Liberal Democrats in Milton Keynes Welcome Transport Plans

8.32.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 17th Jun 2008

Travel and transport will improve in Milton Keynes 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 Milton Keynes," said Jill Hope, Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Milton Keynes North.

"Thousands of people commute from Milton Keynes to London and Birmingham for work every day, but despite the massive bonuses being paid to senior executives at Network Rail, travelling by train is getting worse, not better. There are repeated signal failures, frequent delays and overcrowding, with the result that people who have paid thousand of pounds for season tickets have to stand all the way from London to Milton Keynes.

"We all want people to get out of their cars and on to trains, because that's much more environmentally friendly than driving, but repeated problems on the railways put people off. The rail service needs to improve in the short term, so that people have the confidence to travel by train again. One of the ideas included in the Liberal Democrat transport proposals is the re-opening of a number of stations and lines, including the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Bedford line to provide a much-needed East-West service. This would increase rail use.

"Councils are currently being held to ransom by the bus operators who insist on massive subsidies to maintain routes which they consider not commercially viable. What people refer to as 'public transport' is actually privately-owned, and the bus companies are more interested in profit than service. If a community is seriously dissatisfied with the local bus service, perhaps the time has come for the local Council to take control of that service.

"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 Milton Keynes 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. Under the Liberal Democrat-run Council, we have significantly increased bus ridership but there is more work to do and we think this proposal will improve services for Milton Keynes."