Whoever came up with the idea of asking Mancunians to vote for a congestion charge can't have been serious. For many motorists, the ability to take to the roads is as inalienable a human 'right' as free access to air and water.
That local MPs, from all sides of the political divides, lined up to dismiss "road charging" only amplified this sentiment. Didn't anybody see what happened in Edinburgh three years earlier, when that city also voted against congestion charging?
All that is left of Manchester's attempt to tame traffic in the city is a sad message on the venture's website. "On Friday 19 December AGMA [the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities] formally resolved to no longer pursue the Transport Innovation Fund proposals." The web site of Greater Manchester Future Transport goes on to say that, "This website contains a historical record of the TIF proposals and accompanying consultation."
The site deserves to stay around as a warning to other cities that are wondering how to deal with the mess that is today's traffic. Locals can also consult the site to see if any of the plans for expanded cycle routes and other things that would have arrived on the back of an injection of cash from central government ever make it on to their streets.
Perhaps advocates of road charging should listen to a podcast on "congestion remedies" put out by IBM in its series "Building A Smarter Planet".
IBM's podcasts include "interviews with thought leaders on how technology will change our experience of different aspects of everyday life." Sam Schwartz, described as "one of the leading transportation engineers in the United States", points out the stupidity of the idea that driving should be as free as air and water. "Driving really isn't free. It costs society a good deal."
One day, says Schwarz, who also gave us the term 'gridlock', we will have to apply the same economic disciplines to driving as we do to the supply of electricity, for example, which changes in price depending on supply and demand.
Another interviewee for the congestion item, Tom Vanderbilt, recently wrote "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)". The book's message, judging from an extract on the author's web site, is that you cannot treat driving as a rational activity that is amenable to logical arguments.
As Vanderbilt writes, "The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work."
Did the people who organised the pile-up in Manchester have a psychologist in their team? It seems pretty clear that economics and care for the environment won't swing it with the public.
Further information:
http://www.gmfuturetransport.co.uk/default.aspx
http://www.asmarterplanet.com/blog/2008/11/congestion-reme.html
http://www.samschwartz.com/
http://www.howwedrive.com/
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