More Power for Councils over Bus Services under Lib Dem plans

10.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 3rd Jun 2008

Andrew Simpson - "Local people need more say over where the buses go".

Travel and transport will improve in Northampton 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.

"There are radical policies which will help address some of the transport problems in Northampton," said Andrew Simpson, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Northampton North.

"In Northampton not only do we miss out on fast train services to London but our bus network seems to run at the whim of the companies concerned. Often some logical routes are not being serviced or change frequently. Local people need more say over where the buses go".

"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 in Northampton desperately 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 Northampton will be discussing them at our regular meetings. We are looking forward to a good debate."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

See more details at:

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/liberal-democrats-launch-radical-new-transport-policies.14392.html