Manchester Council sucks lemons thats for sure!!!!!!

Manchester Against Road Tolls

This applies to all those that live in Manchester....
Manchester Council have decided to start forcing people to pay to use the roads via congestion charges. I mean how stupid is that, considering we already pay enough for fuel and road tax.

From what I have been hearing this is the precursor to a nationwide movement and this is just the start of it all..

Here is more information in which the council has not published to the general public.

Background
Because almost no one wants road pricing, the Government have promised very large sums of money to areas that volunteer and are selected as pilots for road pricing. They are doing this through the "Congestion Charge" part of the "Transport Innovation Fund" (TIF). Manchester is the area of Britain which is most likely to become the guinea pig for road pricing. "Manchester" for this purpose is the Greater Manchester area which consists of Manchester City and nine other councils.

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA) and Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) made TIF bids in 2005 and 2006. The bids were said to be made on behalf of all the councils in the Greater Manchester area. Both bids were accepted by the Government and the GMPTA / GMPTE was given money towards the cost of researching a transport scheme.

The authorities know this but have tried to pull the wool over people's eyes in various ways. First of all by denying that they have any definite plans to have road pricing and referring to four meaningless "tests". Secondly by setting up a panel to oversee this, selecting the people on the panel themselves and then calling it "Independent". Thirdly by keeping what they are doing as secret as possible so that not even the councillors seem to have any idea what is going on. We have raised some of our concerns with the Local Government Ombudsman.

On 25th May 2007, the 10 councils announced that they were going to submit a 2007 TIF bid which would include road pricing. They gave a brief outline of what phase one would involve. It is very similar to the two cordon scheme which was rejected by the people of Edinburgh. The people of Manchester are to be given no choice.


The Plans
Phase One -

Charge of £2 to cross Outer Ring (M60) inward between 7 AM and 9.30 AM on weekdays, and further £1 to cross an "Intermediate" ring inward between the same hours. Further charge of £1 to cross the "Intermediate" ring outward between 4 PM and 6.30 PM and further £1 to cross the Outer ring between the same hours.
They have not decided where the "Intermediate" ring is to be.
The above rates are for cars at "today's prices". They have said that motorbikes will be charged but haven't said how much. They have also said that cars and lorries etc will be charged more, but again haven't said how much.

System will be "tag and beacon". Drivers will be expected to have a tag in their vehicle and will be required to register with a "franchise agent". The vehicle driver will pay the agent and the driver's account will be charged as the vehicle passes the beacon. The tag will have a unique identifier which is recognised as the driver passes through the microwave radiation emitted by the beacons.
Though described as "tag and beacon" it seems that the device will not just identify the vehicle, it will also have a facility for putting prepaid cards in.

As many vehicles will for various reasons not have a working "tag", there will also be cameras that will record all number plates as they pass ecah beacon, so that drivers who don't pay can be pursued.
Later phase -

Charges will be on a more elaborate basis. Charge will be according to distance travelled and when. It will be applied to more roads and they want to include the motorways.

Charging will be done using black boxes and satellites. This was originally in phase one, but has been postponed for unknown reasons.

This is supposed to do several things, Force people to use public transport, and basically help the council finance their pockets with the cash made from the charges...
Here's where I see a problem. Those people that have a profession such as carers and so on, they have to pay in order to work, such as paying a fee per day say for example, your a carer that lives in the outskirts, and travels to one of their clients who lives on the inner circle of the toll area, well that client needs to travel to and from the outer to the inner circle. So that means that the driver has to pay a fee every time he/she enters the inner toll area. Secondly! Public transport will be increased, so lets say. about a third of manchesters population decide to use public transport instead of using their own transport, now considering manchester bus timetables are basically "CRAP!" how on earth are the buses going to be able to cope with the extra passengers. In my eyes there's no chance, considering todays youth (No offence) but a quarter of todays youth get their kicks from vandalism will vandalise the buses, toll area's and so on. How is this going to improve the circulation of congestion, there's only going to be one expense, and thats the expense of the general public who have a hard time dealing with finance as it is.

Another thing the council has not told the public about is the fact that they had to ask for a loan of 1 billion pounds just to get this crap started...

Obviously I do not know all of the details so I urge all the manchester residents to goto SAY NO TO CONGESTION CHARGES for more information.