[A-List] UK infrastructure crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Cost of train and bus use drives more into cars
By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent
The Independent, 02 December 2002

Taking a train or bus has become more expensive under Labour, and while road
building has spread, only eight new railway stations have opened since Tony
Blair took power five years ago.

Despite pledging to cut the number of car journeys and encourage people to
use trains, tubes and buses, a dossier released by the Transport minister
David Jamieson suggests that Labour policies designed to boost public
transport have failed.

The figures also show that government plans to cut congestion are in
trouble, with road traffic levels likely to increase by more than a quarter
in the next 10 years.

According to the data, released in reply to a series of Commons questions,
the cost of buying a car, maintaining it and buying fuel, tax and insurance
has dropped 1 per cent since 1997.

But the cost of rail travel has gone up 6 per cent in the same period while
taking a bus has risen by 9 per cent. In that time, road traffic has grown 7
per cent with government forecasts predicting a further rise of 29 per cent
by 2012.

Perhaps most revealing is Labour's record in opening railway stations, which
is even worse than under the Tories. Between 1987 and 1992, under the
Conservatives, 93 stations were opened and between 1992 and 1997 another 61
were opened. But between 1997 and 2002 only eight were opened.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat Environment spokesman who was sent the
information after a series of parliamentary questions, said the figures
showed "how far the environment is from being at the heart of government".

He added: "The Government is failing its environmental objectives to cut
carbon dioxide emissions from transport and its social exclusion objectives.
Not a single mile of extra railway has been built. The Government is going
off the rails and caving into the car."

An analysis by government officials of a journey from London to Newcastle
shows that taking a car emits three to five times as much carbon dioxide as
a train journey. The Department of Transport estimated that the 270-mile
rail journey by one rail passenger would be responsible for the emission of
16kg of CO2 compared with 89kg for a car using ordinary petrol and 54kg for
a diesel car.

Tony Bosworth, a transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said the
Government would struggle to meet its target for cutting carbon dioxide
emissions by 2020.

"The Government transport policy has failed its own target set in June 1997
that in five years there would be fewer people driving cars," he said.
"There are serious consequences of failing to get people on to buses and
trains and out of their cars. CO2 emissions are actually forecast to go up
from cars."

The Department of Transport defended its record and said that its 10-year
transport plan, introduced two years ago, would lead to improvements in
public transport.

"We are injecting £180bn over 10 years on road building, rail and public
transport," a spokesman said. "The key thing is that everybody rise to the
challenge."

* More half-fare concessions should be offered to help bus passenger numbers
swell by 35 per cent within seven years and transform the industry's
"Cinderella" image, a report out today proposes. The Commission for
Integrated Transport wants an extra 850 million bus journeys a year, or 2.3
million more passengers a day.

-----

Government is told: expansion of airports must be halted now
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
The Independent, 30 November 2002

Aircraft pollution will be such a big contributor to global warming that
expansion of Britain's airport capacity should be halted for good, the Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution said yesterday.

No new airports, terminals or runways should be built, members of the
commission said, to cut the soaring demand for flights and the damaging
emissions of greenhouse gases they bring with them. They recognised that
such action action would push up fares.

Aircraft exhaust emissions are particularly harmful in terms of global
warming, the report says, because they go directly into the atmosphere at a
high level and contain oxides of nitrogen and fine particles as well as
carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas.

The report from Britain's most prestigious green advisory body, composed
largely of senior academics, is an outright rejection of the Government's
recent proposals to expand airport capacity hugely over the next 30 years to
meet booming passenger demand.

This projected growth in air travel is not sustainable, the commission says.
It warns that if it continues, emissions from aircraft will become one of
the biggest single contributors to the greenhouse effect, perhaps as much as
10 per cent of global warming in the decades to come. It adds: "The
Government shows little sign of having recognised this, but regards further
substantial growth in aviation as inevitable."

The report, The Environmental Effects of Civil Aircraft in Flight, makes
recommendations on how the growth in demand for air travel can be curbed.

The most radical is the call for airport expansion to be stopped now, a
stark contrast to the plans announced in July by Alistair Darling, the
Secretary of the State for Transport, for capacity to be boosted. Mr
Darling's proposals included a new airport at Cliffe on the north Kent
marshes, three extra runways at Stansted, and a new runway at Heathrow.

The commission says none should be considered. In its written report, it
refers in general terms to "not expanding airport capacity", but at the
report launch yesterday members were more explicit. The chairman, Sir Tom
Blundell, professor of biochemistry at Cambridge, was asked if the
commission was saying the Government should stop at present capacity and
consider not a single new airport, terminal or runway. "That's what we are
saying," he replied.

The commission agrees air tickets would cost more if capacity were
constrained, with demand still rising, as fewer and fewer take-off slots
would be bid up in price. Asked if this meant future generations would not
be able to travel by air as freely, another commission member, Roland Clift,
professor of environmental technology at the University of Surrey, replied:
"That's what we are saying." He added: "We recognise we have been a
privileged generation."

The commission recommends other measures to rein back growth in demand for
air travel and make its environmental costs show in ticket prices. It says
"climate protection charges" should be imposed on aircraft taking off and
landing in the EU, and the EU should press for them to be imposed outside
Europe.

The report calls for more "transport hubs", where air services link with
rail and road services, as opposed to "air hubs", which link only
international and local flights. It says short-haul flights and air freight
are particularly damaging and ought to be replaced with other forms of
transport.

-----

Gatwick ruling delays government plan for airport expansion by a year
By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor
The Independent, 29 November 2002

The Government's 30-year plans for airport expansion will be delayed until
next autumn, Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, admitted yesterday.

This week the High Court overturned the Government's intention to exclude
Gatwick airport from its plans for new capacity in the South-east.

In a Commons statement yesterday, Mr Darling said the ruling would
"inevitably mean an extended period of uncertainty for everyone". He said a
revised set of options, including new runways at Gatwick, Heathrow and
Stansted, and the building of an airport at Cliffe in Kent, would be
published next year, prior to a four-month consultation period.

The consultation on the original plans was issued in July and was due to end
on Saturday. It will now have to be completely redrafted.

The ruling delighted anti-expansion campaigners near Stansted in Essex, who
had claimed the suggestions for the airport would have quadrupled it in
size. With four runways it would have been as large as two Heathrows, they
said.

They brought the High Court case, along with Kent and Medway county
councils, on the basis that expansion of Gatwick should not have been
excluded from the original consultations.

The decision is a significant embarrassment for Mr Darling, who has been
Transport Secretary since the end of May, following the resignation of
Stephen Byers.

But he was urged by the Labour backbencher Chris Mullin, a former aviation
minister, to recognise that the demands of the aviation industry were
"insatiable".

Mr Mullin said Mr Darling should "make a stand, and perhaps instead of
building more runways, airports and terminals, you ought to be considering
demand management".

He continued: "Cheap air travel is not a basic human right and does have to
be matched against environmental considerations."

Mr Darling noted that half the country now flew at least once last year -
and that raising the price of air travel would stop some people travelling.
He added that the aviation industry should pay the price of its
environmental impact.

One option being pushed by anti-airport groups is the construction of an
offshore airport, as has been done in Japan, Genoa and Hong Kong.

Although that was not suggested in the latest consultation exercise, Mr
Darling gave a hint that such plans might be considered if put forward.

He told MPs he had always made clear that people could respond not just to
the Government's proposals but also come up with their own.

He confirmed that the whole consultation exercise remained open because
"manifestly a decision on the London area has implications for the rest of
the country".