Congestion charge vote: So what happens next?
10:30am Sunday 14th December 2008 in
Plans for a congestion charge for Greater Manchester have been given the red light by voters - but they are asking what will happen next.
Almost two million ballot papers were posted out to residents in the 10 local authority areas last month and all 10 voted to reject the proposals.
Of Bolton's electorate of 199,819, 48.8 per cent voted. Figures announced just moments ago revealed 76,910 voted against the proposals, with 20,529 voting yes. In Bury, where there is an electorate of 140,441, 57.4 per cent voted, with 16,563, for and 64,001 against.
Highest turn-out was Trafford with 63.6pc. Lowest Manchester with 46.1pc making Bolton the eighth lowest.
The deadline for ballots to be returned was 10pm last night. The result came in at 12.20pm.
The results, announced by returning officer Sir Neil McIntosh at Manchester Central conference centre, will deal a fatal blow to the scheme, which would have created the country’s biggest road congestion zone, charging drivers up to £5 a day to use the region’s roads.
It could also spell the end for any further plans to introduce similar schemes, given the resounding rejection by voters.
Each of the councils across Greater Manchester must now cast a vote on whether they support the charge which forms part of a £3 billion TIF bid for cash.
That decision will be made next Friday.
If at least seven said yes, the deal would have gone ahead, bringing a new transport interchange, better rail facilities and more buses for Bolton.
Bolton MPs Brian Iddon and Ruth Kelly backed the bid, while David Crausby said he was against the proposals.
The congestion charge would have been be a peak-time, weekday levy for traffic in and out of Manchester city centre and within the M60.
Comments(18)
boltonian68
says...
2:00pm Fri 12 Dec 08
The outcome of the referendum is a fantastic example of democracy at work. Let's have more operations like this on local issues so that our "elected" representatives are obliged to do WHAT WE WANT THEM TO DO, NOT WHAT THEY THINK IS BEST FOR US or perhaps WHAT IS BEST FOR THEM!!!
Well done voters in Bolton.
Royc
says...
3:31pm Fri 12 Dec 08
Great result but no doubt they will now try and get it through some other way. These public paid quangos dont ever give up until they get the vote they want, or find some backdoor way of getting their own way.
Delighted. (For now) Blackrod
Grateful Dave
says...
5:28pm Fri 12 Dec 08
Athertonian
says...
5:57pm Fri 12 Dec 08
Now to throw off the shackles of the GMPTE ...
lancsman
says...
7:05pm Fri 12 Dec 08
Bolton needs its own transport infastructure. Trams to atherton/leigh and Bury are what Bolton needs,not trams to manchester.
Megawatt
says...
7:40pm Fri 12 Dec 08
I agree with all the former comments.
Well voted.
chipbutty
says...
9:17pm Fri 12 Dec 08
Congestion in and around Manchester will not go away, it will get worse with a knock-on effect and cost to everyone.
Talk of "the people have spoken" and "the powers that be should do what the people want" is nonsense. The average person does not have all the facts and are easily swayed by pressure groups who generally have no alternative suggestions and rely on the base argument of "Don't pay more tax". Leave elected members to make the important decisions, decisions that make real differences to peoples lives and if you don't like what they do, vote them out at the next opportunity.
Athertonian
says...
2:18am Sat 13 Dec 08
You wouldn't happen to be an ex-councillor, would you?
rostron
says...
5:25am Sat 13 Dec 08
Everyone would have been asking for later times to avoid this throwing the system of hospital in chaos.
We the people have spoken, I wait now for the other sneaky way they will try to do this.
Oode
says...
9:06am Sat 13 Dec 08
lancsman
says...
11:08am Sat 13 Dec 08
smotch
says...
11:52am Sat 13 Dec 08
the problem now is that something needs to be done about the congestion into manchester and there is no doubt that a scheme will be put into place but at the cost of everyone in greater manchester through an increase in council rates rather than from the people directly involved in causing the congestion.we need something to prise these drivers fom their metal wombs and onto public transport,and this was an oportunity missed.
grannigrump
says...
12:26pm Sat 13 Dec 08
Nelson
says...
6:59pm Sun 14 Dec 08
Stalin would have been proud of you. He too had a low opinion of the views of the people. Perhaps you could get a job in Brussels working for the EUSSR as a Commisar
chipbutty
says...
7:23pm Sun 14 Dec 08
lancsman
says...
7:53pm Sun 14 Dec 08
If there had been any real gains for Bolton,then i would have voted YES. However the whole scheme was so manchester-centric that nobody was fooled.
chipbutty
says...
8:56am Wed 17 Dec 08
I'm still waiting for the No supporters to come forward with an idea, any idea of how to solve the problem of traffic congestion.
Athertonian
says...
6:22pm Wed 17 Dec 08
The thing is, every proposal that affected Bolton was already on the table, quite independently of the TIF bid. All this would have done was to bring things forward a little.
It is not the no campaign, but the GMPTE's paucity of imagination that is the problem.
Locally, its lack of real initiative in the Bolton and Wigan areas is appalling. If, as has happened, Bolton and Wigan, councils of the same political hue demand, and get, rebates because of poor investment in transport, you can bet things are a good deal worse than is leaking out to the public. How can you have faith in an organisation that, as part of a supposedly sophisticated campaign, advertised on Wigan buses more trains for Ashton, and a guided bus for Wigan - when Ashton in fact has no station, and the planned pseudo-tram stops at Leigh, 7 miles short of Wigan? What a gaffe. They clearly don't even know their constituency.
More broadly, creating the world's largest congestion charge zone - far bigger than London's - was a nonsense, not least because the transport improvement package was insufficient and too patchy to justify it, with over half the ACTUAL extra funding being spent on a new tramline for relatively prosperous south Manchester. Perhaps it should be borne in mind that the GMPTA's chief officer's day job is town clerk of Manchester!
Is this being parochial? By no means. It is rather the "little Manchester" mentality - a perfect replica in miniature of the London metropolitanism decried by our "core cities" - that is the problem. A regional problem needs a regional solution. Moreover, there were no extra powers to rein in First or Stagecoach - on whose whims we would continue to have to rely(or rather, not!)under a set-up that has, for us, delivered a less integrated, less reliable and just plain worse system, with fewer links, than we had 40 years ago.
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