EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Transport. Show all posts

domestic+flights[i-domestic+flights]The Department of Energy and Climate Change has been caught in flagrante delicto, or so it would seem. The Daily Telegraph reports that this department, specifically set up to tackle climate change has paid for more than 1,000 internal flights around Britain despite telling the public to cut down on air travel.

However, or so we are told, this is somewhat mitigated by the Government using £35,000 of our money to buy indulgences carbon credits to offset the flights – but that isn't even the half of it.

What we are not told is that the government is co-funding an EU project called CATCH headed by the transport consultancy MRC Mclean Hazel Limited, with the participation of the University of the West of England in Bristol and the public-funded Transport Research Laboratory.

For €1.94 million, of which €1.48 million is EU funding, the project will "develop a knowledge platform" to "provide travellers, businesses, planners and other mobility stakeholders with the tools to play their part in creating a new mobility culture promoting timely and informed climate-friendly travel choice and policies."

The "Holistic Platform" (i.e., website) "will enable travellers to understand the climate change impacts of their choices, and take effective actions to reduce them, and enable policy decision makers to include carbon constraints into their actions."

Nor indeed is this the full extent of the EU involvement. It also has on the go a project called WISETRIP, in which the University of Aberdeen and the Angus Transport Forum is taking part. For €2.14 million – of which €1.44 million is EU funding – they are designing a network of interconnected Journey Planner systems to combine urban and Long-Distance Transport information services, all of which is supposed to integrate with the CATCH project.

Then there is the i-Travel project which for €2.27 million – of which €1.46 million is EU funding – is set to develop "a personalised, context-aware online 'virtual travel assistant' service for travellers, both before and throughout their journey."

This, in turn is augmented by CIVITAS, a €24.48 million project, with €15.29 million of EU money, aimed at improving "sustainable transport" and "pushing citizens towards the desired behavioural shift".

With all that effort, and something like €30 million being spent on guiding travellers towards making the "right" choice of journey plan, the very least DECC could do is take a little notice of what is going on. But then, I suppose, we are dealing with the mindset of our rulers, who subscribe to the dominant ethos of "do as I say, not what I do".

When CATCH goes online in 2012 and becomes available to the public, though, at least we will have some guidance in telling them what to do with it.

COMMENT THREAD

drink+drive+ca[i-drink+drive+ca]"Plans to review permitted alcohol levels for drivers would have no impact on criminally irresponsible individuals who routinely drive while well over the limit," says The Daily Telegraph leader. "It is therefore puzzling that Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, wants to reopen this debate," it then observes.

No it isn't puzzling – it isn't puzzling at all. This is an EU initiative. It goes right back to May 2004 when the EU decided it wanted common drink-driving limits. Only, instead of coming out in the open, it is pushing for each member state "voluntarily" to impose harmonised standards, and only then will it issue a Directive, claiming that this is simply to regularise a position that already exists.

The EU commission is well-aware that bringing out a harmonising Directive at this stage would trigger a huge wave of protest and anti-EU sentiment, so it is working behind the scenes, with a threat that, unless the member states comply "voluntarily" it will push for a new law.

The whole agenda was set out in 2002 (138 pages .pdf) - a project called "ESCAPE", which plans EU-wide traffic law harmonisation and common enforcement standards. The drink-drive limit is only one of the proposals. Standard speed limits, random breath-testing and uniform fines are all proposed.

As always, though, the papers cannot see what id in front of their very eyes – hence the leader writer finding the current government action "puzzling". These people are children when it comes to understanding how our government now works.

COMMENT THREAD

utrain[i-utrain]We are aware of the fact that this blog has not dealt in any detail with the summary of the forthcoming UN Report on Climate Change and the fall-out from it (if one may use that expression). It will be done, honest. M

Meanwhile, over at One London there is some discussion about the way ordinarily and not extremely bad weather affects London and other parts of the United Kingdom.

TRANS+-+Lights+002[i-TRANS+-+Lights+002]
If you look carefully at the picture above, you can count no less than 22 sets of traffic lights. Those, complete with the paraphernalia of signs, barriers and bus segregation, is the classic response of the conventional traffic engineer - creating an expensive, sterile nightmare that magnifies the delays and frustration, destroying visual amenity.

Naked+street+001[i-Naked+street+001]Such a scheme could have been the response of the City Council of Smallingerland in Friesland, Holland. In the year 2000, the councillors and officials were about to implement a long-planned scheme to reconstruct an important traffic intersection in the City of Drachten, known as the Laweiplein.

Read more here.

COMMENT THREAD