Polityka transportowa Wielkiej Brytanii w kontekście koncepcji zrównoważonego rozwoju – deklaracje a rzeczywistość

The main aim of this publication is to analyse the United Kingdom’s transport policy in the context of the concept of sustainable development and to assess it on the basis of a juxtaposition of declared actions with actions actually implemented in the transport sector. The starting point for the author’s discussion is the evolution of transport policy. Due to the limited length of this article, the author outlines only the essential points of the policy, which are representative of particular decades from the period of 1950-2013. Further in the article, the characteristics of transport policy are referred to the concept of sustainable development. Pointing to the increasingly popular (in the era of globalization with approaching the limits of the ecosphere, shortening of product life cycle, increase in production scale, increase in absorptive power of logistics including transport) departure from the classical, static concept of sustainable development towards a dynamic approach, the author places the recently conducted British transport policy in the formula, according to which the priority is the attainment of economic goals while meeting the social and environmental constraints. The main theses, which are supposed to be verified by the arguments contained in this publication, lead to the following statements: 1. The declared British transport policy of the 1980s and 1990s differs from the currently implemented transport policy. 2. The lack of implementation of most of the measures proposed in the 1980s and 1990s under the British documentation declarations relating to the transport sector, led to the maximization of: transport congestion; emissions of dust, gases and CO2; noise emissions and increase in economic, social and environmental costs. 3. British transport policy for the 21st century fits well into the dynamic approach to the concept of sustainable development.