26/06/2008
The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities will soon be consulting on its intention to introduce a road congestion charging system as part of its successful bid for Government's Transport Innovation Fund (TIF). We are promised an expanded Metrolink network, improved railway stations and more frequent, high quality bus services - not to mention giant tax enforcement gantries across every road into the city!

The TIF is typical of how this New Labour government distributes funding – by competitive bidding, pitting city against city. What is needed is the opposite approach: cooperation, integration and rational planning. How will it benefit global warming if our city improves its public transport while others are unable to do so?

Many working class people currently have no alternative but to use their cars to get to work in the city. If this plan goes ahead they will face a charge of up to £10 per day at a time when wages are stagnant yet food prices and energy bills are rising almost daily. The congestion charge is a regressive tax that will have its greatest impact on those least able to afford it.

But to what extent will a congestion charge ease road congestion in our city? The experience of London gives us some clues. Transport for London (TfL) claims that the reduction in traffic within the congestion charge zone was initially 30%, dropping to 25% a few weeks later. TfL claims that road journey times in the zone have been cut by up to 50%. But the people who benefit most from these reductions are the rich, who can easily afford the £8 a day charge. There are now far more Lexus’s and Range Rovers speeding along the streets of London, while working class people are crammed into overcrowded and overpriced tubes and buses. The best that can be said of the congestion charge in London, therefore, is that it makes life marginally more tolerable for its wealthiest people. It does nothing to raise our sights towards a different way of life, one that is no longer dominated by the private automobile.

If we are really going to properly tackle both climate change and road congestion, we need more imaginative approach, in particular we need a public transport system that is massively expanded, fully integrated and free at the point of use. Our transport system should also allow for progressively expanding car free zones so that pedestrians and cyclists can move safely around our cities and towns. Such a system would not only provide real alternatives to the motor car, it would also dramatically improve our quality of life. Imagine a city environment freed from the air and noise pollution of millions of automobiles, a city which is safe for pedestrians and cyclists, and in particular for our children and old folk. The technology already exists to create such an environment, all that’s missing is the political will.

So if we reject the TIF approach, how should public transport be funded? We already as a nation spend £6bn per year on road expansions; these funds should be transferred directly into public transport. The £70bn earmarked for replacing Trident, not to mention the £4bn per annum currently being spent on war in Iraq and Afghanistan, could also be reallocated to peaceful and environmentally beneficial ends. And then there are the Hedge funds and Private Equity Funds that make billions for ultra-rich parasites who pay less tax than the rest of us. There’s no shortage of money in this country, it just needs to be used to benefit all of us instead of for the enrichment of the few.

But can we really afford to make public transport free? The real question is, can we afford not to? With climate change accelerating beyond control, keeping things as they are could literally cost us the Earth. It is generally accepted that education should be free, as should health care. We should start looking on public transport in a similar way, as a public service rather than as a source of private profit. In other words, we should apply the same principle to the health of the planet that we already apply to the health of individuals. The city of Hasselt in Belgium has operated free public transport since 1996. Road congestion has been eliminated, bus passenger numbers have increased tenfold and the streets have been made pedestrian and cyclist friendly. Indeed, the policy has revived what was becoming a dying city.

This policy does of course imply the need to take public transport back into public ownership. Manchester Respect fully supports the rail unions in their campaign to renationalise the rail. Indeed, the question of ownership should be at the centre of the transport debate, yet this is the very issue that that the government, the councils and the TIF all studiously avoid.