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Manchester Congestion Charge Referendum


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Congestion Charge Referendum  

225 members have voted

  1. 1. Your Vote

    • Yes
      60
    • No
      165


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Which will in turn be cancelled out by the longer journey time and the increased cost

 

I dont believe the travel time increase will be all that bad. I do believe the increase in cost will be high though...

 

Are you for real? You want me to vote to impose a tax on myself because other people don't live as near to a bus stop? Considering the exceptional business accumen you have demonstrated for us in this thread you are presumably coining it in, maybe you should vote to give some of your money to me because I don't have it so well.

 

Like I said, its a tax on the selfish and ignorant and you just brilliantly proved my point...

 

Ive supported many government policy's which haven't been good for me but has been good for my family and friends... Its called doing the right thing...

 

Give over will you, they'll blag that no problem. They can spin 80% to make it mean anything they want it to.

 

Its your council that will be monitoring it. Not central government... Your local council have a vested interest for it to be done properly...

 

How does driving 100 yards to get on a motorway you happen to live right next to contribute to the congestion?

 

The hollinwood area is heavily effected by just this sort of journey...

 

Not if they want to get to work/the match at Stockport on time they can't

Edgeley Park is a 20 minute drive from the M60 junction at Hollinwood. Why should a guy living there have to be prepared to disrupt his life to the extent of it taking about 4 or 5 times as long and 2 or 3 changes of bus to get somewhere (because that's still what it will take even after these so called improvements) when he is getting nothing in return?

 

A moment ago you were telling me that nobody else in Oldham had it as good as me and now they are all 15 minutes from a bus stop. And again, why should they suffer that extent of disruption when they are getting nothing in return. Like I said in my original post, when they put something in place the like of what is to be found in London then they might have an argument. This proposal is light years away.

 

And incidentally have you sampled the price of buses these days. I tell you what the cost of the petrol used is a hell of a lot cheaper on the vast majority of journeys. Is that what the congestion charge is for then, because we're just having it far too good and there's got to be a stop put to it?

 

Like I said...its a tax on the ignorant and selfish...it clearly achieves its aim :)

 

If buses are more expensive than driving then im sure you will stick to your car.... I doubt the charge + parking + petrol is cheaper though...

 

£16 to travel anywhere in Greater Manchester for a week is hardly a rip off...and there are cheaper options as well :)

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:lol:

 

Any money made in "profit" by the government will be returned to the public purse for redistribution... Thats hardly a capitalist idea :lol:

:grin::lol:

 

I think you deliberately miss my point that what you claim to do for a living marks you out quite clearly as a capitalist yourself, yet you throw it around as if it were a term of abuse that people are trying to get on and make a living for themselves and their families, without escaping the Hell of Oldham for the paradise of Warrington.

 

As regards the spending of government money raised through this tax, I can tell you that as a matter of public record, around 7 out of every 8 pounds raised by the C-charge in London has gone back to either the various service providers or the exceptionally bloated Council bureaucracy running it. Although I don't have figures to hand I would also suggest that the C-charge is the most efficiently managed of all of the parking services in Greater London. Here's the best bit - it will probably be part of the deal that most of the jobs have to be in Manchester, so people will be adding to congestion, coming into the most expensive office accommodation possible to find for 50 miles around, all to tax other people for coming into the zone!

 

 

LOL!!! :lol:

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I get the part about people dont like standing up on trains and on a bus in rush hour or peak time (but why should motorists pay for that, when it needs doing anyway) but i dont know how many busses iv drove past/ been on that have bin half empty, outside these peak times. so say for example the bus route from my house to manchester that the TIF wants to increase to every 6-7 mins is already half empty when it runs at every 10-12 mins, so whats the point in increasing it?

 

I havent read anywhere that they want to increase it to 6-7 mins.....

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I dont agree...

 

I think peoples travel times may well increase (by not driving) but i dont buy the improvements wont have a positive impacts on the majority of peoples travel options...

Our public transport infrastructure was developed in a bygone age for people living in traditional suburbs and working in town and city centres. These days, a significant proportion of workers work at out of town business, retail and industrial developments, which tend to be served very well by major trunk roads but not by public transport.

 

It would take an investment of tens, probably hundreds, of billions to change that.

Edited by garcon
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:grin::lol:

 

I think you deliberately miss my point that what you claim to do for a living marks you out quite clearly as a capitalist yourself, yet you throw it around as if it were a term of abuse that people are trying to get on and make a living for themselves and their families, without escaping the Hell of Oldham for the paradise of Warrington.

