The Government has defended its demand that England’s regions go back to the drawing board on their transport priorities, and acknowledged that partly-approved schemes could be shelved.
The Department for Transport, in its response to the consultation on the Delivering a sustainable transport system post-2014 (DaSTS) procedure for determining transport priorities, said this would require regions to examine transport schemes ‘on a first principles’ basis.
The DfT said it hoped to avoid the traditional approach of ‘solutions in search of problems’, and to broaden the consideration of investments that would best support economic growth, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Transport planners in the regions have complained that the DaSTS process to develop packages of options by summer 2010 was overly demanding, given the need to also produce the third round of local transport plans and decide the post-2014 regional funding allocations.
But the DfT said: ‘We believe it is important to target funding to the priorities that will deliver the most benefit to the region. It may be appropriate to use money [allocated for existing schemes] in an alternative manner.’ Regions have been asked to provide the DfT with details of their initial work programmes for DaSTS by June.
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