New Labour transport masterplan humiliated
Phasing out of trains, buses and cars slammed as unworkable
by Richard Thomas Walker
New Labour's transport plan for the next century lay in ruins tonight after
its plans to prevent Britain's road becoming clogged up like a constipated
bowel were treated to some colonic irrigation.
The report was foreshadowed as a radical look at the transport system with
much blue-sky thinking, usually out of the box and notable for a lack of sacred
cows but quickly lost support when people actually read it.
Environmental pressure groups were enraged about the stated intention to
"Pave Paradise and put up a (pay and display) parking lot". Other hotspots
include the plan to entire replace Britain's railway lines by 2004. The tracks
will be ripped up by 468 different companies and sold for half the money it
cost to do so, ensuring our loss-making rail heritage is saved forever.
Buses will also cease to be in the near future and the last passenger
service: Wonderful Yorkshire's Wonderful Horseless Traction Bus Company's
Garglethorpe to Scummerton service will depart at 6 am on 5 June 2005, arriving
at it's destination, three miles down the road, 18 months later.
Taxis will also be phased out, with drivers given a rehabilitation course to
help them get over the urge to explain how better to run the country and bang
the world to rights. Instead, the hot air produced by the Labour Party and the
redundant taxi drivers will fuel British transport on a new fleet of balloons;
784 yards of pointless cycle ways will be painted on roads in 48 separate towns
in Britain; and motorway congestion will be solved permanently by closing them
to cars and HGVs.
Petrol stations will be systematically closed down until the remaining ones
are so far apart it is impossible to drive from one to another. In the advent
of more efficient cars, a gradual eradication of petrol stations is planned
until there is only one left. Should this take place, the last remaining petrol
station in the UK will be on Rockall.