from Sunday Herald, 02 April 2006
MINISTERS are quietly preparing to ditch their landmark promise to cut the growth in road traffic because they have failed to stem the unrelenting rise in car use.
This has sparked fears that the Scottish Executive may be unable to meet its ambitious new plans to combat climate change by curbing pollution from vehicles, buildings and agriculture.
In 2002 the Executive set itself a target of “stabilising” the volume of road traffic at 2001 levels by 2021. But since then it has given the go-ahead to major road projects such as the M74 extension into Glasgow and the Aberdeen bypass, as well as preventing the introduction of higher tolls on the Forth road bridge.
As a result, car traffic, and the climate-wrecking pollution it generates, is not only growing, but forecast to grow at an ever-increasing rate. According to the Executive, road traffic is predicted to increase by another 27% by 2021.
Buried in the Executive’s long-awaited climate change programme launched last week was the first suggestion that the 2021 traffic stabilisation target may now have to be watered down.
“We will consult and decide on the continuation of the existing traffic stabilisation target,” it states.
The Executive remains committed to the environmental aims which underlie the “aspirational” target, it says. “However, evidence suggests that road traffic levels are still rising and this is a challenging target,” it adds.
“We are looking at the 2021 target, its underpinning environmental and economic aims, and the best way to achieve them as part of the national transport strategy.”
This has been interpreted by environmentalists and transport campaigners as a clear indication that ministers are wobbling on road traffic cuts.
“This is clearly softening us up for some backsliding on the traffic- stabilisation target,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the director of environmental group WWF Scotland.
“If the Executive fails to tackle transport, it will certainly fail to deliver on last week’s promises on climate change,” he added.
The Executive’s climate change programme, launched on Thursday, was widely welcomed for going further than the Westminster government’s strategy published earlier in the week. Scottish ministers promised to cut carbon emissions by a million tonnes more than their share of UK target reductions.
But according to Colin Howden, director of the sustainable transport campaign TRANSform Scotland, the climate strategy had set Scotland back by raising doubts over the Executive’s commitment to reducing emissions from transport.
“If the Executive ditches the target then it will demonstrate that it is not serious about tackling climate change,” he claimed.
Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends Of The Earth Scotland, said that it was hardly surprising that ministers were under pressure to abandon the 2021 stabilisation target given the “apparent obsession” of the enterprise and transport department with building traffic-generating road schemes.
Further evidence of the difficulties facing the 2021 target comes from a recent report for the Executive by consultants Faber Maunsell. It pointed out that there was “no evidence” that the Executive was currently on track to meet the target.
“We have found that there is little requirement for a national road traffic reduction target,” it concluded. Road traffic reduction targets set by local authorities “lacked credibility” and had been “largely ineffective” in Scottish conurbations.
However, a spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrat transport minister, Tavish Scott MSP, described suggestions that traffic stabilisation targets would be abandoned as “speculation”.
She said: “We are not dropping them and they will be part of the consultation into the national transport strategy which we will launch very soon.”
However, she was unable to say precisely what options will be included in the strategy, expected to be revealed next month.
NEED TO KNOW MORE?Scotland's new climate change programme
Fabour Maunsell research on road traffic reduction targets for the Scottish Executive
