Campaign begins to cut local and national traffic levels

A CAMPAIGN to set national and local targets for reducing traffic was launched yesterday with the aim of getting a Bill through Parliament in the next session.

The proposed Bill, which was published yesterday as an Early Day Motion by Cynog Dafis, the Green Party and Welsh Nationalist MP for Ceredigion and Pembroke North, would require the Government to publish details each year on its progress on reducing traffic levels.

Friends of the Earth, which has initiated the campaign, is hoping that the Bill will be picked up by a sympathetic MP who comes high in the Private Members' Bill ballot in the autumn. Mr Dafis said: 'We are confident that we would get strong all-party support for the Bill. This is an idea whose time has come.'

Friends of the Earth sees the Bill as a potential focus for the growing opposition to new road schemes. Roger Higman, its roads campaigner, said: 'At the moment, Parliament never gets a chance to discuss the roads programme. Yet the protest out there is growing daily.'

The Bill would set a target by which the Government would have to ensure that traffic levels in 2000 were no higher than those in 1990.

By 2005 levels would have to be 5 per cent lower and by 2010 10 per cent lower. The main way of achieving this would be to require local authorities to produce traffic reduction plans within a year of the legislation becoming law.