Survey on local attitudes to congestion charging

Questions 14, 16 and 17 are inserted to test our respondents’ attitudes to the big transportation debate being held in Greater Manchester in summer 2007. GMPTE were promoting, through a giant mail out, through advertising, meetings, and an internet web site, the concept of the Greater Manchester councils applying for special government funding from the Transport Innovation Fund (TIF). The fund would provide “major investment to local authority projects that are: ‘innovative solutions to congestion problems’ with an emphasis on limiting the use of cars though congestion charging” (source: GMPTE & gmfuturetransport).

The proposal for Greater Manchester is to charge vehicles for driving into the conurbation when they entered an area roughly defined, some say, by the M60 ring road. This would only happen once there had been considerable investment in public transport and other support mechanisms.

The purpose of this explanation is not to promote it but to indicate why we sought some views. By way of balance a group set up at the same time was seeking support to oppose the congestion charge and some views were expressed that the TIF bid itself contained a number of road building schemes.

Question 14 asked respondents whether they agreed with any of the four statements presented:

We did not want to complicate this question by forcing respondents to state whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements. Hence respondents picked and mixed their choices. Further analysis could determine the predominant views of car drivers over bus users or regular bus users. However, there is trend to be noted: There is an acceptable awareness of congestion and our respondents suggest that people should to try to use public transport if practicable, however that is unlikely to be acceptable if there is overcrowding. About forty people might be willing to come forward with methods of solving congestion. The last two statements were taken from published reports and the first two were made up.

Question 16 asked respondents about “road pricing” commonly referred to as “congestion charging”:

There are several messages to be derived from these responses. Although dominated by the car users surprisingly few thought bus fares might not change. Whether the bus fares are adjusted if road charging was introduced is an option in the short term, and may be a tool to encourage change before the introduction of road charging. There are clear indicators amongst our respondents that their mind is made up, with a few more likely to consider how they travel. The question as asked, not the version above, was open to interpreting “way” as route.

For us the change from car to public transport is an important consideration because some parts of the conurbation are more likely to be affected by retained car use. This will be mostly evident when there is no alternative. Resistance will also be greatest when car users are using a company vehicle and have their travelling costs paid for. Analysis done in 1998 by consultants for GMPTE suggested that up to 50% of the peak rush hour traffic on the East Lancashire Road may be company vehicles, goods vehicles and company cars or company run cars. This was a factor in being able to determine whether people would use the proposed Leigh Salford Manchester Guided Busway, which is a scheme now incorporated into the TIF bid.

Finally Question 17 asking about acceptability of paying a charge of £5:

This question was based around an experiment carried out in the East Midlands a few years ago where volunteers were asked to carry a device which could record their journeys. Over the course of the experiment they were asked to consider the cost of their journeys and the researchers incrementally changed the charge of peak time journeys. It was when the charging rose to £5 a day that the researchers saw a change in attitude.

In our survey both this question and the previous one show that those expressing an answer were split approximately 50/50 towards considering change or not.

INTRODUCTION   PUBLIC TRANSPORT   ROAD PRICING   CONCLUSIONS   APPENDIX

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