 

As regards the spending of government money raised through this tax, I can tell you that as a matter of public record, around 7 out of every 8 pounds raised by the C-charge in London has gone back to either the various service providers or the exceptionally bloated Council bureaucracy running it. Although I don't have figures to hand I would also suggest that the C-charge is the most efficiently managed of all of the parking services in Greater London. Here's the best bit - it will probably be part of the deal that most of the jobs have to be in Manchester, so people will be adding to congestion, coming into the most expensive office accommodation possible to find for 50 miles around, all to tax other people for coming into the zone!

LOL!!! :lol:

 

I didnt miss your point...

 

The government have provided the investment... The charge goes back to government... The private companies continue to operate the networks...

 

I have no problem with people working to get by... Where have I said anything different ?

 

My political views are left of centre if you want to know.

 

I believe in social security etc while at the same time understanding are private sector most be maintained...

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Our public transport infrastructure was developed in a bygone age for people living in traditional suburbs and working in town and city centres. These days, a significant proportion of workers work at out of town business, retail and industrial developments, which tend to be served very well by major trunk roads but not by public transport.

 

It would take an investment of tens, probably hundreds, of billions to change that.

 

I agree with you mostly...

 

Im just not going to turn away this big bag of money right now to start the process....

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my mistake its 7/8 mins, but it doesnt change my point!

 

Post the link... I cant find where it says that in the plan...

 

Any planning will be based on the fact more people will need other options than they currently have bear in mind...

Edited by oafc0000
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Post the link... I cant find where it says that in the plan...

 

Any planning will be based on the fact more people will need other options than they currently have bear in mind...

 

the existing Langley – Middleton – Harpurhey - Manchester service to be increased in frequency to operate every 7/8 minutes, Monday to Saturday daytime, every 30 minutes in the evenings and every 20 minutes on Sundays and extended to operate across Manchester City Centre to the University, MRI, the new Children’s Hospital and Chorlton

 

http://www.gmfuturetransport.co.uk/MyDistr...le/default.aspx

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Like I said, its a tax on the selfish and ignorant and you just brilliantly proved my point...

 

Ive supported many government policy's which haven't been good for me but has been good for my family and friends... Its called doing the right thing...

 

I already use public transport when I go to central Manchester. I'm just against it because it's bad for my family and friends, I'm told it's called doing the right thing. Does that make me selfish and ignorant?

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the existing Langley – Middleton – Harpurhey - Manchester service to be increased in frequency to operate every 7/8 minutes, Monday to Saturday daytime, every 30 minutes in the evenings and every 20 minutes on Sundays and extended to operate across Manchester City Centre to the University, MRI, the new Children’s Hospital and Chorlton

 

http://www.gmfuturetransport.co.uk/MyDistr...le/default.aspx

 

Cheers for that...

 

I can imagine that route would get hit quite heavily if the charge came in....

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I already use public transport when I go to central Manchester. I'm just against it because it's bad for my family and friends, I'm told it's called doing the right thing. Does that make me selfish and ignorant?

 

Bad for your family and friends... Do they not have reasonable public transport options near by ? Will the charge not provide them if they haven't at the moment?

Edited by oafc0000
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I didnt miss your point...

 

As regards the spending of government money raised through this tax, I can tell you that as a matter of public record, around 7 out of every 8 pounds raised by the C-charge in London has gone back to either the various service providers or the exceptionally bloated Council bureaucracy running it. Although I don't have figures to hand I would also suggest that the C-charge is the most efficiently managed of all of the parking services in Greater London. Here's the best bit - it will probably be part of the deal that most of the jobs have to be in Manchester, so people will be adding to congestion, coming into the most expensive office accommodation possible to find for 50 miles around, all to tax other people for coming into the zone!

 

Im just not going to turn away this big bag of money right now to start the process....

:lol: :lol:

 

crayons.jpg

 

I've been in the position of agreeing with you on a certain issue, yet cringing at the utter stupid ignorance with which you go about arguing your case so much that I wish I supported the other side. I bet there are a fair few people who would like to see a publicly funded, locally planned transport system implemented with a carefully constructed scheme of taxes and charges to support it brought in across the NW region. I am not one of them, but I bet I share with them the wish that you would just shut the :censored: up.

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Cheers for that...

 

I can imagine that route would get hit quite heavily if the charge came in....

 

 

its a main bus route, goes right through to bury so there’s no doubt passenger levels will increase, its just by how much, if i got on that bus at say 11.00am from my house it would be virtually empty till near the city centre. They should spend the money on more shuttle busses in the charging zones rather than more bus routes where it’s not needed.

 

 

 

 

That website is misleading cos its done in areas, so when you click on the bury one, it tells you that there going to improve some of the same bus routes that the Rochdale (and other areas no doubt) are going to improve. Implying that they are making 2 separate improvements, when really its only one!

