UK Environmental Policy and Transport

Abstract

Transport is a major cause of environmental degradation. The problems are neither new nor simple in their impact but certainly it has been the advent of motorised transport which has led to many of the current problems, a point eloquently made twenty years ago by J. M. Thompson (1974) when he described transport as:

an engineering industry carried on, not privately within the walls of a factory, but in public places where people are living, working, shopping and going about their daily business. The noise, smell, danger and other unpleasant features of large, fast-moving machinery are brought close to people, with potentially devastating consequences for the human environment.

As a result of these problems, and the public concerns raised by them, transport has traditionally been the subject of a considerable number of environmentally based regulations and controls over the years. Indeed, as far back as Roman times restrictions were put on the use of wagons in urban areas to contain traffic noise and reduce dust levels. The nature of both the problems associated with transport and their magnitude, however, have changed with time, and with this has come a shift in the forms and intensity of official policy.