Whitehall rewards six cities for congestion measures

31 May 2007

The funds will only be released to those urban areas on track to meet congestion targets (Pic: Mark Wohlwender)

Six of England’s largest cities and conurbations have received the first instalment of a £60M fund to help authorities speed up measures to combat congestion.
But four other urban areas, including London and Greater Manchester, did not attract any funding because they had failed to ‘submit satisfactory plans for tackling congestion’, according to a Department for Transport spokesman.
The first payments from the new ‘urban congestion performance fund’ was only worth £2.2M in total, but will, in each of the three remaining years, be worth almost 10 times more. The funds from 2008/09 will only be released to those conurbations and cities on track to meet congestion targets, and thereby provide an incentive for England’s 10 biggest urban areas to achieve the DfT’s public service agreement target.
The DfT claims it is relaxed about what councils spend the money on, and this has been reflected in a wide range of local traffic authority plans for 2007/08. Tyne & Wear has chosen to spend its £336,000 share of the money on improvements and promotions for its ‘super route’ bus corridors, in a bid to increase patronage. But others have opted to spend the money on traffic management measures.
Mark Wilson, Tyne & Wear local transport plan core team leader, said: ‘We’re putting this year’s funding into existing measures to make buses more attractive.’ Traffic management measures could possibly be introduced under the programme from next year, when research into Intelligent Transport Systems being carried out for the conurbation’s transport and innovation fund had concluded.
The West Midlands, however, is pumping its £585,000 – last week’s largest award – into ‘accelerating LTP2 traffic management measures’, said Trevor Errington, West Midlands core support team leader. This includes introducing more signalised junctions where motorways and local roads connect; installing cameras for enforcing bus lanes; and realigning roundabouts and other junctions.
Priorities for Leicester City Council’s £198,500 were providing additional decriminalised parking enforcement (DPE) and to assist in producing more workplace travel plans, according to transport strategy team leader Garry Scott. Keith Howcroft, Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive strategy director, said: ‘We have been in discussions with the department as to how the urban congestion performance fund links with our potential TIF bid. Following this, we submitted a bid for performance funding on Friday.'

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Whitehall rewards six cities for congestion measures

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