Lib Dems slate road safety plan (From Gazette Series)

Lib Dems slate road safety plan

A ROW has broken out as road safety is given priority over urban congestion and rural bus routes in plans for Gloucestershire's transport for the next five years.

The provisional second Gloucestershire Local Transport Plan plan sets out Gloucestershire County Council's transport priorities from 2006 to 2011 and demonstrates how the council intends to meet both local and government targets. Changes to the plan, which will see an extra £10 million spent on road safety, were approved at a full council meeting on Wednesday, July 20.

But Liberal Democrat councillors called the plan a disgrace, forcing the Conservatives, who made changes to the plan drawn up by the previous administration, to defend their decision.

Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Jeremy Hilton (Westgate) said: "This local transport plan is a disgrace. There will now be no real improvements to public transport in the county over the next five years.

"The planned park and ride schemes have been shelved, new buses to kickstart services that are not profit making have been cancelled and support for rural bus services is in jeopardy."

Cllr John Cordwell (Lib Dem, Wotton-under-Edge) said: "Rushing through these changes will cause long-term problems for transport in Gloucestershire. There will be a decline in bus services and a failure to tackle problems of congestion as development in the Severn Vale area increases.

"Rural Bus services will not be supported, Stroud, Forest and the Cotswolds will suffer as a result. The Government will not give the county the extra 25 percent funding worth £1.3million pounds that we could have received if the council invested in public transport and it could well lose us another 25 percent."

Cllr Stan Waddington, (Cons, Minchinhampton), cabinet member for transport, said: "We took the decision that we had to spend money now on making roads in this county safer - either by direct safety measures or by ensuring they are properly maintained.

"The death toll on our roads is unacceptable - we have a duty to try to do something about it now.

"To do this we have postponed, but by no means abandoned, some of the schemes to build new park and ride sites and to buy new buses for bus companies.

"Labour and the Liberal Democrats are arguing that new bus routes should have a higher priority than protecting the lives of road users in Gloucestershire. I find this impossible to swallow. I've seen the photographs of too many young people killed on our roads - I would be utterly failing in my duties as a councillor if I didn't try to do something about it.

"That is why the Conservative group made the decision to give, for the next few years, road safety a higher priority than building new park and rides.

A public consultation on the plan will start in August. The final version will be submitted to the Department for Transport in March 2006.