I, for one, cheered when Geoff Hoon resigned as Minister for Transport and was replaced by Lord Adonis earlier this month. Geoff was a car nut bought in (in my humble opinion) to rubber stamp Heathrow expansion, and then get out. Frankly, no forward thinking country should have someone like that in charge of transport. The question is, what are Lord Adonis’s priorities?
On Wednesday 24th June Lord Adonis spoke at the Transport Times Conference to outline his vision for transport in England (transport is a devolved power). You could read the whole speech (and it is very good) on the DFT website. Or you could just look at the Wordle I put together using the speech as a source.
Even from just the thumbnail you can see that cycling, public transport, railways and carbon all loom large – which has gotta be a good thing! The one disappointment is only one mention of walking. But every Transport Minister since the 70’s has been paranoid about headlines about the ministry of silly walks. To be honest it was fairly brave of him to reference Jim Hacker and integrated transport policy.
So. Lets wait to see what he comes up with, but I am certainly more hopeful than when that muppet Hoon took over.