Gloucestershire’s ‘new’ Local Transport Plan is meant to run to 2041. However by 2041 we should be well on the way to decarbonising local transport and nobody seems to have told the civil servants – the plan is simply a rehash of unfulfilled aspirations from the previous one. We don’t need aspirations, we need real, practical steps to transform our local transport.

A meaningful plan would contain a vision for networks of walking and cycling routes in and between our town and villages, a vision that would then be slowly realised in new developments. It would contain a vision of the sort of really extensive public transport we are going to need and how we are going to get it – railways are expensive to build in our crowded locality so local public transport is more likely to be buses and taxis. How are we going to move from the typical hourly or two hourly bus services around Stroud to the high-frequency services we’ll need? How are we going to make taxis more affordable?

Finally the plan should say how the remaining cars should fit into all this, how we will power them and how we will fit them into the rest of the local transport mix.

Please GCC, send this plan back to the drawing board. It’s not worth all the time and effort we are expending on it!

Peter Wormington

Stroud,