Local Elections 23: Transport needs to be sustainable and reliable

For full details of this and other policies in our "Eight Point Plan for Peterborough", please refer to www.peterboroughlibdems.org.uk/manifesto

Given that transport accounts for almost 40% of Peterborough’s carbon emissions, the Liberal Democrats believe that an affordable, reliable, and efficient public transport service is vital to sustaining our city’s physical and economic growth.

By investing in public transport, we will ease congestion on our roads and cut emissions without limiting people’s opportunity to travel.

The Lib Dems are concerned that under the Conservatives the Council has failed to follow its own policies of encouraging more environmentally sustainable forms of transport. We will ensure that pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport users are prioritised as Council policies say they should be.

Given the rising concern about poor air quality the Liberal Democrats believe that it is important that we cut harmful emissions from traffic as soon as possible. The Lib Dems will increase investment in our bus network to ensure that more residents have access to a reliable, regular, and environmentally friendly bus service. We will explore new modes of travel using light rail, Peterborough’s waterways and ‘park and ride’ facilities. We will expand the current initiative of“school streets”, where roads adjacent to schools are closed to motor vehicles at school opening and closing times.

In the urban area we will improve the frequency of evening and Sunday buses and protect and improve the network of subsidised bus services. In rural areas we will examine options for ensuring that residents have access to some form of public transport, whether a scheduled or a ‘demand responsive’ service. We will also aim to work with Stagecoach and the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to modernise our bus fleet, so that the vehicles are all hybrid, electric or other low emission buses as soon as practical. We also support all taxis being electric or hybrid within the same time frame. We believe both the Mayor and Peterborough City Council have a responsibility to make public transport more accessible by reducing and simplifying fares and providing fast and frequent bus services.

We will lobby the Department for Transport to help fund new railway stations in the north and south of Peterborough to make it easier for residents to use the railway and cut traffic traveling through the city centre to the railway station. While the Conservatives argue it can’t be done, Lib Dem politicians in Cambridge have successfully campaigned for and won two new train stations. We willwork with partner organisations to develop light rail for Peterborough, so that our city does not fall even further behind other 21st century cities.

There is a clear link between encouraging people to walk or cycle more and improving health and wellbeing. However, recent transport statistics show that only 6% of people in Peterborough cycle at least once each week, which is a quarter less than in 2017. We believe that increasing the numbers of residents who travel by bicycle will cut pollution levels in our city and improve health. We will also task council officers to develop a purpose-built cycle highway network to make it easierfor people to cycle from residential areas into and through the city centre for work and leisure.

The Lib Dems believe that for too long the Council have failed to maintain our roads and pavements. We will seek to end the ‘pothole culture’ which has left our many of our roads and pavements in a dangerous state. We will keep our pavements safe for pedestrians by discouraging parking on them.

We will work to engage with local residents on a street-by-street basis to see if there is desire for new rules to be put in place to make grass verge and pavement parking illegal. We will also use other simple measures such as tree planting to discourage cars from ploughing up grass verges, whilst enhancing the street scene.

Encouraging greener travel and reducing peoples need to travel, makesenvironmental sense but, in a rapidly growing city like Peterborough, it really is the only realistic way of ensuring that having many more people does not mean many more cars and significantly increased traffic congestion.