A £25 million transport revolution for Oldham

A 2004 election briefing from Oldham & Rochdale Green Party

21 April 2004

Contact:

David Roney at Oldham & Rochdale Green Party, 07990 808202

Spencer Fitz-Gibbon at North West Green Party, 07973 736351

Foreword by Professor John Whitelegg

It was revealed this year that Oldham has suffered a massive 28% increase in traffic in just six years. That was the second highest increase in the country.

This means an increase in congestion and pollution. It means more people are made ill by noise and air pollution. Already some 12,000-24,000 people die prematurely in the UK every year because of air pollution – much of it from traffic – and this is set to get worse. In fact, the government expects traffic to increase by 17% nationally within ten years.

We know from long experience that building roads generates more traffic. It’s the M60 extension through Hollinwood and Chadderton which has attracted Oldham’s huge increase. Yet the government wants to spend another £30 billion building and widening roads, and the European Union encourages it.

Meanwhile public transport is crumbling from lack of investment. This is not progress!

Sorting out Britain’s transport problems will require national action, from re-regulating the buses and renationalising the railways, to investing massively in public transport. The Green Party has shown how this is possible nationally, and how to pay for it. But here in Oldham we can make a start. We need the council to adopt a Green transport plan.

That would be Real Progress – and that’s what the Green Party stands for. To make Real Progress on transport in Oldham we need Greens elected to Oldham borough council this year. And we need more Greens in the European Parliament to help stop the EU promoting more roadbuilding in Britain.

Note: Oldham-born leading transport consultant John Whitelegg is Professor of Sustainable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of York, and Leader of North West Green Party.

Real Progress on transport:

The Green Party plan for Oldham

The Greens want to put transport in Oldham back on the right road. This will cost an estimated £25 million over five years. [Source: Lancaster-based transport/environmental consultancy Eco-Logic Ltd.]

• An increase in high-speed traffic has taken its toll on human lives. By establishing one hundred 20mph zones in Oldham we would reduce accidents and injury, discourage traffic and boost the levels of walking and cycling.

• Cycling should be a pleasant experience that everyone can enjoy, without risking life and limb. We would guarantee this by building a network of cycle paths that are segregated and which serve all the main hospitals, schools and public buildings.

• Highway space should be reallocated to allow more room for pedestrian pavements and cycle paths.

• The council itself needs a sustainable travel-to-work plan. Council staff should be encouraged to use alternative forms of transport to get to the Civic Centre, reducing the number of employees using their cars.

• The council should work with local organisations and companies with over a hundred staff to establish tailored business transport plans. This means drawing up traffic reduction targets, plans for reduced parking, and providing incentives like commuter passes to use bus and train services.

• To keep the traffic levels down in central areas the council should introduce congestion charging or workplace car taxation.

• Plans should be put in place in every school to reduce the number of pupils coming to school by car. There should be a focus on ensuring that walking and cycling alternatives are safe and Safe Routes to School programme for every school in Oldham.

• Bus services would become faster and more reliable as we introduced more bus lanes and bus priority measures to the town.

• Based on the Edinburgh model, we should introduce car-free housing - and refuse building permission for housing plans with over-generous car parking.

Conclusion

Accessible, convenient, reliable transport choices are vital for communities, to sustain local facilities and to keep people connected, preventing social exclusion. But so far, all we have been given is a deteriorating public transport system, congestion on the roads and frustration for travellers. And as well as wasted time, money and effort, more traffic has resulted in more lost lives along the way, both from crashes and from air pollution.

Real Progress means making public transport an easy option. It means keeping our citizens safe. The council should work with the community to meet their needs and create cleaner, safer and more reliable ways of getting around in Oldham. This is what Green councillors will do. Our proposals would provide superior standard of transportation for everyone without compromising our health or the environment.

The money can be found partly from existing budgets. If congestion charging and taxation of workplace car parking are introduced, the whole project could become independent of reallocation from the roadbuilding budget. In any case when the government is made to understand that building more roads is a counter-productive waste of £30 billion, more money will become available for further local transport improvements. The Green Party has argued that the £30 billion could be divided roughly equally between the regions, giving approximately £3 billion to the North West, of which up to £1 billion would come to Greater Manchester and its surrounding area.

We need Oldham council and other local authorities to campaign for this change in government policy, for the resulting switch of funding away from roadbuilding and into sustainable transport. We need Greens elected to Oldham council to help make this happen.

ENDS

Printed and promoted by David Roney for the Oldham & Rochdale Green Party, both at 79 Belgrave Road OL8 1LU.