Terry Grimley: Manchester's public transport billions are death knell for Brum
Will plans for congestion charging in Manchester turn out to be a disaster for Manchester, or a disaster for Birmingham?
Since the plans announced by the Government on Monday are not due to be implemented until 2013, the jury is likely to be out for a number of years. And then, since the general consensus is that Labour is unlikely to win the next election, a question mark must hang over the whole enterprise.
But at the moment, the debate seems intriguingly balanced. Where councils in the West Midlands couldn't agree a congestion charging formula to put to the Government's Transport Innovation Fund, Manchester has come up with proposals which would only penalise traffic going with the flow into and out of central areas in the morning and evening rush-hours.
In return, it is being rewarded with £1.2 billion in Government grants, plus an additional £1.8 billion loan, opening up the prospect of a region-transforming £3 billion to spend on developing public transport.
Not surprisingly, views on the plans have divided sharply into two camps. Those opposed to them claim that Manchester's economy will suffer a major setback while those supporting them, including transport secretary Ruth Kelly, point to 30,000 future jobs at risk from growing congestion.
Local politicians are divided, with Stockport, Trafford and Bury having withdrawn support for the scheme and Bolton promising a public referendum.
Personally, I don't know enough about the particular circumstances of Manchester to be able to give an informed opinion. But my gut instinct is that much of the negative response is likely to be knee-jerk conservatism of the sort that insisted, for instance, that the introduction of a minimum wage would lead to mass unemployment.
The question is whether the trade-off between congestion charging and improved public transport will speed up or slow down Manchester's renaissance. What I see is 22 new miles of Metrolink and other rail and bus improvements added to a network which is already far ahead of Birmingham's.
In ten years' time Manchester will have a highly-developed public transport system while in Birmingham more and more of us (car ownership is said to be increasing by 25 per cent per decade) will be trying to squeeze our cars onto the same amount of road space.
For it's surely clear that New Labour now has no intention of funding expansion of the Midland Metro. What would be the point of rewarding city A for jumping through a hoop and then rewarding city B for refusing to do the same? By not voting for the carrot, Birmingham has voted for the stick.
One should never underestimate the power of the road lobby, and perhaps Manchester's plans will still be derailed. But if not, I am inclined to believe that its calculated risk will end up cementing its position as England's true second city.
Perhaps Manchester could win the jackpot if major public transport schemes are given the go-ahead over the next two years (I expect work is already poised to begin on those Metrolink routes) and it is then relieved from having to implement congestion charging when it is scrapped by an incoming Tory Government. Shadow transport secretary's Theresa Villiers' description of Labour's tactics as "bullying, pure and simple" seem to have laid down a clear line on that one.
And yet, of course, congestion charging is a good thing in its own right. For some reason, the motoring "community" is invariably excused from taking a wider view, to factor in such trivial issues as saving the planet, in pursuing its inalienable right to cheap fuel and the freedom to drive where it likes.
Meanwhile the Black Country local authorities have shown which way they think the wind lies by clubbing together to pay a fundraiser £100,000 to find ways of funding the Metro extensions. The fact that Birmingham is not contributing shows the priority given to public transport by the hilariously mis-named "progressive" partnership of Tories and Lib Dems.
Campaigners against congestion charging in Manchester have targeted Kelly, who has a majority of just 2,000 in Bolton. But some are speculating that the very narrowness of her majority has inspired Ms Kelly to go down "doing the right thing" ahead of her inevitable demise. Funnily enough, on this very page two weeks ago I was suggesting that Gordon Brown should do the same thing, devoting his final two years to properly sorting out the railways, with comprehensive electrification.
It is certainly odd, in these dying days of New Labour, to see it under fire for doing something vaguely socialist. The paradox is that it has done it in such a way that advocates of public transport investment in the West Midlands may feel they have little to lose by voting Conservative.
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