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September 26, 2007 - Shattering the government silos with pedal power?

The biggest frustration for anyone watching governments make such a horlicks of sustainable development is their apparent inability to make the connections between different policy silos. So here are three seemingly “separate issues”: the increase in levels of obesity – especially amongst young people; the increase in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from car use; declining quality of life in our towns and cities through increased air pollution and congestion.

No doubt dozens of hard-pressed officials in the Department of Transport, Department of Health and the Department of Communities and Local Government are hard at work in their own respective silos struggling with what are by any standards “seriously wicked issues”. But the idea that the single most important answer to these problems lies in promoting cycling and walking is obviously just a bit too wacky, too subversive, too “muesli-ish” – as someone put it to me the other day!

But could the improbable combination of Alistair Darling and Ruth Kelly be on the verge of shattering those separate silos? A recent report from Cycling England has dramatically raised the stakes in demonstrating that for a mere £70 million a year the Government could secure by 2012 a 20% increase in cycle journeys, 54 million fewer car journeys, and a reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 35,000 tonnes a year. The impact on obesity levels is harder to estimate, but the data shows quite clearly that increased levels of physical activity are fundamental in any anti-obesity strategy.

So could the Government at long last make up for 10 years of paralysing failure in this one tiny policy area of cycling? During that time, the average distance travelled by bicycle fell from 43 to 36 miles per person per year with average trips down from 18 a year to 14. Targets to increase cycle use have unceremoniously been abandoned, and money dolled out in such pathetic dribs and drabs that it’ s no surprise that nothing has happened.

So where has Prudence been all this time? Whatever happened to the “invest to save” philosophy? As the Cycling England report points out:

“even achieving a modest target returning the number of trips to the 1995 level within the next 10 years could save around £523 million by 2015”.

So, anybody prepared to take a punt on the following headline in the announcements about the Comprehensive Spending Review: “cycling receives massive boost as part of governments new sustainable transport strategy”.

I wonder why not!

http://www.cyclingengland.co.uk

Posted on September 26, 2007 4:08 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

February 8, 2008 - Cyclical success

I vaguely remember being very rude about the Department for Transport at some stage last year, regarding their continuing failure to get really serious about walking and cycling. That was in the context of the Cycling England report showing that a £50 million investment in cycling could result in cumulative health, pollution and congestion savings of more than £1 billion.

In fairness, I must now report back with the very good news that the Department for Transport has just announced a huge increase in available funding, from £30 million to £140 million over three years. The priority will be on cycle training for kids, connecting up a lot more schools to the National Cycle Network, reinforcing the work going on in six towns currently piloting cycling initiatives (with some considerable success), and adding another ten towns to those.

Brilliant stuff!

And what’s equally encouraging is that part of the funding is coming from the Department of Health as part and parcel of its obesity strategy. For all those who have been arguing for decades that one of the corner stones of any sustainable transport policy should be the contribution it makes to good health, thriving communities and increased quality of life, this has to be seen as a bit of a breakthrough for the UK.

And maybe one of those 16 towns and cities will go the whole hog and set out to emulate the amazing Velib scheme that was introduced in Paris in July last year, and is already beginning to have a real impact. It’s dead simple: 20,000 bikes, positioned all around the city at 1400 locations (a lot of them close to the 368 metro stations), very simple and relatively cheap hire arrangements, and computer-controlled locking devices on every stand.

Despite huge initial scepticism from cynical Parisiens (though not quite as hostile a reaction as there was to Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge!), they’re now beginning to take it to their hearts. Indeed, two of my most hard-bitten SD colleagues have recently returned from Paris, glowing with enthusiasm for Eurostar and Velib.

As Sustrans has demonstrated (in winning the Big Lottery’s mega-prize before Christmas) success breeds success – and the Department for Transport funding could make a huge difference in that regard.

Posted on February 8, 2008 4:45 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

May 30, 2008 - Fuel Tax Protests

PetrolPump_200.jpgThis all feels very much like one of those periodic crunch moments for the sustainability agenda. Fuel-tax protests. Rebellious backbenchers. The kind of febrile atmosphere we last saw in 2000. The Tory press on the war path. NGOs winding themselves up: “Stay green, Gordon, don’t be yellow”.

In 2000, the price of fuel was heading sharply upwards – not as sharply as today, but very uncomfortably. A motley consortium of some of the worst affected citizens (road haulage firms, farmers etc) took to their trucks and their tractors and blockaded key oil facilities in protest against the fuel tax escalator – a Conservative innovation which Labour was quite happily rolling on with. Within a few weeks, the Treasury caved in and agreed to decommission the escalator.

On the face of it, a minor blip. But a strong case has been made since then that it was this one setback that put paid to Treasury’s enthusiasm for the sustainability agenda. Ministers blamed both NGOs for not having come to their aid and the media for having hyped the whole thing into a massive crisis. The image of ‘Mondeo Man’, feral and unforgiving, was on display, virtually, the length and breadth of the Treasury’s corridors of impotence.

Roll forward eight years. It’s all stacking up again, with campaigns both to defer the projected increase in fuel taxes for the second time, and to reverse decisions announced in the budget on increases and vehicle excise duty. Ministers are ‘listening’; U-turns are widely anticipated.

And would that be so awful? Focussing for now on fuel taxes, just stand back for a moment. The essence of using fiscal instruments to change corporate and consumer behaviour relies on three things: transparency (so that people know what’s coming down the track at them); fiscal neutrality (so as not to piss everyone off by using green taxes primarily to increase revenues); and fairness (so that the less well-off in society are not further disadvantaged).

On those three counts, given the dramatic increases in the price of petrol and diesel over the last couple of years, everyone has been taken by surprise by the price hikes, apart from ‘Peak Oil’ campaigners (who have been telling us this was about to happen for years).

Moreover, the less well-off are being disproportionately hammered, and the hikes in fuel taxes are far from fiscally neutral and never have been.

So, economically, socially, ethically, what are the implications of all that?

Your thoughts really welcome. As the Government’s official advisers on such matters, what do you think the SDC’s advice should be?

Posted by JP on May 30, 2008 9:38 AM | | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

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