Discouraging car addiction

IT always was the ultimate vanity project.

A hugely expensive arts centre totally surplus to requirements and a scandalous example of local government profligacy at a time of the most crippling austerity in a generation.

As a city we struggle to cope with fly-tipping... can’t repair our roads... or house our homeless.

But finding £20 million – our share of the £110 million cost of the Factory Arts Centre – appears to have posed no problem.

Now we discover the city council’s share has doubled to £40m and an ‘embarrassed’ council leader, Sir Richard Leese, with jaw-dropping understatement tells us ‘it’s not good news’

He must take much of the blame as leading member of the project’s strategic group along with the deputy council leader and executive member for finance.

The others have come and gone, he is the only constant. He says he considered ‘scrapping’ the project.

Not doing so was the second mistake – the original error was sanctioning it in the first place.

In a city already possessing three orchestras, an international concert hall, four large theatres, half a dozen museums, two art galleries and an existing arts centre, we needed a new arts complex like a hole in the head.

Now I suspect it is destined to become a huge white elephant.

Another glaring example of our money burning a hole in somebody else’s pocket!

I AM sure many readers of the M.E.N. will be absolutely mortified by the article in relation to the financing of the Factory Arts Centre by Manchester council. It is an absolute disgrace that more land may have to be sold off to pay for this project. The project has doubled to £40m. When you look at suburbs outside the city such as Collyhurst and Harpurhey, they are desperate for some cash injection as I am sure other areas are! TEN years ago Greater Manchester rejected a congestion charge and now we are suffering gridlock It is not coincidence. In 2003 London introduced a congestion charge. Now the capital has better co-ordinated public transport, the Oyster smart card, significant investment in cycling – and cleaner air.

Mayor Andy Burnham should be applauded for using his limited powers to make Metrolink a more attractive alternative for car commuters.

For short journeys cycling is a practical mode of travel. I spend most weekdays not in a traffic jam but on the streets around our primary schools as a Bikeability instructor.

In two days ten-year-olds learn the joy and freedom of cycling in their neighbourhood. Across our conurbation it is vital we create an environment of slower speeds (20 is Plenty) and segregated cycleways so these young people continue cycling into adulthood and do not become as car-addicted as many of their parents. This picture of a single poppy at the Imperial War Museum North Poppy: Wave exhibition was taken by Jackie and David Rickett of Sale. If you have a stunning picture, then we’d love to see it. Send your photos to us at viewpoints@ men-news. co.uk, marking them Picture of the Day HS2; they are simply greedy for an even bigger share of the transport investment pie.

Improvements to the Tube, Crossrail 1, Thames Link and new rolling stock have ensured that London and the south coast have received more than three-quarters of the money available for recent transport schemes for the whole of the country.

They want to divert the money set aside for HS2 into a new north/ south London Crossrail project.

What is surprising is that these avaricious southern voices have been joined by misguided northern representatives who seem to think that if we cancel HS2 we will keep the money in order to improve northern east/west links between Liverpool and Hull.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If HS2 is cancelled the money will be gobbled up by London, but if HS2 goes ahead it will not only provide an immediate economic boost for Manchester and the rest of the region it will ensure east/west links will have to be improved in order to disperse passengers who have travelled on HS2 to Leeds and Manchester.

Those people arguing to scrap HS2 are not helping the north, they are damaging us.