010. This would require a comprehensive package of measures. Congestion charging has proven to be an effective way of both reducing traffic and helping fund the alternatives to the car. It should be introduced wherever appropriate as part of a comprehensive package of Green transport measures.

3. Road safety and approach to traffic engineering
We strongly urge the Council to consider the approach advocated in the 'Better Streets for Stroud District' report (available free to download from: www.glosgreenparty.org.uk). This is about making our roads and communities safer and more pleasant places, increasing cyclists and pedestrians and being good for the local economy. The report also covers much about 'shared spaces' which is directly relevant to managing roads where there are no footpaths like Chalford.

At the recent conference on this approach in Stroud there was strong support amongst those attending to set up trial schemes like the one in Bibury.

In tandem with this approach we would urge the Council to also consider implementing a Vision Zero policy. This is a philosophy of road safety from Sweden that has recently been adopted in York that aims for no one to be killed or seriously injured within the road transport system; its view is that safety cannot be traded for mobility. It has many interesting ideas about ways forward.
More info at:
http://www.sei.se/visionzero/moreinfo.htm
http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/reports/papers/visionzero.html

4. "Gloucestershire" Parkway
Over the last few years train services in Gloucester have been degraded to a point where journey times are now longer and less convenient. The Green party has considerable concerns that the proposed site of the new "Gloucestershire" parkway station outside the city limits of both Cheltenham and Gloucester could easily add 40 minutes to journey times. We consider that that is likely to lead most people who own a car to use it to drive to the new station or for the whole journey rather than travelling to the station to catch a train. Indeed in most peoples minds this extra time is better spent driving up a motorway. This is born out by many conversations with local people on the street. The Parkway scheme is untenable and would reduce the convenience of a City Centre station and therefore reduce the use of rail transport by residents of the city. The Gloucestershire Green Party believes that services should be restored at Gloucester so that we get access to direct intercity trains.

5. 20 mph
We note and welcome the new emphasis of 20 mph zones throughout residential areas and would want those to be applied throughout the County along with such limits in our town, village and city centres. See note 6 for further details about the approach we would like to see advocated. However we have concerns that this committment seems to be vague and does not in many areas have any specific commitments.

6. Stroud
Stroud Interchange is top priority. We would also welcome improvements to the Merrywalks roundabout.

7. Parking
We support the decriminalisation of parking.

8. Report wording
In many cases descriptions need to change ‘transport’ to ‘motor vehicles’ as other forms of transport such as walking do not impact heavily on the natural or built environment.

9. Cycling
The Stroud Valleys Cycling Campaign has noted the Plan does not include anything against which the public can measure progress such as "at the end of the Plan period x miles of cycle lanes will have been created".  It may be that the cycling strategy will make us revise this opinion, and we look forward to receiving it.

Philip Booth, Press Officer, Gloucestershire Green Party.