David Ottewell has made some interesting comments about a closed-door discussion on transport between the Greater Manchester Council leaders. I’m afraid they only reinforce the impression that we will not have responsible city-region governance until the Manchester City Council leadership stop seeing themselves as lord, ruler and dictator.
This attitude – Manchester City Council gets the lion’s share of the investment and the rest of you can whistle for your improvements – contributed to the scale of the defeat in the TIF referendum and has shown no sign of abating.
On the issue at hand – future transport – given that the TIF money remains locked in the Government’s cupboard there is no option but to reassess the value-for-money provided by those proposed schemes before deciding which ones to push forward with – and no, the whims of Labour backbenchers in Manchester are not a value consideration.
The white elephant guided busway can be the first onto the scrapheap, given it serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Meanwhile, GMITA and the local authorities should be pushing forward with lower-cost improvements that could make a real difference, like platform lengthening at Walkden and addition carriages on the lines through Walkden, Irlam and Eccles. This would make a huge difference to commuters and greatly increase commuting capacity without breaking the bank.
I’m afraid extra carriages is unlikely to happen, because the only ’spare’ diesel trains due to become ‘available’ (anywhere in the country, any time soon) are those that’ll be displaced by the Metrolink Oldham Loop extension. Even though they’re old ‘Pacer’ trains, rush-hour overcrowding in all the major northern conurbations is so bad that they’ll be plenty of out-stretched hands. The Government are currently trying to raise capital to build ’some’ new diesel trains but, even if they sort-out the finance (which I doubt, for several reasons) those will be at least a couple of years away.
However, there WILL very soon be ELECTRIC trains (Class 319s) available, displaced as the new ‘Thameslink’ trains are delivered. The sensible thing would be for Network Rail (a.k.a. HM Government) to start electrifying the Trans-Pennine route; which would be COMPARATIVELY cheap, since all the complicated bits are already wired. That way, the route through Irlam could benefit directly from these Class 319s, and the other routes (like the Walkden line) could benefit from the then displaced diesel trains.
But that’s so sensible that you can be sure it’ll never happen!
I have no idea what you’re on about Iain, and I doubt that your general reader will be any the wiser, but it is a fact that Manchester is the GMC and regional centre and at one end of a large proportion of all the passenger transport commuter journeys and business journeys and shopping journeys and entertainment journeys that occur. By dint only of being the hub of the whole issue. So not only have Manchester got a larger population than the City of Salford or the 8 MBCs and therefore far more than 1/10th of the action, but also Manchester is the hub of the county and region. Suggesting anything different is infantile.
What do you think about Darwen and Rossendale Conservatives getting into bed with the blasted BNP? Including the PPC.