CIT campaigns over congestion
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• 'rhe new president of the Chartered Institute of Transport, Alastair Pugh, has launched a campaign to press for radical improvements in Britain's creaking transport system.
He has called on the CIT's 20,000 members to "rebel" against the present inadequate network. "An obvious priority is to get stuck into the awful problems of congestion that swamp transport development," said Pugh, a former executive vice chairman and director for strategy at British Caledonian.
The institute's first annual London conference, to be held in May 1989 at Olympia, will have the theme: Combating Congestion — Relieving Transpores Bottlenecks. The CIT wants to attract more private money to infrastructure investment and, in contrast to the Freight Transport Association, accepts the inevitable consequence of road tolls.
Nonetheless, says Pugh, the government must play the leading role: "Long-term infrastructure planning and investment cannot be left to the marketplace. Deregulated transport in a free market, for all its preceived virtues, does require a framework of policies and rules within which to function."
He outlined the CIT's fivepoint campaign programme. A series of lectures will be backed by research aimed at justifying the argument and followed by sustained lobbying of the government. Pugh also plans to harness the influence of CIT members and start an intensive recruitment drive.