A new deal for transport? - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 131

London Mayor, local control over bus and tube services existed in a way which had no
counterpart elsewhere.
However the Central London scheme would never have happened - or certainly
not within such a short time-scale - but for the election of Ken Livingstone as
London's first Mayor. Livingstone - the notoriously maverick, populist leader of
the GLC in the 1980s - had been manoeuvred from standing as the Labour Party
candidate, whereupon he resigned but stood and won as an Independent. Unlike the
Conservative and Labour candidates, a 'congestion charging scheme' was a central
plank of his manifesto.
The Central London scheme was designed, consulted on and implemented in less
than three years from Livingstone's election in May 2000. This period also included
extensive publicity, improvements in bus services and changes to the fare system as
preparatory measures (LTT 326). The scheme was introduced amidst intense media
scrutiny in February 2003. Fortunately the launch went without any major technical
hitch and traffic flows on the first day (carefully chosen to coincide with schools' half-
term) were reported to be down by 25%.
A few weeks after the launch the Prime Minister, Tony Blair was gracious enough
to say:
I think that it was an experiment that a lot of people were dubious about frankly,
including me, and I think he [Livingstone] deserves credit for having carried that
through … We have got to work out what its implications are more widely now.
(reported in LTT 365)
Whilst preparation for the London scheme was under way, interest in almost all the
other urban schemes faded. Only one other, small-scale scheme was implemented in
the special circumstances of the historic core of Durham city. Proposals for a central
Bristol scheme were shelved following a change in political control whilst a city-wide
scheme for Edinburgh had to be abandoned after a botched public referendum exercise.
The New Deal idea of local schemes being generated in what amounted to a
national vacuum had come to nothing. This represented another nail in the coffin of
the Ten Year Plan as traffic forecasts and expected charging revenues had to be revised
in consequence - in both cases in the wrong direction (LTT 356).
8.8 'Sustainable Communities Plan'
The New Deal White Paper acknowledged that land use planning was a key component
of an integrated transport policy through reducing the need for travel and facilitating
sustainable travel choices. The concept of 'urban renaissance' had great political appeal
in that it appeared simultaneously to address several concerns - the regeneration of
inner cities and the protection of the countryside from 'greenfield' development as
well as promoting sustainable travel. However it challenged social and professional
norms which associated more intensive urban development with a worsening of living
conditions. The architect Lord Richard Rogers was commissioned to lead an Urban
Task Force to investigate these issues (DETR 1999c).
The work of the Urban Task Force was reflected in a revised PPG3 (DETR 2000b)
which made a notable shift from land availability to 'urban capacity' as the basis for
identifying the additional land needed for housing development. (Urban capacity
places greater emphasis on the potential for additional housing through more intensive