The nightmare of Public Transport

Posted By: Wera Hobhouse
Date Posted: 27/10/2008

I do not usually travel into Manchester during the morning rush hour, but this morning I had to be in Manchester for a ‘breakfast meeting’ at half past eight and I took the train! What a nightmare! One train was cancelled, the next one came twenty minutes later and became so cramped that by the time we got to Mills Hill the doors wouldn’t open leaving passengers stranded inside and outside the carriages.

To all those long suffering rush hour commuters I wanted to shout –‘This is why you should vote Yes to the TIF bid’, because TIF is about big improvements in Public Transport and those who are using Public Transport know why it is so urgently needed.

However the No campaign has become so vociferous that most people seem to believe the campaign is Yes or No to Congestion Charge. To my astonishment a lot of people I talked to, when I helped to launch the Yes Campaign a week ago, said: ‘It doesn’t concern me because I don’t have a car.’ or : ‘It doesn’t concern me because I never drive into Manchester.’

Yes! It does concern everybody who doesn’t drive into Manchester at peak times just as much as it concerns those, who do.
All these thousands of commuters shouldn’t abstain from the vote unless they want to continue to experience the misery of Public Transport as it is at the moment.

I believe that TIF is an opportunity that we will not see again in our lifetime. Most No campaigners seem to think that by some chance they can get the investment into Public Transport even after they have said No to TIF. Dream on!

Public expenditure is at an all time high since the Treasury had to come up with billions of pounds to bail out the collapsing economic system.

Government will breathe a sigh of relief if it can save a few billions here and there. If Greater Manchester says NO to TIF we will be stuck with the our poor Public Transport system for the next twenty years.
.