A research report presented at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference suggests that UK transport planning is not sufficiently taking into account the environmental impacts of transport choices.

The report hints that road transport is responsible for the air pollution in 'air quality management areas' in the UK.

It noted that as per the current estimates nearly 50,000 deaths a year can be attributed to air pollution in UK.

"Insufficient relevant priority has been given within the sector responsible for most relevant emissions, transport policy and planning, which has instead prioritised safety and economic growth."

The report also states that a slight improvement was achieved since the Environment Act 1995 came into effect, which committed the UK to improving air quality to internationally-accepted standards.

Tim Chatterton and Graham Parkhurst of the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, have assessed the findings of a number of projects to identify the reasons why the air pollution concentrations from UK road transport have shown little or no reduction in the last two decades.

UWE professor Parkhurst said: “Air pollution is perhaps the grossest manifestation of a general failure of UK transport planning to take the environmental impacts of transport choices sufficiently into account.

“Currently air pollution is a shared priority between Defra and DfT, but shared priority does not mean equal priority.

“Environmental managers only identify and monitor the problems.

"Insufficient relevant priority has been given within the sector responsible for most relevant emissions, transport policy and planning, which has instead prioritised safety and economic growth.”

Despite the fact that air pollution is contributing between 15 and 30 times the number of deaths annually associated with road traffic collisions (RTCs), RTCs continue to remain the primary concern of transport planners.

Air pollution has been designated as a ‘shared priority’ between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the UK Department for Transport (DfT).

A key recommendation suggested by the review is that government departments such as DfT and Defra should re-examine the relationship between environmental management and transport management at both the national and local levels.