The low-carbon road out of poverty

The government's current transport policy fosters oil dependence and exacerbates problems for the poorest households

Lee Waters
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday July 15, 2008

Critics of a new policy that increases the cost of running gas-guzzling cars are calling it "a 10p tax on wheels". Edmund King of the AA is the latest to evoke the government's recent tax trauma to try and induce a similar U-turn.
Labour is particularly sensitive to the charge that it is neglecting struggling families, and nearly 50 Labour backbenchers have taken the hint and signed an amendment to the finance bill, asking the government to rethink its plans for car tax.
But while it is a compelling narrative, does it withstand scrutiny? Are the poorest households best served by a bidding war on car and fuel tax?
Citizens Advice don't think so. It sees families every day struggling to absorb the rising fuel price and consider attempts to reduce the cost of motoring to be "simplistic". "This is not a question of choice, but necessity," it says.
We've been used to fuel costing the same as mineral water and we have designed our towns and cities around the assumption that we can all hop in the car. But not everyone can.
As Sue Edwards, head of consumer policy at Citizens Advice puts it: "Over the past decades jobs, shops, schools, and many other destinations have increasingly become accessible only by car. Public transport alternatives are often thin on the ground or expensive, and distance and an unsafe environment can make walking and cycling impossible even over short distances."
And yet transport policy is still chiefly focused on the car, which simply compounds the transport poverty suffered by the poorest.
As a report for the sustainable transport charity Sustrans points out, buying and running a car is already a major cause of people getting into trouble with debts, and those on low wages who do have cars spend nearly a quarter of their income on the cost of motoring. In some of the most deprived parts of south Wales, 35% of families are car-less and many more feel forced to "invest" in a car to access jobs and services.
As seductive as it seems, trying to match increases in oil with tax cuts is a road to nowhere for the poorest. Instead we need to focus on how to shift our transport system away from oil dependency.
Switching local journeys to a more sustainable form of transport would be a start: 60% of our car trips are less than five miles long, and with a number of small changes most of these could be taken by public transport, by foot or by bicycle. As well as making us fitter and reducing our carbon emissions, a shift to low carbon forms of transport is a key step to making our economy more resilient to further oil shocks.