Thinking about the Congestion Charge...

On 11th December Manchester votes on the proposed peak time congestion charge.  The basic being that there is an inner and outer boundary and each time you cross the boundaries going towards the city centre in the morning rush hour and away from the city centre in the evening rush hour period you'll be charged.  £3 billion will be invested in public transport before the charge comes in.  So we the people of Manchester have the opportunity to vote on this...so what will you do?

There are pressure groups out there for both sides: Vote Yes or  Stop the Charge

What am I going to do?  For me there is no choice, I will vote yes and it will either cost me money or it will make my life less convenient.  It will force me to consider my options when thinking about driving to the city centre and will therefore encourage me to use public transport more.  This can only be a good thing globally.  I'm a left of centre, socially liberal, theologically eclectic person and so i recognise that I was always going to say yes to this.  In my mind the equation goes:

Cars create pollution-pollution cause global warming-global warming is causing the death of the planet.

But maybe I'm being naive, maybe I'm not seeing the complexity of the congestion charge, maybe I'm missing something? I've heard concerns about the poor being discriminated against most, about the arbitrary position of the boundary, of it not being enough to bring about a change it attitudes to our cars, all valid points but the argument I've heard the most is it will make my life less convenient...

Comments

[LauraHD]

If you're going to vote yes and really believe, then you can still campaign - it's not too late!

[Tony]

It's an idea in theory but it's extremely poorly executed.. congestion charges do not effectively deal with congestion (as london has shown - congestion is the same now as it was before they started charging)

The 3 billion figure looks large but taken over the size of greater Manchester over about 5 years it's not a lot.. and when you get down to specifics it's almost nothing.

In Stockport from the stuff they've sent us the sum total of all this investement is increasing one bus route from once an hour to 4 times an hour. The cost being cutting the entire town in half with a charging zone - so people who have no intention of going to Manchester get taxed.

They've proposed nothing to actually deal with congestion - eg. widening the M602/M60 junction, which is a complete bottleneck.

The effect is simply going to be to raise prices in the whole region (you think all those shop workers are going to pay out of their salaries? Only the trafford centre managed to negotiate an exception - all the other towns on the border will get hit) and drive business elsewhere.

It's not going to reduce car use significantly - simply because the plans don't introduce any viable alternative for many. It's not a matter of convenience, it's a matter of necessity - if you have to be in work at a certain time then you often have little choice.

[andrew]

For each advert saying 'I won't have to pay to go to the footy' or whatever, there could be ten more saying 'I will go out of business because my busines/shop is on the dge of the zone' or 'I cant afford to drive to work anymore and the bus goes nowhere near my place of work'. There were plans for a further twenty nine charges which were destroyed so that it could be claimed that 'there are no plans to increase the charge'.

If you really believe the government is doing this for the environment and if you really believe that the charges will not be permanent and will not harm anyone and if you really believe all the promises then good luck to you!

[Ben Edson]

I don't think the city council is doing this for environmental reasons but the reason i have voted yes is for environmental reasons.

I don't think it will get through, we don't want to be inconvenienced, we don't want to pay more money and so most people will vote no. I'm think 70/30 on the no side...maybe i should have bit more faith in the people of manchester to see the greater good.