"If a government can't fix transport, what can it fix?" asks John Ware, the former Panorama reporter who presents his timely series on what he sees as New Labour's failure to transform Britain's transport system. | ARE WE THERE YET? Tuesday 6 March 2007 1930 GMT on BBC Two |
"Transport", Ware suggests, "is the litmus test when it comes to competence at delivering better public services." Unlike crime or education, he argues, there are no social factors like inequality that can affect outcomes. In the first of this four-part series for BBC Two, Ware shows how road building can never keep pace with traffic growth. Yet the government has failed to develop a consistent policy that has made us less car-dependent. For its controversial road pricing plans to succeed, the government will need a much more radical approach to planning, to end out-of-town developments that make us more car-dependent... and a vastly expanded public transport system. Driving around clogged-up Britain through jam after jam, Ware makes the case that road pricing is the only practical way of dampening down car use, much of which is unnecessary. And he shows how it could, and should, be introduced even sooner than ministers - ever fearful of the car lobby - are planning. Episode one was broadcast on Tuesday, 6 March, 2007 at 1930 on BBC Two.
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