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I've been in the position of agreeing with you on a certain issue, yet cringing at the utter stupid ignorance with which you go about arguing your case so much that I wish I supported the other side. I bet there are a fair few people who would like to see a publicly funded, locally planned transport system implemented with a carefully constructed scheme of taxes and charges to support it brought in across the NW region. I am not one of them, but I bet I share with them the wish that you would just shut the :censored: up.

 

The government is offering greater Manchester a big bag of money to invest into public transport and you think that's capitalist...:lol: Your a fruit :D

 

As for the rest, no doubt you would love to suppress my opinion because it comes from a point of view that makes yours look silly :)

 

I ask you to back up what your saying (small business will be damage) but you cant come up with anything to prove it. :)

 

Any chance you own a car by the way :)

 

By the way the wife owns a car... The charge will effect me...

Edited by oafc0000
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Bad for your family and friends... Do they not have reasonable public transport options near by ? Will the charge not provide them if they haven't at the moment?

 

For the one's I had in mind, no on both counts.

 

Like people keep saying, the scale of this public transport improvement does not even come remotely close to what is required to make leaving the car at home a viable option for the vast majority of people.

 

Hence why people who will be no better off in terms public transport at the completiton of this scheme feel it is unfair to have this charge imposed on them when they have no viable alternative.

 

You can always make the case that you can get from anywhere to anywhere by public transport if you're prepared to put up with any amount of inconvenience, but people only have so much time and money at their disposal. Surely at some point it becomes unreasonable to ask a person to go the lengths that are required to make some journeys by public transport.

 

When you go beyond that point and you are still expected to pay a congestion charge in addition to the vast amounts of other taxes motorists pay, of which only a tiny fraction is reinvested in the road network, then surely it is neither unreasonable, nor selfish, nor ignorant to be opposed to the introduction of this scheme.

 

Like I said, when they come back with viable public transport proposals then fine, but the costs would be astronomical. The school of thought that says to hell with the cost, the benefits are such that it simply has to be done is not as ridiculous to my mind as it would probably appear on first inspection of the sums of money involved, especially when you consider some of the :censored:e they waste money on. But I don't see any government ever being brave enough to commit to that amount of expenditure on a single area.

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For the one's I had in mind, no on both counts.

 

Like people keep saying, the scale of this public transport improvement does not even come remotely close to what is required to make leaving the car at home a viable option for the vast majority of people.

 

Hence why people who will be no better off in terms public transport at the completiton of this scheme feel it is unfair to have this charge imposed on them when they have no viable alternative.

 

You can always make the case that you can get from anywhere to anywhere by public transport if you're prepared to put up with any amount of inconvenience, but people only have so much time and money at their disposal. Surely at some point it becomes unreasonable to ask a person to go the lengths that are required to make some journeys by public transport.

 

When you go beyond that point and you are still expected to pay a congestion charge in addition to the vast amounts of other taxes motorists pay, of which only a tiny fraction is reinvested in the road network, then surely it is neither unreasonable, nor selfish, nor ignorant to be opposed to the introduction of this scheme.

 

Like I said, when they come back with viable public transport proposals then fine, but the costs would be astronomical. The school of thought that says to hell with the cost, the benefits are such that it simply has to be done is not as ridiculous to my mind as it would probably appear on first inspection of the sums of money involved, especially when you consider some of the :censored:e they waste money on. But I don't see any government ever being brave enough to commit to that amount of expenditure on a single area.

 

The vast majority of people travelling to work in the morning by car have very real alternatives.... They choose not to take them up... Something has to be done to change this....

 

I reckon I could find reasonable route for all your friends... There are people out there who cant drive yet manage to get to work...

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We have a pointless con of a tax cut tomorrow that has supposedly cost £20Bn. That would have been a start. Although the total investment required in the UK's transport infrastructure is probably about 100 times that.

 

:)

 

Yeah your right... But that money was already going somewhere else... and we have had to borrow money to plug that gap :P

 

I always try not to go down this path when talking about government spending..otherwise you end up going in a endless circles of craziness :) How much have we spent on Iraq etc... The mind boggles....

Edited by oafc0000
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I hate it when people fill their own text into other peoples posts, but I just didn't have the energy...

 

 

The government is offering greater Manchester a big bag of money to invest into public transport and you think that's capitalist...:lol: Your a fruit :D

No, I've demonstrated that as likely as not all of the money will go into paying Council staff to administer it or the people they pay to run the service (for clarity, when I referred to service providers, as I was talking about the C-charge I meant the people who post the tickets, watch the cameras, deal with the appeals and so on - not public transport which was paid for out of the revenue. It is very possible that the costs of this operation will outway the gains, with the deficit being buried in the costs of the council transport department. Possibly being counted as infrastructure towards the happy 80%).

