12th December, 2008 Well well, what a surprise that Manchester voted no to the congestion charge. As the RAC said, "Motorists are tired of being taxed for going about their daily lives and clearly those in Manchester see this as an additional motoring tax too far. Motorists want to be rewarded for changing behaviour not simply penalised for not doing so." Quite. Hopefully that spells the end of similar proposals in Leeds, Bristol and Cambridge, if Boris Johnson's announcement that he's scrapping the western extension of the London charge zone hadn't already done so. The thing is, motorists are the first to agree that congestion levels are horrific and that cars pollute the environment. But it is utter madness to believe you can change people's transport habits by penalising them and not giving them suitable alternatives. The carrot is so much more effective than the stick - you know, incentives to drive low-emissions cars etc. In London, I have to say the bus network is pretty good these days for my needs, and I'll always get the bus or Tube if it's possible rather than sit in traffic jams in the car spewing carbon dioxide into the air. BUT: a) there are times when I have no option but to use the car, like if I'm taking stuff to the skip, and b) other towns and cities have large rural populations that need access to the urban hub, and in many cases they are not served by effective public transport links. The unarguable fact is that you can't penalise motorists if you don't first offer them a viable alternative. In Manchester's case, they were offered £2.8 billion for public transport investment in return for paying a fiver. That's not the way it works: prove to people first that there is a decent tram/train/bus service they can use, and then they might ditch their cars. They might not, of course, but it's the only way to do it. You can't say "Ditch your cars and we promise to make more buses available." People are rightly sceptical of such pledges after decades of neglected public transport services. I know local government needs to raise the money from somewhere for transport services, but to raise it from a congestion charge is like denying people ANY transport options at once. And who will take the brunt of such policies? The poor, as always, for whom a fiver is not loose change. The scandal of the Government dangling money in front of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority but only in return for pushing the congestion charge through didn't have the desired effect because democracy was allowed a voice. Enough of the sticks. More carrots, please.
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