Public transport role central to climate challenge, says RMT

Publication Date: November 20 2006

STATUTORY TARGETS to get people out of cars and onto public transport must be a central plank of any strategy to combat climate change, Britain’s specialist transport union says today.

As MPs prepared to debate the environmental aspects of last week's Queen's Speech, RMT put forward for discussion an eight-point action plan aimed at harnessing public transport to help combat global warming. The eight points are:

• Introduction of statutory targets for 'modal shift' in transport use from private car and air travel to trains, buses and trams
• The Climate Change Bill to include statutory targets, averaged over three years, for the reduction of carbon emissions in the transport sector.
• A statutory requirement for the Department for Transport to publish a strategy for reducing carbon emissions in the transport sector.
• Regulated and simplified rail and bus fares structured to encourage modal shift, rather than dictated by commercial considerations.
• Investment for significant increases in rail and bus capacity to be supported by ring-fenced revenues from road pricing. 
• Increased investment and research into the production of carbon-efficient buses, trains cars and aeroplanes.
• An immediate review of the government's road-building and airport-expansion plans.
• Amendment of the ACAS Code of Practice and legislation to give trade-union environmental representatives the same rights as industrial and health and safety reps. 

 "A climate-change bill is an important first step, but Britain will only be able to meet its climate-change challenge if policy measures are introduced that will get people out of cars and planes and onto trains, buses and trams," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"To do that public transport has to be made attractive, available and affordable for all.

"Ring-fencing revenue raised from road-pricing would be a welcome step towards making sufficient funds available to invest in the public transport Britainneeds.

"The joined-up transport network the environment needs must also mean an end to the damaging fragmentation brought about by bus deregulation and rail privatisation," Bob Crow said.

ends

Notes to editors: Carbon emissions from transport account for around a quarter of all UKcarbon emissions, the vast majority from road transport, and transport is also currently the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases.

A recent Universityof Oxfordreport said that forecasted aviation growth would mean all other sectors of the economy would have to cut their emissions by between 71 per cent and 87 per cent by 2050, rather than the 60 per cent proposed by the government.