Policy aims - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 173

might be gleaned from a search of publications) is changing all the time. For example
concerns about increasing obesity within the population generally have brought the issue
of physical fitness on to the transport agenda in a way which did not exist a few years ago.
To provide a framework for discussion, an illustrative list is offered in Box 11.1.
Readers will have their own experience of transport-related issues and will therefore
be more familiar with some than others. However people are mostly conscious of
symptoms and tend to talk about problems as they perceive them without recognising
that the same condition can reflect quite different issues. For example is traffic
congestion a problem because it increases journey times, adds to pollution or provokes
unreliable bus services - or possibly all three? Depending on which, or their relative
importance, the appropriate policy response will differ. So even familiar items deserve
to be considered with care and it is for these reasons that the following explanation is
offered structured under the four headings of political, economic, environmental and
social/personal issues.
Political issues
There are two kinds of issue under this heading - those concerned with the interests
of the State and those with the interests of the political party currently forming the
Government.
In the first group is the interest of the State in its transport system as a means of
moving armed forces for both internal security and external defence. In England we
are conscious that this was the objective of the network built by the Romans, whose
routes form the origin of many of today's main roads. In modern times information
on how transport decisions are influenced by military or civil defence considerations
is obviously not in the public domain. In the 1970s and 80s however there was
speculation that the national motorway programme was influenced by its potential
role in deploying mobile missile launchers.
A similar issue is the cohesion of the State in a political sense, i.e. as a unit of
government. Transport investment is often seen as a means of 'tying in' otherwise
peripheral or inaccessible parts of a country in order to lessen the threat of secession,
particularly where there are separate nationalist parties. In Britain additional public
spending (on a per capita basis) goes to Scotland and Wales, part of which can be
attributed to concern to uphold the political union. The European Union also funds
a programme of major trans-national transport projects which have political as well as
economic integration as their aim.
The State is also concerned with civil order and law enforcement, whose
implications range from the handling of national emergencies at one extreme (such
as the one brought on by the blockade of oil depots in September 2000) to everyday
relations between the police and the public in enforcing traffic regulations at the other.
The second group of issues relates to the political interests of the party currently
forming the Government. These may involve giving special attention to topics of
particular concern to the Government's supporters, or to policies which advance its
particular ideology. The Conservative's privatisation programme in the 1980s and 90s
was motivated by the ideological view that private ownership was to be preferred and
that - like the sale of council houses - an increase in the number of 'shareholders'
would also add to the number of the Party's natural supporters.
Such seismic changes only occur occasionally. More common is the selectivity
applied in government decision-making in the attempt to influence electoral prospects