Transport strategy for the east of England should be revamped to focus on reducing car use and carbon dioxide emissions, according to an independent panel of inspectors. Environmental and anti-road campaigners have hailed the recommendations, which echo criticisms heard during examination in public of the draft regional plan, as a ‘watershed in transport planning’. The panel agrees the regional transport strategy lacks a ‘clear strategic focus’, and proposes a new, over-arching objective of reducing the region’s climate change emissions by curbing traffic growth and ‘ultimately, achieving an absolute reduction’. Highways Agency modelling projected a 47% increase in traffic by 2021, but 45% would happen even without the 478,000 new homes envisaged in the regional plan. That is unsustainable and suggests existing transport policies will not bring about sufficient change in travel behaviour, according to the panel. Additional work it requested on the impact of area-wide road-user charging indicates a 10p/km charge would reduce congestion more than all the strategy’s road schemes. Policy on demand management should be stiffened to support its introduction. The panel also calls for a campaign to influence transport choice in the same way that public education on recycling and energy use is now beginning to have an effect. Although the strategy aims to improve alternatives to the car, it fails to give public transport, walking and cycling ‘sufficient thrust’. A clearer spatial focus is also needed. While many of the high-priority road schemes are primarily aimed at environmental improvement or congestion reduction, they also increase capacity. The strategy must focus on outcomes rather than specific schemes. Its list of 112 – more than half road-related – should be deleted. Instead, approved and prioritised transport projects would be appended to the strategy, regularly reviewed, and new schemes tested against the re-written strategy objectives. The inspectors also want to raise the regional target for new homes to 505,000 by 2021 – an increase of 27,500. Sub-regions should be simplified by removing the London-Peterborough growth area. Additional growth should be concentrated in major urban centres such as Cambridge, Norwich and Peterborough, plus Hemel Hempstead and Welwyn Hatfield. The assembly, which is to consult councils on the changes, was relieved the new maximum for housing delivery was well below the 575,000 figure in government household projections. Keith Buchan, the transport consultant who represented the region’s environmental transport group STEER, said the report marked ‘a complete breakthrough in putting climate change at the heart of transport policy’. But Friends of the Earth feared that even the revised plans would be toothless without carbon emission-reduction targets. The Government will consult on its changes later this year before the final plan is adopted next spring. • East of England plan report of the panel : http://www.surveyormagazine.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=archive.featuredetail&IsPaper=true&articleID=3143