Table of Contents

Series Editors’ Preface ix

Notes on Contributors x

Foreword xiv

Preface xviii

List of Abbreviations xxii

Part I Policy and Politics 1

1 Policy, Politics and Sustainable Transport: The Nature of Labour’s Dilemma 3
Iain Docherty

2 Devolution and Sustainable Transport 30
Austin Smyth

3 Local Transport Planning under Labour 51
Geoff Vigar and Dominic Stead

Part II Progress in Policy Implementation 73

4 Roads and Traffic Congestion Policies: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back 75
William Walton

5 A Railway Renaissance? 108
Jon Shaw and John Farrington

6 Light Rail and the London Underground 135
Richard Knowles and Peter White

7 A ‘Thoroughbred’ in the Making? The Bus Industry under Labour 158
John Preston

8 Ubiquitous, Everyday Walking and Cycling: The Acid Test of a Sustainable Transport Policy 178
Rodney Tolley

9 Air Transport Policy: Reconciling Growth and Sustainability? 198
Brian Graham

Part III The Future 227

10 Towards a Genuinely Sustainable Transport Agenda for the United Kingdom 229
Phil Goodwin

Index 245

About the Author

Iain Docherty is a Research Fellow in the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow and an expert in urban governance, particularly the implementation of planning and transport policies. His previous publications include Making Tracks (1999), which looks at the transport planning system in major British cities.

Jon Shaw is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Aberdeen. His recent work has examined the privatization of British Rail and road building in England. He is the author of Competition, Regulation and the Privatisation of British Rail (2000) and co-editor of All Change: British Railway Privatisation (2000).

Reviews

"should be on every consultant’s, politician’s and planner’s desk and in the library of every institution where transport is seriously studied" (Logistic and Transport Focus, March 2004)
"This book outlines the political and implementation questions relating to transport policy delivery in the UK. Despite good intentions and a radical policy agenda this book reveals the Labour Government has failed to reduce the need to travel and to improve travel choice. Society has become more car dependent, levels of congestion and unreliability have increased, and the goal of sustainable transport has disappeared. The contributors to this book systematically document and assess the record of the Government on transport over the last six years."
--David Banister, University College London

"This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in UK transport policy. It debunks, in forensic detail, the myth that the government has a coherent strategy for transport."
--Christian Wolmar, author of Broke Rails – How Privatisation Wrecked Britain’s Railways
"This book is valuable not only to transport geographers and the growing literature on sustainable transport, but to anyone interested in how government promises fail to come to fruition." (The Geographical Journal)