Greens: Call for more cycle lanes and narrower roads in Trafford

The hustings, held on Wednesday, April 10, was hosted by the Urban Mobility Partnership, Asthma and Lung UK, and the Clean Cities Campaign, and chaired by Brompton Bicycle’s Julian Scriven.

In attendance were current Labour mayor Andy Burnham, alongside Altrincham Cllr Michael Welton, who was sitting in for Green Greater Manchester mayoral candidate Hannah Kathrine Spencer.

Answering for the Liberal Democrats was mayoral candidate and Stockport Cllr Jake Austin.  

Candidates were quizzed on a range of subjects, including bus reliability, the scrapped Clean Air Zone, active travel, and accessibility.

Cllr Welton said the Greens would review new road building and roll back airport expansion plans.

The councillor also took the opportunity to praise the A56 coned cycle lane for helping to diffuse air pollution.

He said: “In Trafford, we notoriously had cones, a lane coned off on the A56 for the last few years or so, waiting for a lovely new cycle lane to be built.

“It’s become a thing of great debate on social media, particularly in Stretford. A lady commented that the very act of moving traffic further from her house had hugely improved her daughter’s asthma.

“I’ve subsequently done some further reading on this and the research does show that even just a few metres is enough to allow pollution to diffuse, to the benefit of pedestrians and those living on heavily trafficked roads.

“That strongly supports the need for a road diet – we need to give a diet to our major highways to move traffic away from people.”

Cllr Welton added that narrower roads ‘tend to slow traffic’ and create less air pollution from ‘unnecessary acceleration and braking’.

He added: “It’s pretty shocking we’re now one of the few major cities in the UK without a Clean Air Zone, not only are we missing out on cleaner air, but also the revenue to invest in improvement projects.”

The Altrincham councillor said he believed a fairer alternative to the Clean Air Zone would be per-mile road pricing, with people charged based on the distances they drive.

He said: “Nationally, we need to move towards per-mile road pricing, we don’t mind talking about it and saying it, because we believe in it, so people are charged for how much they drive as well as the type of vehicle they drive. It’s much fairer than the Clean Air Zones that we’re seeing around the country.

“Such a system would be much simpler and integrated across different cities across the country, rather than the current mess of different charging arrangements in different urban areas.”

Liberal Democrat candidate Jake Austin and mayor Andy Burnham, however, were united in opposition to the Clean Air Zone – with the Lib Dem candidate calling the debate ‘politically charged’.

He said: “For everything we do in this regard, we need to make sure we’re bringing people with us.

"Every step towards cleaner air, how we take that to make sure we’re bringing people along for that journey to make a permanent change for the future.”

Mayor Andy Burnham said: “I think there’s a bigger debate about net zero and the journey to it that comes as part of this – do you get people to make the change they need to make if you’re doing it with a big stick, or do you get there if you’re doing it with more incentives?

“Give them the incentive to have lower cost public transport and make a change that way, give them the incentive to change their vehicle, do it that way.

“The government’s framework for the Clean Air Zone hit the poorest hardest, people who don’t have that disposable income are the least able to change their vehicles, they are the ones who would just be hit day after day after day.

“We all want to get there as quickly as we possibly can, and I think Jake made a really important point – if you plough on with something unpopular, it can make people resist everything you’re doing.”

The mayor also discussed electric buses and bringing rail under Bee Network control.

Bringing Metrolink services to Bolton and Stockport was also discussed at the event (Image: Newsquest)

Cllr Welton also added that he believed Trafford would be delivering more cycle lanes soon due to the employment of more council officers.

He said: “Something we have great experience of in Trafford is other people building cycle lanes that stop at Trafford, and then we’ve failed to fill in the gaps.

“Happily, that is starting to change. What we’ve seen in our borough in Trafford is the employment of several officers in the last couple of years who are actually going to deliver the schemes we’ve had money for for quite a while.

“I’d suggest that probably that’s the problem in a lot of councils – they haven’t had the skilled officer base to go alongside the opportunities that are available.

"It’s one thing to have an idea and get approval in principle for an idea, but to be able to take that through and deliver it is something else.”

Organisers say all parties with representation in Westminster were invited. Conservative candidate Laura Evans did not respond to an invite, and Reform candidate Dan Barker had a prior engagement. Independent candidate Nick Buckley was not invited to the event.

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