On road to nowhere with state of our highways...

JAMS AND POOR BUS SERVICES ARE MAIN GRIPES

WHEN we asked which part of our transport network you would most like to see improved, the answer was clear – the roads.

One-in-three of you said that was your top priority – although more than one-in-five pointed to poor bus services. But across the board, in every borough, it was the highways that made you most cross.

Hundreds of frustrated readers complained of potholed roads and congested routes both in and out of the city centre and around the region’s motorways, as well as the effect new bus lanes from Leigh and down Rochdale Road and Oldham Road have on traffic.

This comment from a resident in Worsley, Salford, reflected anger among those who hit traffic blackspots daily: “Traffic is a joke. The new guided bus is a total waste of time, unless you live in Leigh – so much traffic headed for the motorways, yet we keep building more and more houses without improving infrastructure.”

Others complained of spending hours in traffic on the M60 and M62, while a reader from Stockport summed up the responses of many: “The congestion is awful. To get to work I have to drive as there are no public transport links and to take the train costs £6.50 a day.

“I travel the A34, which has had roadworks for almost two years now. A scheme similar to the Oyster would be really beneficial to Greater Manchester – more people would then use public transport, but then we would need more buses and trains.

“Roads in my area have been narrowed as the bus lay-bys have been taken away, so when a bus stops all the traffic gets stuck and everything slows down.”

One Manchester resident described ‘appalling’ traffic jams, complaining it takes him an hour-and-a-half to drive seven miles to work.

A reader from Walkden in Salford said it took her an hour to get four miles to work due to rush-hour traffic through the neighbourhood, a problem she said had got worse in the last four years.

Your top gripes varied significantly depending on where you live – unsurprisingly, given that different areas rely more or less heavily on certain types of transport.

Bury was the area most annoyed by the state of our roads, with 40 per cent of people listing that as their top priority for improvement, compared to 33pc on average.

Barely anyone in Bury listed trains as their biggest concern – less than 2pc – but the borough returned by far the highest level of dissatisfaction about trams, with 21pc of people saying it was the service they would most like to see improved.

Rochdale, Tameside and Oldham all had a higher than average concern about the state of the roads.

But despite the new tram extensions into those areas, the quality of the Metrolink was much less of a priority than in places such as Bury and Salford – with residents in all three boroughs far more bothered about bus services.

Wigan was the only area in which more readers were more annoyed about the state of the trains than the highways, although only just, with roughly 29pc picking roads and 30pc choosing railways.

Bolton delivered a similar result, however, with road and rail almost tied and buses far less of a concern than elsewhere.

In most other areas trains were notably far down the list of priorities, although one-in-five people in Stockport and Tameside – areas that like Wigan and Bolton, are largely without tram services – listed them as their burning issue.

But regionwide, buses were the biggest complaint after roads.

Trafford was the exception, being the only place in which people were more concerned about improving cycle routes.

But in Manchester and Salford onein-four people listed buses as their biggest gripe, while Oldham came out top – at 28pc.

Comments covered a whole range of complaints, from pricing to the difficulty in making long journeys across different operators, a lack of night buses and general unreliability. One frustrated traveller in south Manchester summed up many of the problems in one comment.and is the only “My family live in Heywood and the 163 bus is a joke, never runs on time option. The trams need to run to Middleton at least, and more buses to serve Heywood. Plus all buses should be run by one company.”