Transport appraisal reforms don't go far enough, says Campaign for Better Transport

Transport appraisal reforms announced by government don't go far enough, says Campaign for Better Transport. While welcoming some changes to to the way the Government assesses transport projects, it claims that there is still too much priority given to minor time savings for motorists and not enough on reducing carbon emissions and protecting landscapes. However, public transport and cycling schemes should become easier to fund as a result of the reforms, it allows.

Stephen Joseph, the group’s executive director, said: 'We have campaigned to make the Government’s transport appraisal more even-handed and support schemes that will give real choice to transport users, and these reforms go some way to helping. However, we think tiny time savings, especially by motorists, still get too much value in the system, and other factors like carbon reduction and traffic intrusion get far too little.

'Government economists are still trying to put meaningless monetary values on landscape and trade them off against small time savings. We will be pressing for further reforms and for the Government to apply these reforms to several current road schemes to ensure that they don’t get priority. What matters is what actually gets built – and at present too many road schemes and not enough sustainable transport projects are coming forward from regional bodies and local councils.'
 
Background
Back in 2007, the Department for Transport (DfT) published a consultation on the DfT’s New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) transport appraisal guidance: the NATA Refresh. This was published alongside the Transport Strategy document and forms part of the DfT's analytical work in response to the Eddington and Stern Reviews.

On 6 April 2009, the Government published its response to the NATA Refresh consultation which examined how it appraises transport projects: http://www.dft.gov.uk//consultations/archive/2008/consulnatarefresh/  

Campaign for Better Transport lobbied for changes to the appraisal system due to its bias towards road building. http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/system/files/Report_Getting_Transport_...  .
 
The reforms show some significant changes on current practice:

• The health benefits of walking and cycling schemes will be taken into account, as part of the Government’s anti-obesity drive
• Schemes that get people out of cars will no longer have to treat fuel tax loss as a disbenefit
• Work will be done to define more precisely the time savings for transport users that are such a big part of many transport schemes

Each English region (except London) has been compiling a wish-list of the transport schemes that they would like Government funding for. Although they could have picked any number of public transport schemes, most of them wanted to spend most of the money building roads.

Download: http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/system/files/09.03.31.regional-funding-briefing.pdf