All transport cash seems to be on the route to city
AT the weekend, I read an article which said within five years, flying taxis could be taking people from Heathrow Airport to anywhere in London in a matter of a minutes.
A similar fleet, the article claimed, would be set up at Manchester Airport, while in Cardiff, it may soon be possible to fly from the Welsh capital to Plymouth in 40 minutes. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
Especially when, here in Rossendale, just getting anyone in authority to pay attention to improving our most basic of transport requests seems impossible.
There’s a lot of talk about ‘levelling up’ in Government these days, and any big announcement which involves cash all ties back to this idea of levelling up.
This week, in slightly less imaginative announcements than the flying taxi one, the Government confirmed £7bn would be spent on public transport improvements in various parts of the UK.
The precise amount to
be allocated to Lancashire?
The answer would appear to be £0.
It’s possible Rossendale might see a smidgen of the £1bn been handed over to Greater Manchester as, well, we’re next door, but if we do, it’ll be by accident rather than design.
GM Mayor Andy Burnham has done a brilliant job constantly comparing and contrasting Greater Manchester’s public transport infrastructure to London’s.
It is, without doubt,
more expensive to travel on buses in Greater Manchester than in London.
The Metrolink is amazing, but could be so much better. And so the money rolls into Manchester. Again.
Just as HS2, current cost £100bn, is likely to make it to Manchester too, providing faster trains to Birmingham and the Capital than we have at the moment, and freeing up existing rail networks for more capacity.
Which is great, if you live near the current network.
And here comes yet another announcement of improving cross-Pennine train links between Manchester and Leeds. Improvements on that line have been on and off more frequently than a Love Island relationship, and probably just as frequently announced too.
But who is shouting up for Lancashire, or indeed Rossendale? We’re the only Lancashire borough not connected to regular rail services.
Heck, we can’t even get improvements to the M66 to connect us more
effectively to the country’s motorway network, or the city region where all railway tracks seem to be heading to.
For a long time now, we’ve been told about the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ and latterly about ‘levelling up’ but it all seems to be about big cities becoming more like London.
The assumption that wealth and prosperity will then spread out is far from proven.
And so the Government gets excited about big transport plans for big cities, but with little on
offer to areas like Rossendale, where even getting a new bus station in Rawtenstall came at the cost of having to sacrifice having a new swimming pool for the people of Haslingden.
Is it a case that Lancashire isn’t shouting loudly enough, or that it isn’t being listened to?
Maybe it’s a bit of both - but the end result is that Rossendale can’t get basic support from Government when Manchester seemingly can’t move for offers of cash for new buses and trains. Something isn’t right.