Sustainable Transport and the Environment Guide - Unite the Union

Taxi drivers more affected by transport emissions being in the centre of the road
Large increase in taxi numbers after a number of Councils lifted the restriction on the
number of taxis after a circular letter from the Department for Transport following an
Office of Fair Trading Report.
Use the Sustainable Transport document to campaign on environmental and social
issues
Practical solutions list – What can our members do? What are we doing? (Bus
workers Charter, Local Transport Act 2008)
Environmental reps – What would they do? What rights would they have?
Economical driving – Traffic light economical driving system in place in a lot of
workplaces already (Red – bad, Green – good, etc). They put stats on pay slips.
Potential for management misuse?
Workplace examples of what could be done in the workplace to deliver sustainable
transport – Garage side of sustainability.
Town planning – Around car or employer in the case of John Lewis in Leicester.
Cab design committees – Frank Llwellyn heads this up for us. They felt there was
some potential here.
7.2 Road Transport Commercial Trade Group
Delegates fully endorsed the recommendations in the RTC chapter of the report. The
issue of how to create an sustainable and integrated transport policy - through
regulation – is a question for the whole country. It was recalled that in the 1960s,
picking up and dropping off was largely handled locally. From 1975 this changed –
along with pressure for cheaper prices. Vehicles now run double or even triple shifts
for trunking and distribution. Companies do not want to hold stocks but this results in
lorries not being fully loaded. An easy way to reduce the number of lorry movements
would be to revert to more stock-holding.
Finding means to make holding stock more financially attractive than ‘just in time’
delivery was perhaps a way for government to address some of the problems – either
making the latter more expensive and/or the former cheaper. Additionally, measures
that would make it more expensive for lorries to travel without a load would have a
beneficial effect.
7.3 Civil Air Transport Trade Group
It was considered that there are some areas that we cannot affect – e.g. the technical
design of aircraft and the type of fuel used by aircraft. Employers held the key to this,
the key factor for employer is saving money and as there is a direct relationship
between fuel savings and environmental improvement the union can play a role in
making employers aware of the measures that could be taken.
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