I have once again been in discussions with the Council over their promised improvements to the ludicrous junction at St Ann’s Road and Bury New Road, which would doubtless take home the gold medal in the “Most Ridiculously Dangerous Road Junctions in Bury” competition, narrowly beating the one up the road at Hilton Lane.

As a reminder, this is the junction with two out-of-sync sets of traffic lights within 10 yards of each other, more or less forcing cars to plough into other cars like some kind of Council-sponsored box car derby. God knows why it was put there in the first place, and we’ve been campaigning to get it removed and reduced to one set for the last year. It may indeed be safer for pedestrians, but only because they’re glued to the spot in horror watching the passing cars career into each other.

We were promised that the work would be done to rectify the problem by the end of the financial year, but on chasing this up last week I was informed that the Council now  only “hoped to start” the work by the end of March. Let me say now that any delay to this work would be utterly unacceptable. The people of Prestwich suffer enough with filthy streets and pot-holed roads as the forgotten back-end of Bury. I am not going to let lethal road crossings join the list of Prestwich projects on the doomed list. I am sick of Council officers sitting idly on their thumbs as far as Prestwich is concerned, whilst I say the same things to them over and over again.

This junction should have been altered months ago, but was put off whilst they cancelled all road schemes for the duration of the Met line closure. That was fair enough, but you’d think they’d prioritise the backlog, would you not? Well, the line has been open for four months now and we’ve still got nowhere. I challenged the Council on their latest back-track, and am told that they do in fact hope to have contractors on site by March. But this really does need to be prioritised because it’s been put off long enough and I don’t want one of my constituents to be the next person sideswiped by a driver utterly flummoxed by the world’s most idiotic set of lights.

Rick

The cost of some Metrolink season tickets will go up from Friday 1 February, following the increases in single and return fares just two months ago. Weekly tickets will rise by up to 60p and quarterly tickets by up to  £7.  

Metrolink management claim that these fare rises are fair, and that the Metrolink offers good value for money. But once again they show just how out of touch and wrong they are.

The new increases means that it now costs £21.80 a week to go from Bury to Manchester, and £232 a quarter. This is more expensive than a number of city centre car parks, and despite the fare rises the quality of service provided by Metrolink is, in many aspects utterly woeful. 

I have said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it – there are too few trams, they are frequently late, almost always disgustingly dirty, and too often a Metrolink journey is disrupted by rowdy passengers unsupervised by police and unwatched by security. It’s a thoroughly nasty experience, and it doesn’t tempt anyone out of their cars except those forced to weigh up the general unpleasantness of the Met with the equally unpleasant congestion.

We have a third rate system in the Metrolink. The experience is nothing compared to the London Underground, itself hardly a paragon of virtue. Once again we are let down by a government intent on talking the talk on public transport, but not matching rhetoric with money. Fares go up, passengers get angrier, and the service doesn’t improve fast enough.

This isn’t good enough, and I will continue to campaign for better central funding, better services and more realistic fares for Metrolink until they come our way.

Rick

Greater Manchester’s Yellow School Bus services are reducing congestion, improving pupil behaviour and boosting school attendance, according to the latest report heard by transport bosses.
Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA), on which I sit and represent Bury MBC, now funds the services to 22 schools, providing safe and reliable journeys for more than 2000 pupils.
Councillors heard that the Yellow School Buses have made a major impact on the school run, taking more than 265,000 car-miles off the road this school year.

