A Conservative Party government would reprioritise some funding from the Transport Innovation Fund for a rural ‘dial-a-taxi’ scheme and scrap Labour’s emphasis on congestion charging, the shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, has revealed.
The Tories this week announced the plans for a £7M, seven-year pilot of shared taxis in rural areas, while accusing the incumbent government of ‘being quick to ignore the needs of rural areas’.
The CRC (Commission for Rural Communities) said it would welcome a slice of the money set aside for local congestion charging schemes under the TIF scheme. ‘Channelling a proportionate amount of money away from congestion charging schemes in order to pilot rural schemes would be sensible,’ Gordon Stokes, a policy advisor at the CRC, told Surveyor. ‘The general feel is that the current government is weary about spending on rural transport – it has been somewhat lukewarm about the issue.’
Government advisory body, the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfiT), has been pressing for a large-scale roll-out of such a scheme for some time. Last year, it published a report looking at new approaches to rural public transport, and concluded that the UK would ‘benefit from demand-responsive transport schemes’ in deep rural areas (Surveyor, December 12 2008).
Dr Lynn Sloman, vice-chair of CfiT, said: ‘People feel they can’t rely on public transport and instead use private cars. What we want to see is more flexible public transport services that can link people back into local facilities and core bus and rail networks.’
At the time the report was released, Nick Bisson, director of regional local transport policy at the Department for Transport, said he would take the recommendations seriously.
However, Villiers suggested this was not the case and that the Government had neglected the issue. A DfT spokesman said the Government had encouraged local authorities to promote such initiatives and would continue to work with the industry to look for further opportunities where the service can be implemented.
There are a number of demand-responsive schemes currently being run by councils nationwide, including in Cumbria, Devon, West Sussex and Wiltshire.
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