Manchester Congestion Charge Vote Is A "NO"
By Jim Symcox on Dec 12, 2008 in Congestion Charging, Manchester, Manchester City Council
Well after all the money spent by the "Yes" and "No" camp we discover that really Manchester people don’t want to pay to go into Manchester.
Is that a surprise, or not?
And now what is the next step.
Given that the council (and us) really do need to have money spent on the transport infrastructure what do we do?
There is no Plan B at the moment, or so we’re told.
However, I suspect we’ll get a different congestion charging scheme that may, or may not be offered up in a referendum.
I suspect the reason the charge was rejected was that no one really believes what this government tells us they’re going to do. After all we could have accepted the congestion charge and still been left with a not particularly impressive transport system at the end of it if the government delayed the funding or even reduced it so that chunks of the scheme would have been removed or reduced in scale.
Rather like the original Metrolink Big Bang. Where suddenly funding we thought had been promised wasn’t after all. Do you remember that?
