The Institution of Civil Engineers earlier this month called for a longer-term framework setting out overarching transport goals, after the transport select committee claimed the Government was ‘stalling in making decisions’.

The DfT has now told MPs that it has ‘a clear and ambitious programme’, and a spokesman told Surveyor that it would consult ‘in the autumn’ on a Green Paper containing new long-term policy goals.

The document will include ‘suggested quantifiable goals’ for challenges such as reducing transport carbon emissions and making transport networks more efficient, in line with the ICE’s proposed priorities (Surveyor, 16 October).

The spokesman said: ‘We will issue the consultation in the autumn, and then a further document in the spring, to take this process forward, working towards a transport strategy document covering the 2014-2019 period.’

The consultation had been delayed due to the need to wait for the Committee on Climate Change to advise on statutory reductions in CO2 which would need to be made by 2020. Ministers have acknowledged that emissions from road transport have increased under Labour.

The new ‘sustainable transport strategy’ would follow the recommendations of Government adviser, Sir Rod Eddington, that policy-making should start with a policy goal, rather than ‘a list of grand projects’.

This would explore whether, for example, cutting journey times and CO2 in the Manchester-Birmingham-London corridor would be better achieved by active traffic management and/or increasing rail capacity, than by motorway widening.

The DfT also denied last week that its ‘failure to deliver on road congestion targets is very disappointing,’ as the transport select committee had claimed. It stressed that 40% more strategic routes had been affected by works to improve roads than before the target, and July 2007’s floods ‘accounted for 25% of the delay experienced in one year’. And Robert Devereux, permanent secretary for the Department for Transport, told the transport select committee that the Government met its target to reduce congestion on the strategic network ‘three months late’.

‘Today’s performance, month-on-month, is better now than it was three years ago,’ he added.