No Cycling in Unsustainable Welsh Transport Plan
The proposed 15 year £8 billion transport plan announced on 7 December (Press Release on www.wales.gov.uk) claimed to "create a fully integrated, effective and world class transport infrastructure throughout the country". Environmental groups reacted with dismay – especially over the £400 million Newport motorway duplicating the M4. So have cyclists
The announcement contains one use of the word "sustainable" - in relation to a subsidised aircraft service to Anglesey (RAF Valley), which must rate among the most extravagant use of fuel and maximal CO2 emissions. The £95 million on a PDR for Port Talbot looks like the most extravagant – and for a road without strategic function. Cardiff must be sore that its similarly costly eastern PDR link is excluded.
Improved rail services are included – of interest to Cardiff is extra rolling stock to make up longer trains on key peak services across the Valley Lines. This first phase of a programme to double and in some areas quadruple capacity will start next December. Passenger services on the Ebbw Valley Railway are to be advanced to commence in 2006-07.
Cyclists are rightly dismayed. We waited most of 2003 for the Welsh Walking and Cycling Strategy to be published. And now have waited a full year with no progress on it – zero funding and no agreement on bids submitted for cycle training and CTC Benchmarking. The one advance is to form a separate cycling forum, which will include representatives from the Health and Sport sections of the Assembly government.
Sustrans have criticised the announcement for still showing no budget for cycling:
Whilst £3.8 million has been allocated for Safe Routes to Schools, no
other new money has been earmarked for walking or cycling measures,
and comparatively little for public transport.
Matt Price proposed measures for curbing traffic growth, such as encouraging walking and cycling for local journeys. But any idea of restraining traffic growth has vanished under the present Minister, Andrew Davies. He talks only of reducing congestion and increasing consumer choice. The laugh is that he promotes air services within Wales as ‘consumer choice’, while safe, convenient cycle routes to offer the choice to cycle to far greater numbers is ignored.
Wildlife groups are growing militant. Katie-jo Luxton, RSPB Cymru Policy Advocate, commented,
"RSPB Cymru believes that Assembly support for a new motorway south of Newport makes a mockery of its commitment to sustainable development. There is no way this road proposal can be described as sustainable - it will exacerbate climate change via emissions from increased car journeys, cut through protected wildlife sites, open the door to more development on green field land, and it could very well act as an economic drain on the wider area. A small city such as Newport does not need fourteen lanes of highway around it!"
Similarly Neil Crumpton, of FOE and member of the Welsh Transport Forum (which the Minister no longer holds) said:
" It is nothing less than an attack on the Assembly's own sustainable development policies. The strategy will soon go out for public consultation, so it's up to the public now."
Our own Dyfed Wyn Hughes – till recently enjoying living and cycling in Copenhagen – is angry enough to write on our e-list (cardiff.cycling@topica.com) of challenging the Welsh Assembly in Court: as they do not
"seriously consider sustainable development in all policy decisions, they are ultra vires of Section132 of the Government of Wales Act 1998. They could therefore be challenged by judicial review in the courts."
On past experience, people can have little faith in the Assembly’s ‘public consultation’. Yet we still have to try and engage in it. The law is changing to objectors’ advantage, with eg. the Freedom of Information Act and Strategic Environmental Assessment of development plans. Yes, if Rhodri Morgan’s government tries to push this transport plan through, we may well be pushed into legal challenges. But why not test it now with an easier challenge - to the failure to implement the Welsh Walking and Cycling Strategy?
Max Wallis