Detailed plans for how the Government intends to accelerate the roll out of charging points for electric vehicles must be set out this year to support transport decarbonisation efforts, the National Infrastructure Commission has urged.

The commission welcomes ambitions to bring an end to sales of new diesel and petrol cars and vans by 2030 in its latest Annual Monitoring Report. But it now calls on the Government to produce a delivery roadmap for charging infrastructure and set clear milestones towards meeting the 2030 target.

This is among 10 key action points for 2021 set out in the report. “2020’s policy statements set the bar high: 2021 must be a year of turning policy goals into delivery,” commented the Commission’s chair Sir John Armitt.

The report adds that Government’s plans to decarbonise cars have “not yet been matched by a similarly binding ambition on diesel heavy goods vehicles”. It calls for publication of a cross modal freight strategy this year with a firm commitment to phase out diesel heavy goods vehicles by 2040.

The report also welcomes a decision to give ‘Metro Mayors’ in major city regions five year transport budgets and suggests extending this to other cities, with sufficient investment to support “urban transport projects that could make a real difference to congestion, productivity and quality of life in fast growing places”.

“Projects on the scale needed will take a decade to deliver so work should start now on identifying priority cities for a pipeline of major projects, and setting aside funding in the order of £30Bn by 2040 to support development of specific programmes in partnership with cities,” it urges. City authorities should be set the goal of raising at least 25% of the cost of any major improvements locally, it adds.

The report comes ahead of next week’s Budget announcement by Chancellor Rishi Sunak. The Construction Leadership Council recently called on the Chancellor to consider how capital funding for local transport infrastructure could be moved onto similar five year funding cycles as seen for strategic transport.

Meanwhile the Campaign for Better Transport has urged the Chancellor to use the Budget to support a long term shift towards sustainable transport and avoid a car based recovery from the Covid crisis.

“It’s time to end the fuel duty freeze and reform vehicle taxation as we move towards cleaner, lower emission vehicles, and support public transport with a Government led campaign and incentive scheme to encourage people to get back on board when the time is right,” said the group’s chief executive Paul Tuohy.

(Photograph: nrqemi - Shutterstock)