Congestion plan involves real money — now

2:24pm Thursday 9th October 2008

I will leave Coun Baum to make his party political points against the Government, but I would like to look for a moment at what the transport plan for Greater Manchester will mean for ordinary people.

The £3bn investment will secure extra tram carriages so that all peak-time Metrolink services from Bury will be double length trams, to take just one of the projects.

That’s an extra capacity of 200 people every six minutes over and above the current capacity, which makes a total of 4,000 in a two-hour peak period. If you were to put those 4,000 people in a convoy of cars along Bury New Road at the current average of 1.2 people per car, and space them two seconds apart, it would take that convoy a staggering two hours to pass by. Travelling at 15 miles per hour they would form a collossal 15-mile long traffic jam. And these figures don’t even take into account the fact that traffic has to stop frequently at traffic lights.

To take that many cars off our roads would make an unimagineable difference to our borough’s air quality, noise pollution, road safety and carbon emissions, not to mention ease of movement for pedestrians and average road speeds. And this is just one of the many projects funded under the plan which will take cars off our roads. Other projects include more school buses, dozens more destinations served by new Metrolink lines, more frequent buses and brand new bus routes. And there are more funded projects which will make public transport more integrated, convenient and attractive, such as more car and bicycle parking at stations, more bus feeder routes and integrated smartcard ticketing.

Whatever alternative plans people propose to fund transport investments, there is no guarantee that they are feasible and that they will be approved by the political process.

Even if alternatives jump all the hurdles they may take many years to deliver. This multi-billion pound plan is real money which exists and is available now and is approved and is ours — all we have to do is say yes to it on December 11.

Jonathan Whitehead Prestwich