Media Release

media release
TRANSform Scotland
Transport manifesto analysis: Main four parties' transport policies bad for the environment

Sunday 27th April 2003

TRANSform Scotland have today launched their evaluation of the commitments on transport made in the party manifestos for Thursday's Scottish Parliament elections. (1)

Colin Howden, TRANSform Scotland Campaign Manager, said:

"None of the four main parties have an environmentally sound transport policy. The programmes they set out would not restrain traffic growth or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they would all continue with Labour's £1 billion road-building programme."(3)

"Labour's transport proposals could have been written by the Confederation of British Industry. More road-building, more air transport, and no mention of the road traffic stabilisation target
made just a year ago. It is clearly an embarrassment to Labour's record on the environment that their largest transport project should be the M74 Northern Extension, a £500 million elevated urban motorway to be bulldozed through Glasgow." (4)

"The Liberal Democrats, who have gone out of their way to push their environmental credentials during the election campaign, make no commitment to road traffic reduction and have blindly signed up to Labour's massive road-building plans. As such, their commitments
towards tackling climate change emissions are simply incoherent.

"The Lib Dems pledge support for local authorities to implement congestion charging. Yet over the past four years, Lib Dems have gone out of their way to oppose charging schemes. In Edinburgh, the congestion charging proposal of the Labour-run City of Edinburgh Council has been undermined by the political opportunism of the Lib Dem opposition group, in wilful disregard of their national party policy. As this is the only proposal for congestion charging in Scotland, the Lib Dems are clearly trying to have it both ways."

"At least the Tory manifesto pledge to cut the number of Ministers might at least take a few Mondeos off the road."

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

(1) The report, 'Heading in the Right Direction?', is available
as PDF (150K) at http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/info/docs/HeadingInRightDirection.pdf

(2) TRANSform Scotland is a supporting organisation of the 'everyone' campaign - an initiative from Scottish Environment LINK. Some 26 organisations with nearly half a million supporters are
combining forces to push the environment up the political agenda in the run up to the Scottish Parliamentary elections on May 1st.

(3) Labour / Lib Dem committed spend on new trunk roads since 1999:
M74 Northern Extension £375-500 million; M77 Fenwick-Malletsheugh & Glasgow Southern Orbital £130 million; A96 Aberdeen western bypass £120 million; A8 Baillieston-Newhouse £125-143 million; A80 Stepps-Haggs £120 million; A876 Kincardine Bridge & A876 Eastern Link Road £84 million; A1 Haddington-Dunbar £48.2 million; A78 Ardossan, Saltcoats & Stevenston bypass £38.9 million; A96 Fochabers-Mosstodloch £18.3 million; A830 Arisaig-Kinsadel £11.4 million
Total: £1.07 - 1.2 billion

References available on request.

(4) The M74 Northern Extension

The most damaging of the projects bulldozed though has been Glasgow's M74, the largest urban motorway project in Britain, and perhaps in the whole of Europe. The project, five miles of elevated multi-lane motorway slicing across south Glasgow, is a remnant of 1960s-style roads planning. In March 2003, in a note in an Executive press release, it emerged that the project would cost not £250 million, but between £375 million and £500 million. Was it only just coincidental that the Executive should announce this doubling of the price of the motorway just as Parliament was wound up before the election?

The Road Orders, published in the middle of an election campaign, have a deadline for objection of May 12th 2003.

END OF NEWS RELEASE