New drive to ease spiralling urban congestion

Date: 09/11/1995

GOVERNMENTS will have to consider a tougher approach to tackle the mounting congestion on Europe's roads, Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock is set to warn in a Green Paper to be published early next year.

The paper will make the point that so-called 'pull' measures to encourage traffic to leave the streets may be more politically acceptable, but the less popular 'push' measures designed to actively discourage traffic are likely to be altogether more effective.

But the Green Paper will not spell out in detail what type of 'push' measures should be considered, in recognition of the fact that the Commission's competence in this area is limited.

Kinnock's Green Paper on “Citizens' Networks” - the Commission's first ever comprehensive policy statement on public transport - has already been circulated within the Commission in preparation for its planned launch in the first half of January.

The document, flagged up by Kinnock a month ago, “will not be a Brussels masterplan for transport”, officials stress, but will provide the basis for an EU-wide debate on how to broaden public transport choices for EU citizens and reduce crippling congestion in urban centres.

Officials stress that the Green Paper will not be a revolutionary document. According to one Commission official: “We are not in the business of taking cars out of existence.”

The Green Paper will stress that although urban congestion is a localised problem, its effects stretch well beyond national boundaries. It will try to encourage good practice by drawing attention to successful projects in individual member states.

Kinnock has, for example, been greatly encouraged by the success of the Manchester Metrolink, which has been calculated to replace as many as two million individual car journeys into the UK city every year.

“But it's not for the Commission to say there's a magic formula,” an official emphasised, although Kinnock has spoken of making the price of road use reflect its real cost more fully.

The Commissioner is pinning his hopes on the formation of some sort of “Citizens' Network Forum” of interested parties to take the debate forward, but has made no firm plans as yet on what form this will take.

Any individual legislative actions arising from the debate would most likely be dealt with on an individual case-by-case basis and not in a new raft of measures arising from the Green Paper.

Despite his socialist beliefs, Kinnock is well aware that public money to improve transport networks is in short supply and that a balance must therefore be struck between the public and private sectors.

His recent comments reflect the increasingly-widespread political acceptance that things cannot continue as they are, with the number of cars on the road spiralling further out of control.

He is clearly hoping that politicians can also be persuaded that politically controversial actions must be taken to ease the damage being done to human health, the environment and the European economy.

But no one is underestimating the problems he faces. As one member state official puts it: “Everybody thinks cars are a bad thing, but they still go out and buy them because they are convenient.”

Some member states are naturally suspicious of what they view as the Commission's attempts to gain competence in an area which has naturally fallen under national legislation and will continue to do so in the era of subsidiarity.

Others are aware that this initiative is useful, but fear that it may not be sufficiently balanced. “The Commission has the political clout but not the expertise,” one official said.

Showing an appreciation of such concerns in a speech last month in Copenhagen, Kinnock stressed that crucial decisions “must obviously and rightly be taken at national and local level”.

Although some member state officials reject the recent “love affair with the train”, the Commission is also keen to stress that its paper will not limit itself to 'fashionable' transport systems.

“An electric trolley bus would not be better than a diesel vehicle if the electricity used to power it was produced by highly-polluting brown coal,” pointed out an official.

The extent of the problem facing the Union is shown by figures suggesting that traffic volumes will probably double by the year 2020. According to the OECD, the annual cost of congestion in the EU's 15 member states is estimated at 2&percent; of GDP, or more than 100 billion ecu every year.