And antisocial behaviour on school buses has reduced by 75% at schools that have the yellow buses. Schools have also praised the services for improving attendance records.
One Yellow School Bus currently runs to Bury Church school and the scheme has proved a hit with pupils and parents.
My Lib Dem colleague Cllr Andrew Garner is the Bury spokesperson for GMPTA. He  said: “Yellow School Buses are a safe and reliable way of getting pupils to and from school. We already know from anecdotal evidence that they are popular, but this report really highlights the benefits of the service.
The services are really helping to tackle local congestion caused by the school run, as well as offering a safe travelling environment for pupils. I’m sure other road users appreciate the services too as they take so many cars off the road each morning and afternoon. We have bid for government funding to buy more Yellow School Buses and reports like this really illustrate what a strong case there is for expanding the service.”
Pupils using Yellow School Bus services have to sign up to a code of conduct, use the same seatbelt-equipped seats every day and have regular drivers to help build a good working relationship.
All Yellow School Bus drivers have undergone an extensive training programme run by GMPTE, which includes training in customer care, first aid, disability awareness, health and safety issues and conflict avoidance.Two more vehicles are due to be introduced at schools in Wigan early in the new year, taking the number of Yellow School Buses in Greater Manchester to 36, running to 22 schools. Yellow buses are something I and the Bury Lib Dems give our full support to, and have publicly backed in Council. We will continue to press for more of these buses, funded in the proper way.
To find out more about Yellow School Buses and for a full list of services visit www.yellowschoolbus.info

Here is the speech I made proposing the congestion charge amendment at the meeting of Bury Council last night. There were a few last minute amendments made in the chamber, and I said a bit afterwards too to close the debate, but this is more or less it:

“Mr Mayor, in proposing this amendment I would like to tell Council  about an experience I had at Watford Gap service station on the M1  in early October.  

I was driving to an engagement party when my car began making the  types of spluttering noises one would normally associate with the early days of steam.   

I pulled into the service station and waited, with nothing but a  Ginster’s Pasty for company. The AA man came, and despite him  being a very nice man he was no use at all, and I had to scrap my car  and get a new one.   

The only good thing to come out of the whole mess was that I got a  refund on my tax disc, which still had more or less a whole year to  run.   

And Council will be delighted to hear that, should we all end up  paying a congestion charge each and every day to travel into Greater  Manchester’s District Centres, should our cars have the same  troubles, we too will be entitled to such a refund.  

Because this congestion charge isn’t replacing my tax disc.

It isn’t  replacing fuel duty. In fact it isn’t replacing anything.  

It’s an extra charge which will force poor people out of their cars.  

Simple as that.  

It limits choice. It is hugely regressive. And it is a damning indictment of the nannying, money-grabbing worst side of our government.   

We shouldn’t be bidding for anything which signs us up to it. 

Mr Mayor, this country is in dire need of public transport investment.  

We have been promised an integrated transport system for decades.  

We don’t have one yet.  

In Greater Manchester we have a Metrolink system so dirty, dangerous and unreliable that half the time I may as well ride to  work on a wing and a prayer as on a tram. It’d be cheaper, that’s for sure.  

We have buses that serve some communities well, and others not at all.

An 85 year old lady in my ward has to walk a mile and a half to  get a bus because the route past her house doesn’t make enough  money to continue. That’s just not on in my book. 

The north of our Borough is woefully served. Woefully served Mr  Mayor.  

This is unacceptable after ten years and more of a government which claims to champion public transport.  

We need investment in our public transport system, and we need it  now.  

Never has it been more important to get people out of their cars.  

For the sake of pollution, for the sake of congestion, and for the sake of our communities, we need people using sustainable public transport. People using a first rate public transport system. 

And people should pay for it, Mr Mayor. There’s no such thing as a  free lunch. And God knows there’s no such thing as a free Pasty at Watford Gap. 

But People do pay for it. You pay for it Mr Mayor, so do I, and so  does everybody up there in the public gallery. Whether we use it or not.  

Through the taxes we pay every time we get paid, every time we purchase anything, and every time we fill our cars and tax our cars and buy our cars. 

This government now wants us to pay for it again though. Through congestion charging. 

“You’ll get the transport you need,” they say “but only if you pay upto a fiver a day to drive into Manchester. We won’t pay for it ourselves.  We think other things are more important.” 

Well Mr Mayor, I don’t think that’s right.  And I’d like to know the opinions of the people in this room, in this Borough and in Greater Manchester.  

And we should get them to tell us by holding a county wide referendum of every household. 

I don’t think the government’s attitude is right because it’s an additional tax. Because it’s an unfair tax, and because it’s an unwise tax. 

It’s an additional tax because it replaces nothing.  

We’ll still be paying £1 a litre at the pumps.  

