Labour's New Trunk-Roads Policy for England: An Emerging Pragmatic Multimodalism?

Abstract

In 1998 the UK government introduced a new, integrated transport policy signalling a move away from the principles of ‘predict and provide’ towards ‘new realism’. Labour's approach involved promoting a reduction in car use through (among other things) seeking to improve public transport provision and, in line with the trend which had begun in 1994, scaling down the national trunk-road building programme. But despite claiming that building new roads to resolve traffic problems would generally be a measure of the last resort, Labour's most recent statement of transport policy, Transport 2010: The 10-Year Plan, makes provisions for a large programme of trunk-road construction against a background of continued traffic growth. In this paper we compare the scale of trunk-road completions achieved by the generally pro-road Conservative governments of 1979–97 against those anticipated in Labour's 2000–10 plans. We suggest that the annual level of trunk-road completions in England over the next decade will in fact be little different from that achieved by the Conservatives. At a broader scale, we identify the emergence of a new paradigm in transport policy which we call ‘pragmatic multimodalism’.

The Effectiveness of Park-and-Ride as a Policy Measure for More Sustainable Mobility

“…The late-1990s saw positive encouragement of P&R given the UK Government's 'Pragmatic Multimodalism' (Shaw & Walton, 2001); trying to manage congestion and emissions whilst not appearing to favour particular transport-sector interests. The attention in national policy was relatively short-lived and national policy towards local transport has more recently emphasised decentralisation, with P&R being one of many measures which authorities can include in applications for national funding for local transport capital investment and travel management packages.…”

Bridging the Qualitative–Quantitative Divide in Transport Geography∗

“…Postfordist production approaches, such as flexible specialization, justin-time inventory, and increased outsourcing and offshoring, require much more sophisticated logistics, supply chain management, and distribution systems to function properly (Aoyama, Ratick, and Schwarz 2006). A related area of research involves the important role of transport infrastructure provision in regional competitive advantage and economic development (Filion 1996;Vasconcellos 1997;Shaw and Walton 2001;Shriar 2006).…”

Transport Planning and Environmental Assessment: Implications of Induced Travel Effects

“…There are indications that this has allowed environmental concerns to receive greater consideration relative to traditional cost-benefit measures (Nellthorp and Mackie, 2000). Shaw and Walton (2001) suggest that this actually led to an increased certainty that various projects would be built as opposed to the large ''wish lists'' of previous policy. In some regards, this was one of the first hints that future policy would be more accommodating of new road construction than originally thought.…”

“…This plan provides significant funding commitments to both increases in road and public transport capacity. This back-pedaling on initial commitments has been termed ''pragmatic multimodalism'' by Shaw and Walton (2001), especially given that increased road capacity was seen as a ''last resort.'' Realistically, it is in response to political criticism that the government has been ''anti-car.''…”