The Government has given up on its environmental aims of curbing car use, according to environmental campaigners, as traffic levels rose again by 0.7 per cent between the third quarters of 2004 and 2005.
According to the Government's latest stats, car and goods traffic was unchanged, although light van traffic rose by four per cent -- which might be accounted for by either a rise in economic activity (surely a good thing?), or seasonal movements of Christmas goods.
Meanwhile, the AA Motoring Trust pointed out that trying to price motorists out of cars did not work, as demonstrated by the continuing levels of car traffic despite huge and record petrol price rises, up to £1 a litre in some cases.
The attack by Friends of the Earth came as Transport Secretary Alistair Darling attended the Environment Friendly Vehicle Conference in Birmingham last week (in a bio-ethanol-fuelled Ford Focus - pictured above), where he declared the Government's intention to make transport fuels greener. By 2010, five per cent of all fuel sold on UK forecourts will come from a renewable source (see Tesco 99 story - link below).
Given that cars contribute relatively small amounts of pollution compared to the emissions from heavy lorries, commercial jets, industrial plants and power stations, you'd hope that the Government would start to concentrate its firepower in that direction...