Ministers are facing renewed pressure to give councils greater powers to regulate buses to help Britain’s cities and towns save lives by cutting harmful carbon dioxide emissions.
London has reduced the emission of CO₂ gasses by 20% since bringing in the congestion charge in 2003, which has reduced traffic by 18% and boosted the number of people using buses by 59%.
But council leaders told MPs this week that other cities and towns were unable to follow the lead taken by London mayor ~Ken Livingstone~ because they lacked powers to regulate buses.
Cllr ~Tony Page~ transport spokesman for the ~Local Government Association~ Environment Board, told the Environment Audit Committee that until the Government rose to the challenge, councils outside London would be unable to secure the improvements in air quality achieved by the mayor.
‘The key point is that the deregulation framework for public transport outside London is a major obstacle to achieving these sorts of improvements. ‘There is no other authority which has comparable powers as those vested in the mayor of London.’
The cross-party committee is inquiring into whether the Department for Transport is failing adequately to deal with growing carbon emissions from the transport sector. Some 8,000 people die in London each year from poor air quality. Each year, around 42M tonnes of CO2 gases are emitted in the Greater London area, 21% or 9M tonnes from transport activity.