David Ottewell has an interesting post on his blog about the future of the Integrated Transport Authority. It’s a complicated situation and David puts the options on the table as succinctly as I’ve seen so far, so I hope he won’t mind me repeating parts of his post here:
AGMA, the umbrella body representing the 10 councils in the city-region, wants to assume power over economic development, housing, planning and transport. There is a problem, though. Put simply, no one can agree what to do about transport. There is already a GM-wide body with power in this field: the Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority (GMITA). Three basic options have been drawn up.
- ‘A’ options are roughly the status quo. Keep GMITA as a sort of add-on to the new ’super-AGMA’.
- ‘B’ options involve keeping GMITA, but giving the 10 council leaders a much greater role in how it is run.
- ‘C’ options would scrap GMITA and put the council leaders (plus perhaps some other councillors) in direct charge.
When this came to Salford City Council, I had no hesitation in voting for Option A.
We have already seen what happens when we allow Sir Richard Leese and his merry band of Labour Council leaders to take charge of transport policy – we had the ludicrous congestion-charging proposal together with a Transport Innovation Fund package that was of little benefit to local residents in Salford.
The last thing we need is to go down that road again.
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