Transform Scotland - For Sustainable Transport

26 April 2010

Newsletter: Show Us The Money

Spending Reviews will Dictate Future of Sustainable Transport
By Colin Howden

The next few months will have a critical bearing on the prospects for sustainable transport  – with the impending UK election, closely followed by Spending Reviews from UK and Scottish governments, we wait to see what level of investment will be provided for sustainable transport.

But with little separating the three London-based parties, might we even be in the unexpected position that the Tories might be the best bet for progress on sustainable transport?

Whilst all the London-based parties bicker over precisely what alignment a future high-speed rail line might take out of London, it’s the Conservatives taking a welcome stand against expansion at Heathrow Airport whilst the current Labour administration has recently dropped all support for road pricing.

Whoever wins the election - and some are forecasting a hung parliament for Westminster - will be faced with delivering the UK Comprehensive Spending Review, while also having to tackle the UK's national debt,  built up during the financial crisis.

The UK spending review will then be followed in Scotland by the Scottish Government's own Spending Review, which will set spending plans for the years 2010-11 to 2013-14. Due to the adverse macroeconomic conditions, it is widely accepted that budgets will be cut: COSLA has forecast "a real terms reduction of 12% across the next three years of the spending review period, which equates approximately to a 4% reduction in cash terms over the three years."

Our interest is to prevent cuts to sustainable transport spending - as we saw recently with the dropping of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link scheme - and instead ensure that whatever cuts are made to transport budgets fall on unsustainable expenditures. Without priority being given to sustainable patterns of investment, we will see no progress towards sustainable transport. We will therefore be calling for investment to be protected in areas which have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and/or improve public health, and cuts should instead be directed towards unsustainable projects: specifically, the multi-billion pound road-building programme that the current administration has inherited.

For more information see Campaign for Better Transport's 'Manifesto for improving everyday transport'