Policy aims - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 182

Box 11.3 Roads: 'Where we want to be'
Looking ahead thirty years we need to be in a position where
• We continue to improve safety
• We identify, fund and deliver promptly improvements in road capacity where
justified - balancing the needs of motorist and other road users with wider
concerns about impact on the environment, including impact on the landscape
• We get ever greater performance out of the road network through improved
management
• We facilitate smarter individual choices about the trips we need to make, giving
people alternatives to using their car, particularly for short journeys, and
• Promote these choices by ensuring that new ways of paying for road use are
developed so that they become practical options.
Source: DfT 2004f Future of Transport para 3.5
policy-makers' particular concern with the opportunities available to otherwise socially
excluded groups is not reflected in the framework.
Although NATA has continued to have a central role in investment appraisal and
is currently being updated (24.8), the intervening 2004 White Paper seems to have
been written in a parallel universe. It marked a complete change in style and substance
from its 1998 predecessor. There was no discussion about the rationale for transport
policy and the contribution it can make to other policy sectors. Equally there was no
explicit consideration of overall objectives. Rather the text is written more narrowly
around individual travel modes. For each of these there is a short section headed
'where we want to be' which mixes both ends and means. The section in the Roads
chapter is reproduced in Box 11.3 as an example.
At one level such statements can be regarded as unexceptional. (Only the pursuit
of road user charging was controversial and hence cosmetically presented as 'new
ways of paying for road use'.) On the other hand as evidence of the strategic steer on
national transport policy over a period as long as thirty years they are seriously lacking.
(This void will be returned to in the discussion of contemporary policy in Part 5.)
Some evidence of the 'real' change taking place in the evolution of policy (as
opposed to the rhetoric of policy statements) can be seen in the targets which were
published to accompany the 2004 White Paper. Before considering these however we
need to reflect on the role of targets in general.
11.5 The role of targets
Objectives are typically expressed in terms of directions of change - for example to
lessen pollution or to increase reliability. They do not normally prescribe a particular
outcome or degree of improvement by a particular date. Traditionally these future
conditions have been left undefined in policy documents. This is partly because of
uncertainty about the level of resources and other factors which will have a bearing
on the rate of implementation. It is also because more detailed work usually remains
to be done to explore the practical options available for making such improvements.
From a politician's point of view expressing aspirations only in the generalised form
of objectives retains flexibility but does not convey much idea to the public of the