We’ll still be paying hundreds to tax our cars.  

And now we’ll be forced to pay a fiver to drive where we want. 

It’s an unfair tax because poor people will suffer the most.  

If I earned ten thousand pounds a week, a fiver a day isn’t going to stop me doing anything.

But if I earned ten thousand pounds a year, it might stop me doing everything.  

Mr Mayor, poorer people have poorer choices, and this deprives them  of yet another.  

And it’s an unwise tax.  

Unwise because it is presented under the guise of being good for the  environment and good for the economy.  I think it’s neither.

It’ll just create bitterness, and bad feeling towards good causes.  

Businesses won’t like it because Greater Manchester will be a big city with a big tax.

Workers won’t want to move here,  and businesses will want to leave. 

And people won’t like leaving their cars at home because they’re being dragged wallet-first towards public transport, not shown the  light through world class public transport. 

That’s not the way to benefit the environment or the economy. 

We should say no to the congestion charge Mr Mayor. 

No to this government forcing poor people to pay to get to work.  

No to being tracked by cameras.  

No to tags in our cars.  

No to public transport investment on the never never.  

No to the TIF bid if this is what it means. 

This TIF bid isn’t about a Transport Innovation Fund.  It’s about a Transport Injustice Fund. 

It is simply unjust to ask poor people to pay hundreds of pounds extra every year to drive into work when there is simply not a suitable alternative. 

We should not stand for such injustice. 

How can we be entrusted to serve the people if we consign the poorest to paying more to get what is rightfully their’s?  

Innovative governments persuade by example, convince by  investment, and win arguments by building a brighter future.  

Simple taxation is not innovation. 

Mr Mayor I know what rejecting congestion charging may mean.  

It may mean saying goodbye to the investment in public transport that  we need.  

But it shouldn’t mean that.  

It should send a message.

A message to government that we will not stand for their bullying.  

That we have been elected by local people to stand up for what they want – a quality public transport system paid for through the taxes we have already paid, sustained through more users and leading to  improvements all round. 

We shouldn’t take no for an answer from government.  They owe it to the people of this Borough and this county to give us  what we need.  

We need to send them a message that we want quality public transport corridors in Bury.

That we want the north of this Borough to be properly served.  

And that we want Bury to be part of a region with a world class public  transport system. 

Let’s send them that message Mr Mayor, by rejecting congestion charging, listening to the views of every house in Greater  Manchester, and then telling the government loud and clear what it is  that the people want. 

Mr Mayor, I have pleasure in proposing this amendment.” 

My colleague, and the leader of the Lib Dem Group on Bury Council, Cllr Tim Pickstone, seconded the amendment,  giving the Council two examples where major public transport investment was made without the need for a congestion charge (Crossrail in London and the Edinburgh Tram System). He also noted how the decision that Bury were making might actually shape the future by enabling the people of Greater Manchester to have their say in a public referendum.

Rick

This is the Liberal Democrat amendment to the Congestion Charge motion that Bury Council voted on last night.

“TRANSPORT INNOVATION FUND (TIF) BID
Amendment Proposed by the Lib Dem Group
Cllrs Baum, D’Albert, Davision, A J Garner, A S Garner, O’Hanlon,
Pickstone and S D Wright

This Council believes that major investment in public transport
infrastructure is urgently needed in Greater Manchester for significant
environmental and economic reasons, but rejects the attempts of the
Labour Government to force congestion charging on Greater Manchester to
receive the public transport investment we need.
This Council is against the TIF Bid if Congestion Charges are included in
the final offer from Government.
This Council will continue to promote a scheme that includes further
investment in transport corridors in Bury – in particular transport corridors
to the north of Bury town centre.

This council requires that public support for the initiative is confirmed
through a Greater Manchester wide consultative referendum on congestion
charging.”

The amendment was proposed by me, seconded by Lib Dem Council Group Leader Cllr Tim Pickstone, and voted for by the Liberal Democrat Group supported by the Conservative Group. The Labour Group abstained, and the amendment passed to become Council policy.

