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Bicycle Safety

Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent representations he has received on bicycle safety in London. [107405]

Mr. Jamieson: My Department has received eight such representations in the financial year 02/03. Cycling safety in London is the responsibility of the Mayor of London and Transport for London.

Departmental Staff

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many staff were employed by his Department in (a) 2001–02 and (b) 2002–03. [106966]

Mr. Jamieson: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 4 April 2003, Official Report, columns 891–92W.

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Flight Time Limitations

Mr. Pickthall: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has had with the British Airline Pilots Association about EU proposals to standardise flight time limitations throughout the EU; and if he will make a statement. [107221]

Mr. Jamieson [holding answer 8 April 2003]: There have been several meetings between BALPA and the Civil Aviation Authority at which the European Parliament's proposal has been discussed. The CAA has reviewed the European Parliament's proposed FTL requirements. They advise that, while the requirements are not totally acceptable, with suitable amendment they could form a baseline European FTL requirement which could be supplemented by additional requirements in each Member State. We recognise the need for FTL requirements to be harmonised at a European level and should the proposal come before the Council we will work constructively with other Member States to ensure that it is appropriately amended.

Local Transport Plan

Mr. Ivan Henderson: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much funding the Harwich constituency has received under the local transport plan since 1997. [107714]

Mr. Jamieson: Since year 2000, allocations under the Local Transport Plan procedures (and prior to that their predecessor Transport Policies and Programme) have been made by my Department to local transport authorities, in this case Essex county Council. LTPs identify individual schemes costing over £5 million as 'major schemes'; make a block allocations for integrated transport measures each costing less than £5 million; and make an allocation for maintenance based on a common formula. Figures are kept only for the Tendring district council area as a whole and so it is possible to identify expenditure falling solely within the Harwich constituency only for major schemes, by reference to their location.

Expenditure on named schemes in the Tendring district of Essex£000

Scheme	1998–99	1999–2000	2000–01	2001–02	2002–03(2)
A133 Little Clacton Bypass	166	381	394	0	0
A120 Dovercourt Bypass Stage 2 Phase 1	9	14	18	0	0
A133 Little Clacton Bypass and Gorse Lane Link Stage 2	95	16	0	0	0
A136 Parkeston Bypass Stage 1	491	322	207	16	-2
A136 Parkeston Bypass Stage 2	103	0	0	656	973
B1029 Brightlingsea Bends	0	15	12	15	296
Jaywick Relief Road	250	0	0	0	0
Jaywick Spine Road Stage 2	0	0	0	341	236
Total	1,114	748	631	1,028	1,503

⁽²⁾ Not final

Expenditure in Tendring district under LTP on:

	£	£
Integrated Transport Scheme	409,000	437,000
Roads maintenance	1,529,000	779,000

Note:

Figures for earlier years are unavailable.

Crossrail

Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport pursuant to his answer of 3 February 2003, Official Report, column 40W, on Crossrail, when his Department will announce its final decision on the project. [107743]

Mr. Jamieson: The Department is continuing to examine proposals for Crossrail. Decisions on the way

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forward and on the timing of any announcements have yet to been taken.

M1

Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects the M1 motorway in both directions between junctions 23 and 25 to be devoid of lane closures due to roadworks. [107551]

Mr. Spellar: I have asked the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency, Tim Matthews, to write to the right hon. Member.

Letter from David York to Mr. Greg Knight, dated 9 April 2003:

Tim Matthews has been asked by the Transport Minister, John Spellar, to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about roadworks on the Ml Motorway between Junctions 23 and 25. I am replying as Tim is currently away on Highways Agency business.

There are two schemes currently being undertaken on the M1 north of Junction 23. which are expected to continue until Spring 2004. The first, involving major maintenance work to resurface the carriageways with low noise material and renew drainage installations between Junctions 24 and 25, began in January. That work is expected to be complete by June. (Phase 1, about which I wrote to you in March last year following a previous Parliamentary Question, was completed in early summer 2002.) The second involves upgrading the motorway communications in this area and extends from Junction 24 to Junction 27.

Wherever practicable, the Agency seeks to combine roadworks, as is being done here, in order to minimise disruption to road users. For the resurfacing/drainage work a contraflow system is in operation with three lanes of traffic running in each direction between 6 am and 8 pm (10 pm Friday and 9 pm Sunday) and a 50 mph speed restriction applies for safety reasons. When lane closures are required, work is normally scheduled either overnight or outside peak periods, in accordance with the target set for us by ministers to ensure that at least 98.5% of running lanes are available for use during peak hours. The majority of the communications upgrading work is being carried out at night with closure of lane one and the hard shoulder.

I should add that further minor works art planned at Junctions 23A and 24 but, due to the nature of the work and the potential disruption that would be caused to the surrounding road network, these will not go ahead until the current -major works are completed. They are programmed for completion during this financial year.

This is a particularly heavily used length of motorway. The Agency is doing all it can to keep disruption to a minimum but I am afraid there will inevitably be some delays at peak times.

If you would like any further information, Iftikhar Mir, the Agency's Route Manager for this length of the M1, would be pleased to help. He can be contacted at our offices at Broadway, Broad Street, Birmingham B15 1BL, or by telephone on 0121 678 8025.

Pollution

Mrs. Helen Clark: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) of 6 March 2003, Official Report, columns 1155–56W, on pollution, what sources were used to calculate the cost of abatement of pollutants. [107166]

Mr. Jamieson: The data presented in my answer were based on work from a number of different sources. Figures for the cost of emissions reduction from LPG

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vehicles were calculated using work carried out by the Energy Saving Trust as part of the Government's Powershift programme.

Figures for the costs of carbon reduction for biofuels were based on a range of 'life-cycle' CO2 values from the following published studies:

CONCAWE (2002) Energy and Greenhouse Gas Balance for Biofuels for Europe—an update;


L-B-Systemtechnik Consultancy (2002). Well-to-wheel analysis of energy use and the greenhouse gas emissions of advanced fuel/vehicle systems—a European Study; and


Mortimer, N.D, Cormack, P, Elsayed, M.A, and Home, R.E. (2003). Evaluation of the Comparative Energy, Global Warming and Socio-Economic Costs and Benefits of Biodiesel. Sheffield Hallam University.

The data on the local air quality emissions performance of bioethanol were drawn from the following research commissioned by the DfT:

AEA Technology (2002) Ethanol Emissions testing.

Central Railways Project

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions (a) his Department and (b) the Strategic Rail Authority have had with Chiltern Rail on the impact of the proposed Central Railways project on passenger services. [107738]

Mr. Jamieson: The Strategic Rail Authority has commissioned studies to examine, inter alia, the impact of the Central Railways proposals on the existing rail network and services (both passenger and freight).

Rail Services

Mr. Lazarowicz: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has had with the Strategic Rail Authority regarding the impact of its Capacity Utilisation Policy on rail services to and from Edinburgh. [107030]

Mr. Jamieson: The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) has consulted widely on its Capacity Utilisation Policy and has recently published a Statement of Principles (copy in the House Library). The next stage is for the SRA to commence route by route studies of Capacity Utilisation and at this stage local stakeholders will be consulted about the possible impact of the Policy in their localities.

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