Congestion Charge - no thanks!

At South Cambridgeshire District Council's full council meeting last Thursday I seconded a motion from Councillor Tom Bygott opposing the idea of a congestion charge for Cambridge. I've attached what I said below. It was a good debate and got a lot of local press coverage. Our argument was not that we opposed improvement to public transport, but that those improvements should be in place and given the chance to work, before any introduction of a congestion charge.

"In order to be able to second this motion, I’ve just come from London. I used the train, the bus and the tube. I was able to do that because the infrastructure of public transport in London went in, in the century before last, and it is still pretty effective. Two weeks ago I was in Manchester, using its fast and reliable metro tramway that reaches out across the city.

But if I compare that to the small rural villages which lie at the southern end of the C7 bus route into Cambridge, villages like Whittlesford, Heathfield and Thriplow, then the picture is very different. Because of its hopelessly circuitous route, hardly anyone uses this bus from these villages. If your job was to open a shop in Lion Yard at nine o’clock, or run the day shift in the Intensive Care Unit at Addenbrookes, you could get seriously old and very frustrated trying to use the public transport systems in and out of Cambridge.

And that is the point: the public transport infrastructure for south Cambridgeshire has to be far better developed before we should consider, or contemplate, or even remotely entertain, the idea of a congestion charge.

At the moment, the lure of Treasury gold to spend on public transport is in danger of distracting us from the stealth tax that goes with it: a tax on the people who work in the shops, staff the hospitals, and do the basic jobs.

The residents of the villages of South Cambridgeshire know that Cambridge is a place that wasn’t built for cars, and it jams up. They want to see innovative transport solutions, for the area. They do not want to see solutions developed in and for Cambridge City, while the rest of the region gets the very basic transport services that there are now, and the congestion charge to boot.

The Lib Dems in Cambridgeshire have said and say today that this debate is premature, and that they will note vote on this motion. Let me tell you what a Lib Dem Berkshire councillor thinks about Reading’s idea for a congestion charge. Councillor Alan Macro says “I don’t see why people should pay a congestion charge if they are going nowhere near Reading town centre.

Is he confused, or jumping to premature conclusions, or is he being sensible and cautious, as we must be. We must not allow the congestion charge to be brought to Cambridge, to burden people, on the back of the Transport Innovation Fund proposals. "