PETER BROWN meets Darren Shirley, new director of the Campaign for Better Transport, which wants public transport — in rural areas as well as big cities — to be treated as a much higher priority, for it to be funded accordingly and integrated to reduce car dependency
Anyone picking up the news in recent months about bus services in Britain can be left in little doubt that some are in a critical state, with many local authority supported routes — rural ones especially — being withdrawn and declining numbers of passengers using some commercial routes.
Funding is at the heart of it, but there are other issues too, such as how building much needed housing has led to whole communities being cut off without supplying such necessities as shops and public transport.
Building homes on brownfield sites seemed to be one solution to the national housing crisis. But now they are being built and completed we can see a major flaw in the plan. In one breath the government continues to tell us all to reduce our carbon emissions — and that means it wants us to use our cars less, or not at all — while with another it sanctions this kind of house building.
In the past such thinking might have led to bus services being sup…