 

As for the rest, no doubt you would love to suppress my opinion because it comes from a point of view that makes yours look silly :)

Some people take me to be a socialist, some a loony right winger, some a PC tree hugger. I am quietly confident that nobody considers me so much of an idiot clown as you make yourself when you go off on one. I relish debating with interesting people with opposing views, I get depressed by foolishness.

I ask you to back up what your saying (small business will be damage) but you cant come up with anything to prove it. :)

I have done. You were too stupid to understand it. Maybe you skipped over the module in you Business Science classes that said that you divert resources away from things that cost more. It wasn't only meant to apply to driving vs getting a monthly bus pass. Maybe your tutor didn't make that clear.

 

Any chance you own a car by the way :)

No, no desire to where I am. I walked to work from my last place, now walk 10 minutes to get one of 3 frequent overland trains, 18 or so minutes and a couple more minutes walk and I'm there. Costs me £50 a month which I didn't pay for walking, but that's my choice. I'm most often pissed when I go out other than for work anyway so wouldn't want to be driving and I can get my shopping on the way home. It doesn't mean I don't feel for people whose lives are screwed up by the arbitrary drawing of lines down a map, especially as I know more than most about the impact it can have on people's circumstances.

 

By the way the wife owns a car... The charge will effect me...

 

Really - so she drives into Manchester after you have made a moral decision not to? Gosh...

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The vast majority of people travelling to work in the morning by car have very real alternatives.... They choose not to take them up... I reckon I could find reasonable route for all your friends...

 

But that's exactly the point I'm making, there are loads of people that don't have a real alternative. There an awful lot of people out there with journeys to work of a nature that including waiting time would take 2 hours or more by public transport involving 3/4/5 changes of bus, and these proposals are not going to remedy that for the vast majority of them. That kind of journey to me is unreasonable. I do not expect a person to leave their car at home when that is the alternative. That's 4 hours of your day wasted on travelling which is a pretty significant impact on your quality of life and it is totally unreasonable to charge somebody for refusing to put up with that.

 

There are people out there who cant drive yet manage to get to work...

 

Yes, but there is a limit to where it is viable for them to work.

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Who is kidding who with this charge.

Can you imagine our inept councils trying to waste £3 bn on public transport.

We will end up with a public transport system no better than current.

What will this do ? Get all those people that initially gave the car up back on the roads in their cars.

Guess what - more congestion with the council rubbing their hands with glee at the extra billions they are coining in through the charges.

 

There should be guarantees put in place that IF (or when) the councils fall short of the intended public system services then the charge is suspended until such time it is corrected.

Edited by losesome
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I have voted no - I live in south Manchester but as I am from Royton which is where my family lives. I have looked at what they will gain from the improved transport and the answer in nothing. The 24 bus has already been withdrawn after 7 pm, which means I can't get home after a visit. This might change if yes campaign wins - so they will be putting the bus back on. That’s not worth millions of pounds.

 

Also I read a letter in the MEN from someone in Stockport council, they said that under the congestion charge they would get an increased number of yellow buses bring the total to 8. They already have 7. Is 1 yellow bus going to have an impact on reducing congestion? I think not.

 

Also I am applying to a course in social work, if everything works out then in two years I will be working in a job where a car is mandatory. I will literally be paying to work.

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Really - so she drives into Manchester after you have made a moral decision not to? Gosh...

 

Cant be arsed comment on the rest of your comments...mainly because most of them are just having a pop :) You say such things but you continue to debate with me :)

 

My wife is free to do as she pleases... She is against the charge...that her choice... I think she is selfish and ignorant as well :D But she actually admits to being selfish and ignorant and she says there is no way she is using public transport :)

Edited by oafc0000
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But that's exactly the point I'm making, there are loads of people that don't have a real alternative. There an awful lot of people out there with journeys to work of a nature that including waiting time would take 2 hours or more by public transport involving 3/4/5 changes of bus, and these proposals are not going to remedy that for the vast majority of them. That kind of journey to me is unreasonable. I do not expect a person to leave their car at home when that is the alternative. That's 4 hours of your day wasted on travelling which is a pretty significant impact on your quality of life and it is totally unreasonable to charge somebody for refusing to put up with that.

 

Ive had journeys around the 2 hour mark in the past... that's life....

 

The selfishness of the majority of motorists have lead to the situation where we need to consider the congestion charge as a option..

 

Yes, but there is a limit to where it is viable for them to work.

 

Not really....

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