MERSEYSIDE'S councils are paving the way for the introduction of congestion charging by bidding for special funding only available for such schemes.
Senior councillors insist they do not want to introduce road charging in Liverpool, but claim ministers are leaving them with no choice.
As the Daily Post reported in February, a Liverpool transport plan had suggested introducing the charges as a way of tackling air pollution, but conceded there was little political or public appetite for such a system.
Next month, however, council-lors will submit a bid to the Government's new Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) for cash to research ways to tackle congestion on Merseyside. At a recent meeting, senior councillors were told that the Government was "very keen" for Merseyside to bid.
Any schemes which come from that research will then be the subject of a bid to the second layer of TIF, which is set to become the main source of cash for large schemes in the future.
It will release up to £200m a year to fund large-scale schemes nationally. But one of the conditions of getting that cash is that any scheme brought forward will contain an element of "road pricing."
Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman has told officers: "The TIF ship is set to sail, it would be better to be on it than not."
News RSS Feed