Richard Baum

This weekend has seen more campaigning from both sides in the congestion charge debate. Yesterday I attended a debate on the subject, with Graham Stringer MP and Cllr Susan Williams (the Leader of Trafford Council) speaking on the “no” side against Roger Jones, the former Chair of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, and Ken Knott the Chairman of Ask Developments.

Obviously I have a view on the subject already, but it was clear from the arguments on both sides that nobody will be truly happy with a “yes” vote. Even the “yes” people acknowledged the clear injustices that it will create in terms of low paid workers having to find an extra £1,200 per year. In fact, the most compelling reason for introducing the charge is, according to the people voting “yes,” that it is the best offer we are going to get in Manchester.

Well I don’t think that we should lumber Manchester with a charge for that reason. We should be telling the government where to stick its blackmail, and to spend money on public transport ahead of expensive white elephants like ID cards. Roger Jones said that there is no way that Manchester can expect a £3bn gift, because other city regions wouldn’t get the same, and that would be unfair.

Well, frankly, until he was voted out of office this May, we in Manchester paid him to lobby for just that, so if he thinks it’s unfair then perhaps he is better out of that job. It’s no less unfair than the tens of billions earmarked for London alone. Nor is it any less unfair than the transport projects earmarked for specific cities in the past, like trams in Leeds and the Metrolink here. And it’s lots less unfair than teachers, nurses, and working mums on £6ph having to find £1,200 from somewhere to pay to go to work.

And besides, I don’t see that it has to be unfair. I don’t understand how people like Roger Jones, so admirably passionate about public transport, can sit by and watch the government offer such a paltry deal to Manchester, and not even offer that to anywhere else! Government claim to champion public transport and an end to congestion, but the facts don’t back that up. The government could afford to invest £3bn in transport for Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham AND Newcastle/Gateshead just by scrapping ID cards. But it won’t.

Instead, it is saying that unless we create the world’s largest congestion charge zone, it will deny us OUR money and let public transport continue to fail the public. We pay taxes to get the public services we want. We want public transport, so the government should give it to us. It’s as simple as that. Unconditionally. The money is there, it just needs allocating properly.

I have mentioned many reasons for voting no. Here’s another - voting “yes” will create the world’s largest congestion charging zone right here in Manchester. It will be 80 square miles. That’s ten times the original London size, seven times the current London size, and ten times what London will be again once the western extension is scrapped. It’s seven times the size of the Stockholm zone, and 40 times that of Rome and Singapore.

It will create a massive no-go area for the low-paid, and be an 80 square mile “no entry” sign for any new business thinking about coming to Manchester to invest. How will they attract staff when every job they advertised has a £1,200 additional tax on the salary?

I don’t want to live in a city breaking the wrong type of world records. That’s what we’ll be living in after a “yes” vote. A ludicrously large c-charge zone which is so incredibly over the top in size that it makes me wonder where they got the idea from! Does it really need to be FORTY times the size of the zone in Rome, a capital city famed for its traffic? Of course not. 

Another reason to vote no, and another indictment of these ill thought out plans.

Rick