Liberal Democrats in Guildford welcome transport plans

1.39.50pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 10th Jun 2008

Travel and transport will improve in Guildford if new Liberal Democrat transport policies are put into operation, claim local members of the party.

The policies were launched on 3rd June by Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg. The proposals include improving bus services by putting them under the control of local councils where bus companies have failed to provide improvements themselves; improving local rail services; introducing strong environmental criteria for new roads and building a high speed rail network to cut journey times for longer distance travel.

"These are radical policies which will help address some of the transport problems in Guildford and across the UK" said Sue Doughty, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson for Guildford.

"We need to reduce our dependency on cars but for this to happen we clearly require improved public transport systems. We would seriously invest in public transport without passing the costs on to passengers. Our transport policies would therefore benefit Guildford with an increase in bus services that are better coordinated for example, as well as a marked improvement in other public transport services, which would in turn reduce traffic congestion.

"Transport is now high on people's lists of concerns. Despite lots of talk by Labour, public transport is expensive and plagued by problems of decades of failure to invest in it by both Labour and Conservative governments.

"With the cost of driving shooting up, bus and rail services need a boost. Our proposals will help to create a modern local transport system fit for the decades to come, rather than for decades ago.

"The policy proposals will be debated at our conference in September and before then, members in Guildford will be discussing them at our regular meetings. We are looking forward to a good debate."