Examination of Witnesses (Questions 178
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH 2005
MR PAUL
DAVISON, MR
ROGER HARDING,
MR PETER
HENDY, MR
PAT ARMSTRONG
AND MR
NEIL SCALES
Q178 Chairman: Good afternoon to
you, gentlemen. I am sorry to have made you wait. We cannot always
control, like you, all the things that happen to us. Can I ask
you to identify yourselves for the record, starting with my left
and your right?
Mr Davison: Paul Davison, Managing
Director, Tramtrack Croydon Ltd.
Mr Harding: Roger Harding, General
Manager, Tramtrack Croydon.
Mr Hendy: Peter Hendy, Managing
Director, Surface Transport, Transport for London.
Mr Armstrong: Pat Armstrong, Promoters'
representative for Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham
City Council.
Mr Scales: Neil Scales, Chief
Executive and Director General of Merseytravel.
Q179 Chairman: Thank you. All of
you represent a very wide range of experience, which is why we
have asked you to come. I do not know if you have studied the
National Audit Office Report but it says that almost all the old
tram systems were closed down because they could not compete with
motorised buses and cars. Why do you think that light rail is
important for you? Mersey?
Mr Scales: Thank you, Chairman.
We are basically trying to get to a single integrated public transport
network that is accessible to everyone, which follows the 1966
White Paper, which set up the PTEs in 1968. When we went through
the road transport planning process we did a new approach to transport
appraisal across all the county to find out which mode of transport
would suit each corridor. That analysis revealed 15-plus quality
bus corridors, a three-line tram network and integration points
across the county. We looked at it in very careful detail to make
sure that we were starting off from a very good base. So what
we came up with was a three-line tramway from the ground up rather
than thinking that trams were a great idea, and start from that
and work backwards. So we put a lot of work into this before put
our road transport plan in.
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