Half a million pounds is to be spent improving safety and traffic efficiency at 20 Manchester pedestrian crossings.
This comes as a result of a successful bid made by Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester to the Department for Transport’s Traffic Signal Maintenance Award Programme.
By securing £500,000 of funding, the Council and partners in TfGM will be able to embark on a project to improve crossing facilities throughout Manchester.
Improvements made will include:
Upgrading crossings from remote monitoring systems to Urban Traffic Control - this allows crossing on the network to talk to one another as well as within the wider network helping to reduce congestion
Improving pedestrian and cyclist safety when using crossings
Reducing pedestrian delays
Improving junction efficiency and therefore congestion
Reducing vehicle delays at junctions
With funding now available the Council will work to identify the 20 locations which will benefit from being upgraded.
This funding has been allocated for the next two years with plans under way to develop a timeframe for delivering the upgrades.
The upgrades will also play their part in the Council’s ongoing commitment to encouraging more people to travel either by walking or cycling. By making active travel journeys easier and safer the Council hopes to gradually shift people away from journeys by car to more environmentally friendly methods.
The road crossing improvements will support Greater Manchester’s ‘Streets for All’ ambitions, as they will help to ensure that crossing busy streets is as direct and safe as possible.
The soon to be launched Streets for All Strategy (a sub-strategy to the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy 2040) will set out Greater Manchester’s progressive approach to making streets easier for everyone to get around by putting people first.
Streets for All aims to ensure the city-region’s streets are welcoming, green, and safe spaces for all people, enabling more travel by walking, cycling and using public transport while creating thriving places that support local communities and businesses.
Councillor Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment for Manchester City Council, said: “By securing this funding the Council and TfGM will be able to make valuable improvements to infrastructure across the city.
“By making crossings faster and safer we are making them more user friendly and therefore encouraging more people to get out and use them.
“But by also reducing congestion we are helping to create a road network which runs more smoothly, causes fewer delays and results in less time spent in traffic jams including passengers using buses.”
Chair of the Greater Manchester Transport Committee, Councillor Mark Aldred, said: “We will only realise our ambitious plans to revolutionise travel across the city-region and make active travel the number one choice for short journeys if trips by foot or bike are a safe and pleasant experience for all.
“Hand-in-hand with the 100km of new walking and cycling routes being delivered by the end of the year are other schemes, like improvements to road junctions and traffic signals, which all serve to make active travel easier, more convenient and safer.
“We will be working closely with Manchester City Council to upgrade systems at 20 key locations that will give more priority to pedestrians, while at the same time minimising disruption to other road users.”