Better Transport

3 November: The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit today published a long awaited report on transport in urban areas. The report sets out a vision for transport but shows how much more is needed for Britain’s cities to catch up with European counterparts to improve both public transport and conditions for walking and cycling.

The report sets out how important a good transport system is for the health and quality of life of people living in towns and cities, and how desperately we need to have city leadership to bring together in one place powers on transport, planning and highways.

But neither central government nor local councils seem to be able to find a way to make this happen. The Department for Transport in their response to the report blame local councils for not coming up with proposals.

But local councils face a difficult task in the best way forward through an increasingly complex structure of passenger transport executives, integrated transport authorities, multi-area agreements, economic prosperity boards and combined authorities.

From our perspective, we’re calling on Government to challenge local authorities more strongly to improve transport in our towns and cities and in our response to the Government's consultation on local democracy we called city-wide local transport authorities to be equiped with the powers, funding and capability to really make a difference on transport.