Future scenarios and strategic choices - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 425

The objective of supporting economic growth, and its relationship to CO 2 reduction,
has taken on a radically different complexion following the global financial crisis in
the latter half of 2008 and the prospect of an economic recession deeper than any
experienced previously since the Second World War. As far as transport is concerned
the Government's initial response was reflected in the Ministerial Foreword by Geoff
Hoon in the DaSTS document published towards the end of the year:

When TaSTS was published economic prospects were good. Today the global
economy is in trouble. Government, companies and households across the world
have to think harder about their priorities. In the UK we need to support people
and businesses through the downturn and help them emerge stronger on the
other side 1 . We have thought hard about transport's contribution to this.
The Government remains committed to investment and to tackling problems
of congestion and crowding…. If we don't tackle them they will become a brake
on economic growth and employment.
We still want to cut transport's carbon footprint. It is wrong to think that, in
a time of economic difficulty, we can put the climate change agenda on the back
burner. … Stern stresses the importance of tackling climate change in the most
economically efficient manner. That means preserving freedom of choice, facing
people with the true carbon cost of those choices, forcing the pace of technological
change, and helping people reduce their need to travel or switch to lower-carbon
modes. It does not mean rationing transport demand by constraining the capacity
of our transport networks.

(DfT 2008g)

In line with Eddington's recommendation about the importance of clarifying goals
the 2007 Paper includes a chapter on the subject as the basis of discussion. The list
offered (Box 24.4) is essentially a revamp of the five over-arching objectives included
in the New Deal White Paper (Environment, Safety, Economy, Accessibility and
Integration) and which have been used as the basis of the NATA appraisal framework
in the decade since (Table 11.1).
Since the Paper does not refer directly to its predecessor it is not clear what policy
significance should be attached to the changes proposed, or whether it is more a
'tidying-up' exercise. For example incorporating safety within a broader health and life-
expectancy goal seems a matter of more logical structuring. On the other hand singling
out CO 2 reduction as a separate goal, rather than retaining it as a sub-objective within
the Environment group is said to signify the greater importance now to be attached to
the subject. A consequence of this particular change is that most other issues within
the former Environment objective are subsumed within a new 'quality of life' goal. This
rather imprecise term is expressed in terms of improvements for transport users and
non-users which rather implies that the protection of the natural environment exists
only for the enjoyment of passing humans! (This idiosyncracy has been rectified in the
revised wording adopted for the five goals included in DaSTS, also shown in Box 24.4).

1 As part of a Government-wide initiative to offset the effects of the impending recession the

DfT in December 2008 accelerated £1bn of transport investment, including dualling of the
A46 in Nottinghamshire, introducing more ATM schemes on the motorway network and an
extra 200 train carriages plus a number of smaller projects serving ports and airports( LTT
508) ]