HC Deb 18 May 2004 vol 421 cc835-6W
Mr. Paul Marsden

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what funding has been made available to local authorities specifically to promote car-sharing, car clubs, education programmes to promote walking and cycling or other soft measures to address transport issues in each year since 1997. [173312]

Mr. McNulty

In general, revenue funding provided to local authorities is not dedicated to specific purposes in this way. We have, however, provided some ring-fenced funding to local authorities through our bursary scheme for the employment of school and workplace travel plan co-ordinators at a cost of £3 million per annum for the three years from April 2001 to March 2004. From April 2004, the bursary scheme has been focussed on school travel plan co-ordinators, and its value has increased to £7.5 million per year (joint with DfES).

Mr. Paul Marsden

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment the Government have made of car-sharing within schools as a means of reducing congestion associated with the school run. [173315]

Mr. McNulty

The Department has commissioned research to identify the most successful school travel plans in the country and what has made these plans successful. We shall be publishing good practice guidance drawn from this research under the title "Making School Travel Plans Work" later this year. The guidance will include information on car-sharing initiatives where these have contributed to the wider success of school travel plans. We already know of a number of individual car-sharing initiatives that have been effective in reducing the number of cars taking children to school, and that many families make their own informal arrangements for sharing.

of passengers and (b) passenger kilometres in each year since 1997, broken down by region. [174172]
Mr. McNulty

The estimates of local bus usage in terms of passenger journeys for the years 1997–98 to 2002–03 are given it the following table. Estimates of passenger kilometres are only available for London and are given in the final row of the table.

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