Rick

Last night’s meeting of full Council was very successful, not only for local Liberal Democrats, but I think also for the long term future of the people of Bury, as the Lib Dem amendment to support the Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) bid only at the exclusion of congestion charging passed and became Council policy.

This emotive issue has been central to local politics ever since I was elected, and whilst others have wavered in the Council chamber and flattered to deceive, Bury Lib Dems have been resolute in our opposition to the bullying imposition of this unfair tax since the beginning. We remained so throughout, and last night we won.

Even last night, Bury Labour walked the thinnest of ideological tightropes by refusing to reject the TIF bid if it contained congestion charging (they abstained in the vote on our amendment), but maintaining their opposition to the charge if applied nationally. They proposed an amendment of their own which indicated support for the charge if decided locally - in other words by the Labour-run Councils of Greater Manchester. Thankfully this didn’t pass. Labour showed themselves up last night as unable to publicly denounce the charge.

You’re either for the TIF bid as a whole, or against the congestion charge part of it. We are the latter. We want the £3bn investment in public transport, but we want government to pay, not local people. We want a rejection of government’s response to the TIF bid if it contains proposals for congestion charging, and now we have convinced Bury Council to back us.

Bury is now the latest Greater Manchester Authority to come out against congestion charging, which makes it very difficult indeed for AGMA (the Association of Grater Manchester Authorities) to press ahead and accept any government scheme which introduces such charging.

I proposed the Lib Dem amendment which was passed last night, and I will post the speech I made in support of it on this site in a moment so you can read why we think that the TIF bid is simply unacceptable with congestion charging, and why Greater Manchester deserves quality public transport paid for by government, not through a congestion charge.

Rick

I have learned today that the Stagecoach bus strike action planned for Tuesday & Thursday this week will not now take place.  At this time there is still possible action for Saturday and talks are continuing. This is good news and I hope that a satisfactory outcome will be found to stop the inevitable disruption that a strike will bring.

Rick

Great news for users of the Ring and Ride service today - there are going to be 19 new minibuses for this vital door-to-door service thanks to the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority. Bury’s two members of the GMPTA are both Lib Dems - Cllr Andrew Garner and me. We’re proud that from January next year, as well as making local trips, Bury’s Ring and Ride users will also be able to travel into neighbouring districts for the first time thanks to the new vehicles. 10 of the 19 new minibuses will replace older vehicles in Greater Manchester’s Ring & Ride fleet and the other nine new vehicles - one for each depot in Greater Manchester - will run the new cross-boundary services.

Ring & Ride provides an essential transport service for people of all ages who find it difficult to use ordinary public transport.

It is extremely popular and up until now there just haven’t been enough vehicles to provide many journeys outside Bury. We know that passengers often want to travel a bit further afield and I’m delighted that, thanks to the extra minibuses and their new drivers, they will now be able to do so.

We want people to use public transport as much as possible and by investing in important local services like Ring & Ride we are giving everyone the opportunity to do that. 

A consultation with members of the public and Ring & Ride passengers last year showed that users were keen to see any money raised through fares reinvested in new vehicles to increase the capacity of the service. Passengers must register their details before they travel by calling the Bury depot on 0161 764 1999. The standard fare is £1 per trip or 50p for GMPTE permit holders.

Rick

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) has announced plans to introduce changes to Metrolink fares from Sunday 18 November.
 
Single and return fares will rise by an average of 5.7%, but season tickets will be frozen at their current prices until 1 February 2008. There will be no increase in child fares and some family tickets will be reduced.  

The increases will do little to tempt people out of their cars. On the odd journeys where there might be a choice between the car and the tram, the tram will now be more expensive than it was. 

GMPTE claim that fares will be re-invested in services, but as an occasional user of the system I have to say that significant improvements are required.

I don’t have to commute into town for work, so only get the tram for nights out and at weekends. And it’s extremely expensive, dirty, unreliable, and dangerous. And it stops way too early on the weekend evenings. 

Compare Metrolink to the London Underground. There, Oyster cards make fares cheap for even occasional users cheaper. The trains run into the early hours and there is real time information as to the next one. There’s always help at the stations too. Here, paper tickets dispensed by temperamental ticket machines emerge into filthy and unmanned stations for trams which arrive when they feel like it, populated by unwatched feral youths prowling and growling their way through the carriages, screaming and swearing.

