A bt of everything....

Rail: Make commitment to HSR network development. Set up UK benchmarks against NetworkRail costs. Turn stations over to the local authorities. Create one publicly owned franchise.
Bus: Compulsory quality contracts. Mandatory skills development requirements for companies.
Aviation: Blow apart Boris island proposal. Ensure passengers are actually insured. Roads: Freeze new road projects. Promote hard shoulder running.

Joe Fortune

Focus on ecology, mobility and equality

The focus of the Labour Government’s transport policies should be ecology, mobility and equality. Taxation and funding should be re-based to deliver these objectives, initially on a zero-sum basis in order to be politically deliverable. For example, the mobility of lower income people could be protected by the use of environmental taxation “personal allowances” (c.f. income tax) or by rationing.

STEWART STACEY, Birmingham Yardley CLP

Are buses delivering?

Is it time to look at the delivery of bus services since deregulation? Are they affordable, convenient, well-used? Do we need a universal low-fare akin to what the GLC delivered for the tube in the 1980s? Buses could be key to reducing congestion and alleviating all sorts of traffic related stresses to our urban environments.

Julian Ware-Lane
Labour PPC, Castle Point

Fuel tax reform

This needs pan-european co-operation. We should tax aviation fuel at the same rate as road fuel while keeping the overall tax-take constant. Only frequent flyers would get hammered and the ‘one holiday per year’ poor would have their costs offset by cheaper motoring the rest of the year. We cancel Heathrow expansion and stop subsidising ‘stranded technology’ as the oil exhausts.

Philip Smart
Ipswich CLP

Green taxes earmarked for transport

A Green Fuel Tax supplement earmarked for public transport improvements will influence where people locate their homes and their businesses. Backed by urban regeneration, this tackles social polarisation as well as transport demand growth. A national strategic framework is neded, but localisation of money-raising and spending decisions is essential to real integration of transport and spatial policy.

Prof Alan Wenban-Smith

Green economics - and end to agnostic transport planning

The next Labour Government cannot be modally agnostic in its transport policy but should seek to influence travel choice and behaviour through the price mechanism. Essentially this means using taxation based on carbon emissions per passenger/ freight tonne kilometre to promote the most sustainable form of transport possible for any given trip. A first step would be to revisit plans for road user charging for heavy lorries. Another would be to ensure that aviation pays a realistic price for the use of take off and landing slots.

Mark James
Greenwich CLP

Improve Regional Infrastructure

Improvements to our transport infrastructure is vital if we are to stand any chance of closing our productivity gap with the more affluent parts of the UK. We must get the DfT to upgrade the status of the A1 going North through our region and to get on with the long overdue work on the Western Bypass. I am supportive of the need to include our Region ion the High Speed rail network, but a much more pressing need would be to re-instate the importance of our regional airports, especially at Durham/Teesside. The negative impact on the industry in that part of the north is massively underestimated

Dave Anderson, MP for Blaydon

Act to double the number of cyclists

Cycling helps solve many of the problems society faces. Doubling cycling in ten years would save billions of pounds in health, congestion and pollution costs. We will work with businesses, schools, public transport operators, the health and voluntary sectors, local authorities and the police to promote cycling and to make our roads safe and welcoming for all existing and would-be cyclists.

Tony Berkeley, Chairman, Rail Freight Group

Oysteration of National Rail System

Given the huge success of take-up for TfL ( except for some TOCs on surburban lines ) in London across a number of modes of travel of the Oyster Card, it would make sense to spread this across the UK. This would be very convenient for passengers and should help reduce the bureaucracy of using trains,coaches and trams. As London is the source of some 60 per cent of all trip ( both to and from ) in the UK.

Murad Qureshi AM - LTG Vice Chair and Chair London Assembly of the Environment Committee

Electrification of the Railways.

The complete electrification of the rail network will provide a cleaner, more efficient railway and, if powered by renewable energy, would assist the UK in significantly reducing carbon emissions and reliance on oil. The electrification of the network would a key step in the move towards a low carbon economy and would increase capacity by providing longer and more frequent trains.

Nigel Gibson
Executive Committee Member, District No.5
ASLEF

Tackling Transport's CO2 Emissions

To achieve an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 requires a 3% year by year reduction for the next 40 years. Transport cannot be a passenger. We must develop policies to deliver a 3% annual reduction across all transport sectors, including aviation. Cheap flights may otherwise cost the earth.

Proposed By Brian Ross
Saffron Walden CLP

Not for profit rail franchises

Introduce a not-for-profit model for train operating companies as franchises expire - as a first step towards the renationalisation of the network. The current structure of the industry delivers neither value for money nor a good service for the public. The franchising system is an obscenely expensive game of musical chairs which fragments services and health and safety and takes no long term approach to investment or environmental challenges.

Simon Weller, LTG Exec Member (South East)

Green Transport Measures

Government funding for research into green cars - creating employment as well as potentially benefiting the environment
and,
A hypothecated tax on internal flights, with all proceeds used to subsidise rail/coach fares on equivalent routes

Chris Clake, LTG Exec Member (South East)

Appoint a bus regulator

A new Bus Regulator would take over all the bus related functions (other than the checks on roadworthiness) of the traffic commissioners. But unlike today`s commissioners they would be properly resourced and widely promoted to encourage passengers to report concerns. The regulator would ensure that operators operated their published registered schedules fully and penalise them if they didn’t.

Mike Parker, LTG North Eastern Rep

A new way of road user charging

Scrap the existing road taxation scheme and reduce the petrol tax down to 25/30%, offset this by charging people through a sliding scale of costs, depending on distance travelled. The public would feel in more control of how they pay tax while the reduced tax on petrol could be hypothecated for transport spending, the proposal could also support the reduction of CO2 while also helping free up congested roads.

Proposed by Gary Hills, LTG Exec Member for the East of England

Improve Local Bus Services

Build on the success of the Local Transport Act to;
• Provide cheaper fares and better services in cities outside London and in rural areas, including more free or lower price bus travel for under-16s.
• Provide more low emission buses
• Improve training and employment conditions for the bus workforce, through bus workers' charter and minimum tender requirements.

Proposed by Lucy Anderson, LTG Treasurer

A High Speed Rail Network

Britain needs a high speed rail to link our cities and create a modern, green economy. Lord Adonis's leadership on this has been excellent, particularly through setting up HS2. But we must do more, and commit in Labour's manifesto to investing in a new high speed network, to guarantee a green and prosperous future.

Proposed by Mike Katz, Chair of LTG

Empower Local Transport Authorities

Every region in the UK faces different transport problems, funding and projects should stop being linked with the latest Westminster trend (as with TiF and Congestion Charging). Local authorities should be given more power through ITAs to design bespoke solutions, which meet a minimum set of national standards (as proposed by LTG in “Local Transport; National Standards for Local Empowerment”).