TAKING TN GREEN ROUT
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The Green Party has all but vanished from the opinion polls but tacit support for green transport policies is still widespread. The British Social Attitudes Survey found that nine out of 10 people believe traffic congestion will either definitely or probably be one of the most serious problems for Britain over the next 20 years. Research by MORI shows about one in 10 adults belong to an environmental pressure group or charity. John Guttridge, external affairs director of the Freight Transport Association, says: "They reflect what a large number of people think and believe because they don't understand the facts." Transport policies contained in the Green Party Manifesto for a Sustainable Society are far more radical than those of other political parties: "The emphasis would be on local provision of goods, services and leisure and commercial requirements. ...Evaluation of transport needs would be based on social and environmental considerations. The profit motive is an inappropriate basis for a Green transport system."
Alan Francis, the party's speaker on transport, says lorries damage road surfaces and are a major source of air pollutants which exacerbate breathing problems. "We therefore need to reduce both the number of lorries on the roads and the distances that they travel."
The Green Party has fewer than 10,000 members nationally and wields far less political clout on transport than Friends of the Earth (FoE), which has 180,000 members. Blake LeeHarwood, FoE media co-ordinator, says there is a huge gulf between the two organisations. "They are a political party and we are simply a pressure group which focuses all its efforts on encouraging and chivvying environmental policy in a direction that benefits the planet and all living creatures on it. There would probably be a great deal of hostility to the Green Party's economic agenda if more widely known."
Transport 2000 is a much smaller pressure group and concentrates solely on transport. It supports the idea of taxing lorries to cover their "true costs" in terms of road repairs, accidents, pollution and environmental damage.
But executive director Stephen Joseph says this would not mean removing profit from transport. Although last month's launch of the "Truck-Off!" campaign by Transport 2000 against 44-tonners helped reinforce the impression that greens are invariably hostile to lorries. This is not always the case, according to Roger Higman, senior transport campaigner for FoE: "We recognise that within cities, rail is not going to provide much of an option for delivery of freight which will have to be done by road," he says. "I personally am not unsympathetic to the idea of certain commercial vehicles using bus lanes."
1 by Guy Sheppard