And many’s the time that three go the other way before one turns up in the direction you want to go in. 

Until Metrolink uses its stupendously high fares to markedly improve quality and safety, or cuts the fares in half, we aren’t going to tempt people to use the system more.

How can anyone claim that fares are fair when a return Met ticket from Bury to Manchester at peak time will now cost a fiver, which is the same as from Zone 4 to Zone 1 on the Underground with an Oyster?! The weekly fares may be slightly cheaper on the Met than the Underground, but the service in London is incomparably better.

What these fare changes do is entrench the position of those poor saps who have to use the system (I know lots of them, and very few enjoy the experience) without making the prospect more appealing for those who don’t. Which will do nothing to alleviate congestion. 

I know that the track has been improved, but this is the only thing that’s got better. Once again the passengers have to pay in advance for future improvements. 9 new trams are promised, but they come after the fares have gone up. A bit like the muddled congestion charge plans which have us paying in the car with no suitable alternative yet in place!

However, there is some good news amongst the bad. There are some really good fare changes too, especially for families. The new weekend family ticket will be reduced by £1 to £5 for a one-day pass and by £3 to £7 for a two-day pass. The ticket can be used by up to two adults who are accompanied by one to three children. And child fares don’t rise either. It’s still a long way from London, where they travel for free. But it’s a start at least. 

Rick

Last night was my debut speech to Council, proposing an amendment which called upon the government to extend the concessionary travel scheme and give free bus travel to school children, as well as to extend the yellow school bus scheme to every school in England. Below is a transcript of my speech, minus a few last minute amendments scribbled as the debate went on…

In proposing this amendment Mr Mayor, I would like to tell Council the story of Arthur Pennington, a resident of my ward who is 82 years old.  

Arthur visits his family in Burnley fairly often, and he likes to take the bus.  

He gets the X43 which goes from Manchester, through Prestwich and out northwards into Lancashire.  

And at the moment, Arthur travels for free. 

Except that, when the bus gets to the border of the Borough of Bury, Arthur has to get off, watch the bus drive away in the direction he wants to go, and wait for the next one to come so he can pay to be taken the rest of the way. 

The bus companies aren’t allowed to take him any further than the border, even though they’re going in the same direction.  

Some nice drivers let him get off and then straight back on again. But lots don’t. 

Now, I don’t think there’s anyone in this room tonight who doesn’t think that’s ridiculous. 

Arthur doesn’t begrudge paying.  

He objects to the silly situation of getting free local transport, then having to wait in the cold at a bus-stop far away because a very sensible policy has been implemented in a not very sensible way. 

But now, because of the government, his problem will go away.  

And I think we should thank them for that.  

Now Arthur, and every other over-60 in the country, can travel far and wide for free on buses.  It’s a marvellous idea, for lots of reasons.

And Arthur’s happy. 

But contrast Arthur with the many local people in my ward who have to go to school every day.  

They don’t travel for free.  

They pay 70p every time they board a bus. 

70p up from 50p last year, and up and up and up in recent years.

Trebling since I was at school in the 1990s. 

70p every time they board a bus. And for some of them that’s four times a day.  Two to get to school, and two to get back.  

That’s £2.80 a day, or £560 to get to school and back every school day for a year.  

So, a family with two secondary school aged children are paying well over £1,000 a year just to send their children to school.  

The same money as a summer holiday.  

The same money as a family day out at a museum or country house every weekend for a year. 

Much more than the cost of a school uniform. 

More than the cost of school dinners. 

The government should do something about that. 

And we’re calling on the government to give to our young people free travel, just as it is giving our old people. 

Mr Mayor, Councillors on all sides of this chamber agree that the 70p fare is too high.  

I know this because I was recently lucky to be chosen to take part in the presciently titled competition “I’m a Councillor, Get Me Out Of Here,” and was grilled by the youngsters of this Borough.  

And so were five of my colleagues here tonight. And we were all asked about the 70p fare. 

