Sustrans slams chancellor's budget

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by Mark Sutton
Monday, April 27th 2009 at 12:35PM

'The measures announced in the budget will deepen the nation's reliance on car travel'

Sustrans has expressed dismay at the announcements made in last week's budget.

Despite outlining several 'green initiatives', Sustrans believes the budget did not tackle transport emissions - the fastest growing source of emissions in the UK - and as a result has missed an opportunity to tackle the car dependence culture.

Jason Torrance, Sustrans policy manager, said: "The budget was an ideal opportunity to support improvements for public transport, and for walking and cycling schemes, that would allow low-carbon economic recovery.

"But, the measures announced in the budget will deepen the nation's reliance on car travel, and do nothing to improve local environments, health, road safety or travel choice."

The sustainable transport charity also described the car scrappage scheme as 'disastrous'.

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"The scrappage scheme is a catastrophic knee-jerk reaction to the recession, which ignores congestion and climate change and could amount to nothing more than a large hand-out to car manufacturers overseas."