MPs slam failure to meet transport targets

LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) Ministers are failing to hit their own targets to improve Britain's roads, trains and buses and lack a clear plan for the next five years, MPs said in a scathing report today.

Five of seven Department of Transport objectives have been missed, including targets to ease congestion, improve air quality and encourage more people to use public transport.

''This is a terrible picture of failure,'' said Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairman of the Commons Transport Committee.

''The department has not presented any evidence to convince us that the next five years will bring a radical change.'' ''(It) lacks a clear strategy of what it wants to achieve.

Without this vision, it also lacks a timetable of policies which are necessary to bring improvements.'' The department is on course to meet only two targets, on road safety and rail punctuality, despite spending 13.5 billion pounds in 2005-2006.

Ministers announced the objectives in 2004 as a ''contract'' between the government and the public.

''I imagine that most rail users would be surprised to hear their experiences described as the pinnacle of the department's annual achievements,'' Dunwoody added. ''Success against the road casualty targets is subdued by the daily toll of death and injury.'' Plans to impose pay-as-you-go charges on drivers will fail to ease congestion unless public transport is improved, the committee said, while welcoming plans for small-scale trials.

The failure to tackle air quality leads to the deaths of ''large numbers of people'' each year, the committee said. The department must make it a priority.

It called for tighter checks on foreign-registered lorries.

Four out of 10 trucks involved in crashes are foreign, even though they account for just three per cent of the heavy goods vehicles on the roads, the report said.

''The total number of un-roadworthy lorries currently on our roads is staggeringly and unacceptably high,'' Dunwoody said.

The Department for Transport said it did ''not agree with the characterisation of its work'' in the report.

''We are investing record amounts in transport, but we fully acknowledge there is much still to do,'' a spokesman said.

It met the rail punctuality target six months early and is on track to meet the road safety goal. Progress was being made on congestion and air quality targets.

The Conservative Party said the report pointed to ''system failures'' on road pricing, congestion and public transport.

''The department ... seems to be wedded to old-fashioned top-down Whitehall targets, and it can't even meet them,'' said Shadow Transport Minister Owen Paterson.

REUTERS SP RN1448