Councillor Connelly said “I think that people under 16 should travel free on the bus.”

Councillor Cresswell said “I would like to see free transport for all young students.” 

I agree with them both. And I said so in the competition. And the young people of the Borough will doubtless be cheered by the tri-partisan show of unity which we can display on this issue.  

Well Mr Mayor, us Councillors can’t get out of here now, so will they join me in asking the government to give us what we all want? 

Young people have no choice.  

They have no access to private transport of their own to rival the buses.  

They have no income, so have to rely on their parents. 

And obviously, the parents hit the hardest are the ones who have the least. Our young people need to get to school, and they need to do so on the bus.  S

o we shouldn’t be charging them £560 a year to do it. 

But it’s about more than getting to and from school. 

It’s about opening up social and leisure and cultural opportunities for young people to enjoy on public transport. 

It’s about providing added opportunity without added financial burden.  

It’s about instilling in our young people a lifelong appreciation for public transport as a sensible alternative to the car. The cleanest, greenest, safest choice.  

And the only way to get them to do this is by getting more of them on the buses for free from now.  

Of course it would cost money. I know that. 

I may have been elected at the last election, but I didn’t come down in the last shower. 

It’s about priorities.  

It’s about making the choice and teaching our children that public transport is the best way to travel.  

And choosing that we should spend the money where it needs to be spent. 

Because where there is a need, that money should be found.  

And there is a need. And that money should be found. 

It has been found in London. There, 385,000 young people of school age benefit from free travel. And the poorest benefit the most. 

385,000 young people. 

That’s nearly twice the population of our entire Borough. 

Think of the difference that makes.  

In London they made efficiencies with smart cards. Just the type of smart cards that will soon be appearing on buses here.  

And the buses made more money, because more adults were using them too, bucking the national trend.  Because if your children can travel for free, it’s cheaper for the family to take the bus than the car.  

And as the economy grows, more people use buses in our new quality bus corridors to get places. More passengers, more fares, more money for improvements. 

This is what happened in London, and it can happen here too.  And 80% of the people of London backed the move to introduce the scheme when they were asked by MORI. 

The people want the scheme. The children benefit from the scheme. The government should widen the scheme. 

And the government should extend the current yellow bus scheme to every secondary school in England. Because Mr Mayor, 

Yellow buses cut truancy.  Yellow buses cut traffic. And yellow buses save lives. 

In America over half of all school children take a yellow bus to school. In the UK, the figure is less than 10% 

Yellow buses cut truancy because children have a sense of belonging. Their own bus, in their own neighbourhood, with their own seat. 

Each day the same bus, the same driver, the extension of the school community to a place where too often there is bullying, over-crowding, and unreliability. 

Yellow buses cut traffic because parents are more likely to send the children to school on a designated school bus than on a regular bus. And the school-run accounts for 20% of all traffic on the roads. 

And yellow buses save lives because this extra traffic accounts for 40 deaths and 900 serious injuries each and every year. 

Yellow buses work.  

In Hebden Bridge, a single yellow bus has cut 25,000 journeys a year by car in the area.

Think of the impact on pollution, on traffic, and the future health of the children on that bus. 

We should extend the buses across the country.   

We should call upon the government to find the money to get our children to school in a way that is fair, green and safe. 

We should call upon the government to roll out a policy which manages to be good for education, health and the environment all at the same time. 

Because we can make a real difference and that’s what we were sent here to do. 

Mr Mayor. I don’t have children. In fact it’s not very many years since I was one.  

Nor am I an old person. Although there are times in this place tpwards the end of meetings when I feel very much like one.

But I listen to the old people of my ward, and I listen to the children.  

The old people are delighted that they can move around for free. And the children are sad that they can’t.  

We have an opportunity to foster a generation of children who see public transport as a first option, not a forced second choice taken up through necessity. 

We have an opportunity to make life that little bit easier for poor families. 

We have the chance to cut traffic, cut accidents, and cut pollution. 

And all it takes is the will to see it done.  

So let’s show the government that we have that will.

And let’s see it done. 

Mr Mayor, I have pleasure in moving this amendment.