So, Gordon Brown has seen fit to postpone the fuel duty rise of 2p. This is just putting off the inevitable - within a short space of time fuel will have gone up 2p anyway with the rising price of oil. What this does demonstrate is the governments lack of real commitment to making the changes necessary to make our transport system more sustainable. We cannot afford to put the environment to one side every time the economy isn't doing as well as we'd like. The environment is the economy, and if we stuff the enviroment, there won't be any economy.
At the Transport Practitioners' Meeting (Reading University) yesterday, there was an excellent presentation in the opening session about sustainability in transport, which concluded it was probably never there. I'm inclined to agree. We are still obsessed with top-down transport planning and big infrastructure schemes, rather than looking at the bottom-up approach, favouring walking and cycling, ditching road building schemes and seriously re-allocating road space in urban areas.
