Disgusted by Manchesters Congestion Charge Proposal

melancholly

it's a really rubbish idea to do this in manchester - some people have a great service from the trams, but most of us don't have a stop anywhere near us........ my bus service is awful - always full single decker buses in the rushhour and empty double decker ones for the rest of the day. the 'free' bus for the university just takes you from the old UMIST campus to the Manchester campus so doesn't help with any other journeys.....

they've had to pull multiple bus services in the last year thanks to very poorly trained bus drivers who ended up being dangerous..... and anyone who has to suffer a commute in from liverpool on the transpennine express has my sympathies - it's worse than any commuter train i ever had to use in london!

i'm all for using the car as little as possible, but only when there's a viable alternative. manchester is nothing like as big as london - you can't even compare the two. the east-west routes are useless within the M60 so you have to go into town by bus and then out again. cycle lanes are non-existant in most places (and i would cycle more but it does rain here a lot!)...........

but anyway, we've got a new casino coming, so that'll make everything better (joke btw!)

pault123

Its good to have some opposition to the C-charge from Mr Whittaker he's one of the few people making a stand against this and making me £1200 a year better off!

If we removed all the bottlenecks along the A6 ie Bus Lanes and the on street parking corridor which has swallowed up a lane in levenshume that would undo 5 years of congestion for no where close to £3b cost!

black-saturn

You keep on about Manchester not being as big as London. I manage to not own a car and I'm in a small coastal town of Suffolk. In fact it's the most easterly town of Britain so it's furthest away from anywhere. public transport here is really bad but I use it because I would rather do that than pay a high price for running a car. If you can't be bothered to wait for public transport and put up with it's hiccups I'm afraid you will have to put up with the car charges.

pault123

Why should I pay £1200 to fund bottlenecked bus lanes?

pault123

Click below to see how the charge zones would affect you >>>

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110238099807559138111.0004346db6b5f00c4376c&ll=53.471496,-2.231598&spn=0.155513,0.31929&z=12&om=1

black-saturn

pault123 wrote: »

Click below to see how the charge zones would affect you >>>

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110238099807559138111.0004346db6b5f00c4376c&ll=53.471496,-2.231598&spn=0.155513,0.31929&z=12&om=1

About the same price as a bus fair by the looks of it :rolleyes:

stumpjumper

well possibly...

but for DH metrolink from Bury to Stretford its £4.40 return... plus £3.50 for the bus from Rawtenstall... oh and not to mention the first bus from Rawtenstall to Bury isnt till 7am, and arrives in bury at 7:30am. then its a further hour to cross manchester from Bury to Stretford on the metrolink... plus a 10 min walk from the station to the office...

the small problem is he starts work at 7:30am... yet by public transport he wouldnt get to the office till after 8:30am (and total journey would be 1 3/4-2hrs door to door as he also needs to catch a bus to get to Rawtenstall for the connection to Bury)

in the car it only takes 3/4hr but currently we go round the M60 and under this toll proposal we would cross both the outer and inner zones - costing us £5 per day... but if we leave the M60 at the north of manchester before 7am (by leaving a little earlier) we can cross the borders and cross to south manchester by driving though the city centre... and therefore avoid the tolls, but by making a journey through the very area they are trying to relieve (supposed) congestion.

Alternitivly get another job like many of his collegues are thinking over in warrington which has plenty of out of town office complexes that are easier to get to by road. Even the company is thinking about relocating in the future if the plans go ahead, least it looses staff.

Cumbrian_Male

Public transport is not public!!

These are commercial businesses run for profit.

If the Gov't was serious about providing a public service, it should be from a public purse.

There needs to be a nationalised bus, and rail system for it to work. As long as it is run for profit, it won't be for the benefit of the populace but for the benefit of the shareholders.

Little_John

I don't work very often inside Manchester but I use the M60 a lot, I get on at the bottom of the M61 and either travel east or west I work over towards Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle, Huddersfield, Birmingham, London around Manchester I work Cheadle, Stockport, Hale Bolton, Westhoughton, Horwich. Now come up with some form of public transport that allows me to serve all these places with 4 hour response and carry a boot load of IT equipment and I will use it. Yes I can get to Bolton easy the Number 8 gets e there in the same time as I can drive but they want £2.20 from me each way, its cheaper to park and drive. I have a train station with in 3 minutes walk but nothing stops at that station after 8pm.

OK now a little rant about Bolton roads
Bolton Council have totally screwed up round here, reduced moss bank way from 2 lanes to 1 so the queues are now twice as long but the cycle lane is empty.
The junction of long causeway in Farnworth and walkden/Bolton road was redesigned due to an accident in which someone lost control of a car and killed 2 girls there have been more accidents there since it was done that have involved cars hitting the fences/pavements since the redesign then in 10 years before.
Bolton Road from farnworth they made it a single lane towards Bolton and put a half hearted turning area that doesn't actually fit a car in it the road from Bolton is 2 cars wide but not marked so people drive down the middle.
Plodder lane and Bradford road both surround the hospital they have put islands down the middle of the roads chicanes in that make buses using the roads need to turn wide and go in to oncoming traffic to get round them, some of the islands have 2 bollards and a post with a sign on telling you to got the left of it whats the point not even for crossing. If the ambulances try to go up there and it is blocked due to traffic there is no chance for cars to move out of the way. bear in mind that there are 3 large secondary schools in that area, St James, Harper Green and Mount St Josephs.
The redesign of the junction outside the Manchester road college 2 left hand lanes to turn left at the lights the single right hand lane goes forward then splits in to 2, 1 for the town centre the other turns right. People are using the left hand lane and going straight on to the lane that goes to the town centre.

They also love speed bumps, chicanes and potholes I am sure they leave potholes as a traffic calming measure. and the number of manhole covers that are sunk by at least 2cm is stupid, I used to drive a car with uprated suspension nothing major it was just a little harder, I now drive one with uprated and lower which is harder and you feel absolutely everything. total crap and they want us to pay more to drive down these roads.

Charging people to drive on the roads wont reduce congestion in any major way there are so many journeys that can't be made in any other way. They are just trying to cover up a major lack of investment in the local road and transport network.

Having a look at the goggle map overlay I wasn't aware they were going to charge to use the M60, there would be some type of toll booth or ANPR system just inside the M60 on all the roads leading towards the city centre, then another boundary closer to the city centre probably the inner ring road.

People will just look for the many routes to avoid getting charged, and with the use of sat nav it will be very easy the charging route may be empty but every other road will be jammed.

If they want to come up with an amazing public transport system they need to charge people more that use it not force drivers in to paying for it. The cost of everything will go up as delivery companies will need to adjust their charges due to the extra costs. People will need to earn more to pay or the new charges as a result wages go up and companies will need to make that expenditure up some how.

Rachel_123

Little_John wrote: »

If they want to come up with an amazing public transport system they need to charge people more that use it not force drivers in to paying for it. The cost of everything will go up as delivery companies will need to adjust their charges due to the extra costs. People will need to earn more to pay or the new charges as a result wages go up and companies will need to make that expenditure up some how.

it costs enough already, last time I checked a daysaver was nearly £3 - as a student I simply can't afford that a day. I can drive myself to places there and back and petrol will cost a lot less. Met tickets are similar - £4+ to get to town and back. Also, now the pensioners have their free transport the children/students are paying for it, the 50p fare is now 70p.