Nicholas Craig column

Feb 2 2007 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

My once in a lifetime sojourn to Australia and New Zealand has probably used up my entire carbon allowance for this century. Coming home again it is obvious that the war against transport has cranked up to top gear.

I thankfully missed the Very Important Pedestrian day in London, when cars and buses were banned from Oxford Street. I also missed the publication of the Eddington Report on transport, which touts punishment for car drivers in the form of tolls as the only way forward for our road system.

The continuing furore about aeroplanes and climate change is, however, impossible to avoid. Prince Charles' visit to America has led to howls of rage, and the EU's annual emissions limits on airlines is a sharp reminder of our effrontery at daring to move outside our back door.

I love travel. I adore no-frills airlines, enjoy train journeys and am rarely parted from my car. During my life I have seen the remarkable opening up of the world through cheaper, more reliable transport. As a result I have had the chance to spend time in extraordinary countries and meet wonderful people.

The swift development of the motorway system means I now drive up and down the country with comparative ease. Childhood memories of journeys to London in my parents' car involved a very long, tiring day's drive. Now we are castigated for driving to work, discouraged from dashing off for a relaxing weekend, and asked to justify anything resembling a long-haul journey.

Has anyone independently looked at our road network and asked if we are genuinely incapable of extending the system to better accommodate our cars? In 2004, British motorists travelled 306 billion miles, more than three times those travelled 40 years earlier. There were four times as many private cars in 2004 as in 1964 - 26 million compared with seven million in the swinging sixties.

And yet total road length in Britain has increased by only 20% in the last 40 years, from 200,000 to 245,000 miles. As for aeroplanes being the apocalyptic route to global destruction, aviation's contribution to total man-made emissions worldwide is around 3% according to The Economist. That's way below electricity generation, industry emissions, or even other forms of transport. It's too late to try to keep us all at home. Our horizons are broader, roads need a rethink.

Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton LLP.