Policy aims - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 180

Box 11.2 'The New Deal for Transport'
'A long-term strategy to deliver sustainable transport':
• better health
• more jobs and a strong economy
• a better environment
• a fairer, more inclusive society
• a modern, integrated transport system.
Source : DETR 1998 Ch 2
interests of motorists was to prove its Achilles' heel. The attempt was made to alter
this impression in John Prescott's Introduction:
As a car driver I recognise that motorists will not readily switch to public transport
unless it is significantly better and more reliable. The main aim of this White Paper
is to increase personal choice by improving the alternatives and to secure mobility
that is sustainable in the long term.
(DETR 1998a p. 3, emphasis added)
As with the Conservatives previously, the language of 'choice' was being used in
a carefully selective manner - in effect a politically acceptable way of presenting the
more unpalatable concept of demand management. Motorists were being offered
better options for not using their cars whereas many would have chosen to have better
options for using them!
Whilst this policy rhetoric was being set out in the White Paper the practical
development of the Government's transport programme was being pursued through
application of a 'New Approach to Transport Appraisal' (NATA). This attempted to
summarise all the impacts of a scheme under a series of headings which, it was claimed,
reflected the Government's overarching objectives, viz:
• environment
• safety
• economy
• accessibility
• integration.
The full list is shown in Table 11.1. In character it is similar to the list of issues
presented earlier. However the use of the terms objective and sub-objective can be
considered misnomers in that they fail to fulfil the function of objective-setting in
steering action as explained in the previous section. Rather the framework is intended
to act as a 'neutral' technical device - a comprehensive impact statement - to which
Ministers can apply their own relative priorities in arriving at decisions. However this
begs the important question of what objectives have actually been used, consciously or
otherwise, in generating the proposals brought forward for Ministers' attention!
Because the NATA framework is used as part of a process of selecting (and hence
also of rejecting) transport proposals the interpretation of issues and objectives which it