Final Local Transport Plan 2006/07 - 2010/11

The task of planning for the future transport needs of an area such as Greater Manchester is a complex one. It requires us to take a long term perspective of the problems and opportunities facing our area today and likely to be facing us in five, ten and twenty years time. While an effective transport system is critical to the future well being of our city region it is important also to recognise that transport is ultimately a means to a wider end and that transport planning needs to be informed by, and in turn, inform the wider economic, spatial, social and environmental goals for our area which we have set out above.

Recognising the importance of setting out a long-term vision for transport in the city region, the Greater Manchester authorities published our Integrated Transport Strategy (GMITS) in April 2005. This sets out a fifteen year perspective of how the transport system needs to develop to both influence future patterns of spatial development and economic growth and to respond to the demands which a growing economy will place on the transport network. The vision, which we have shared with Government and asked them to work with us in delivering, is ambitious but achievable. We recognise that we will need to make some difficult choices if we are to deliver the transport system that Greater Manchester needs and recognise that resources are finite. We also fully appreciate the importance of demonstrating that our investment plans represent the best possible use of available resources. We need to continue to show how investment is delivering real improvements on the ground in terms of the issues that matter most to local people.

Fundamental to our strategy is the need to bring about a step change in the quality and capacity of public transport alternatives to the private car if we are to be able to persuade more people to make a higher proportion of their journeys by non-car modes. This investment led approach needs to be coupled with an approach to demand management which is based on understanding the linkage between congestion and its impact on the economy and environment. We are currently undertaking this research work as part of our TIF pump priming work, and are developing a toolkit of demand management measures which, when coupled with investment in public transport, will achieve the behavioural change necessary to continue to support economic growth whilst protecting the environment. Furthermore, we will continue to adopt a fully integrated approach to influencing travel behaviour with a range of measures to encourage more of the large number of shorter trips to be undertaken by bike or on foot rather than by the private car. Our transport strategy will also be fully integrated with our future land use strategy that will continue to direct activities generating large numbers of trips to areas where they can be accessed by a range of transport modes.

A full version of the GMITS can be found on the Greater Manchester LTP website www.gmltp.co.uk. Further details of the analysis are set out in the LTP2 Technical Annex.

A central objective of GMITS is to support Greater Manchester’s continuing economic growth agenda. We already account for nearly 50% of the total Gross Value Added of the North West and are the fastest growing sub-regional economy outside London and the South East. We alone among the northern city regions have the potential to make a major and lasting contribution to the Government’s target of narrowing the output gap between London and the south east and the north, not by deflecting activity away from London but by growing our own economy and providing all the necessary components for a city region to rival the most dynamic in Europe.

A key mechanism for delivering the GMITS will be our Corridor Partnerships initiative. This will involve the relevant local authorities, GMPTA/E, regeneration agencies and other major public and private sector stakeholders jointly agreeing a series of outcome based targets covering economic, transport, demographic and other quality of life indicators within the relevant corridor. We will commit to delivering these outcomes in return for agreement to investment resources being made available to improve the local transport system, and recognise that these resources will be at risk should we fail to deliver our proposed outcomes.

In this Plan, we demonstrate how our justified growth projections will place demands on the transport network, which we believe we can meet with the appropriate policies and balance of investment and demand management measures. By the end of 2006-2011 period, the Greater Manchester conurbation is anticipated to be substantially wealthier and stronger economically. The downside is that without interventions to tackle transport problems, the rate of growth could slow and inward investment might also slow or disappear, environmental quality would be adversely affected, and the benefits of growth will not be shared by all as current problems of accessibility will not be addressed. GMITS, therefore, proposes a range of solutions to the sub-region’s current transport problems and those anticipated over the next 20 years.

The analysis underpinning GMITS has taken into account the following key drivers of major developments in the conurbation’s economy, all of which are identified as key delivery components of the Regional Economic Strategy:

• The Knowledge Capital initiative, forecast to generate 50,000 jobs in the Regional Centre and a further 50,000 jobs throughout the conurbation  ⁱⁱⁱ
• Manchester Airport, where the number of jobs is expected to increase to 28,000 by 2015 in association with a growth in passenger numbers from 21 million per annum currently to 38 million (with a further increase to 51,000 jobs associated with 54 million passengers per annum by 2030). ^iv
• Rejuvenation of New East Manchester where the population is planned to double, from 30,000 to 60,000, by 2015 and where the Central Park business park will bring 10,000 jobs.  ^v.
• Kingsway Business Park, forecast to create 8,000 jobs. ^vi
• Further office and service sector growth in the Regional Centre.   ^vii.
• The Housing Market Renewal areas in Manchester/ Salford and Oldham/ Rochdale.   ^viii

Without interventions and assuming current modal split, this would result in a significant increase in the number of cars entering the Regional Centre along a limited number of radial routes. Increased activity elsewhere in the conurbation will bring problems for town centres similar in nature if not in scale. Hence, to accommodate this growth we are adopting an integrated policy approach embracing spatial and transport planning and economic development. This is an iterative process so, for example, work is currently underway to develop a longer-term spatial strategy which takes GMITS as an input. It will seek to facilitate economic growth, making best use of existing transport infrastructure, improving social inclusion and protecting the environment. As part of this work, consultants have been employed to identify the likely levels of demand for each of the growth sectors and to develop a brief for the follow-on work which will be undertaken by the local authorities to look at identifying appropriate development sites to accommodate the growth. This brief will include transport considerations, in particular the need to consider the effect on transport networks of the level of trip generation by type of employment envisaged on the site (with those having higher levels of peak hour trip generation preferably being located close to public transport nodes) and the need to locate the sites close to the relevant type of housing stock (to try to attract people to live close to where they work to minimise travel distances and make walking and cycling more practical). The outcomes of this work will be used as an input for further refinement of GMITS.