TAN keeps us up to date with national news and other local campaigns, and their own challenges to continued road-building. TAN director Chris Todd led us in our July strategy meeting, and continues to advise us. Here are two pieces from recent TAN newsletters which report on national figures who talk the talk.
- Lord Deben, chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) at a Greener Transport Solutions webinar said that: “the government must be congratulated on its targets and attacked on the basis it has not delivered on the mechanisms for delivering those targets”. He also went further saying that: “we’ve also got to ask ourselves a very big question about the road building programme. There is a very great deal of money there which should be used in other ways.” This is the first time that the CCC has been so explicit in its criticism of RIS2 [the government road programme] and roadbuilding in general.
- Grant Shapps acknowledges in his Transport Decarbonisation Plan that “we cannot, of course, simply rely on the electrification of road transport, or believe that zero emission cars and lorries will solve all our problems”. It is something the Government has started to address in urban areas where it wants to see half of all journeys made by walking and cycling and for more people to travel by bus.
