ABSTRACT
The growth of bus usage and road haulage in the 1920s eventually led to what was regarded at the time as excessive competition and, following the Royal Commission on Transport of 1930, legislation was passed to control entry into both industries. The emphasis in transport policy between 1919 and 1939 was on regulating the level of competition for public transport for both passengers and freight. After World War Two the emphasis in the policy debate was about ownership and structure of the public transport industry. In 1974, central government grants for individual items of transport expenditure were replaced with a single grant which, in principle, could be used for any transport expenditure. The environmental concerns arise from the fact that transport imposes costs on society as a whole in the form of environmental impacts. A new government, of whichever political party, will have higher priorities than transport on its policy agenda.
