Wirral Thread

[the golden vision]

Originally Posted by Evertonian

Because they're getting vast amounts of public land and streets given to them to own exclusively.....for dirt cheap and with tax breaks.

It's alarming how they've sold of what was once public highways and footpaths to a priovate company without consulting the public. I hear they'll even have their own 'sheriffs'.

Shocking.



Why do you think this!? Studies have shown that this isn't the case. Why Chester???



Very few people form Liverpool come over to the Wirral to shop, though I accept that some do. Theres massive net gains from the fact that over 80% of tunnel users spend the majority of their day in Liverpool shopping, working or doing business, to suggest otherwise is akin to the daft arguements put forward that theres no gain in having LFC & EFC in the city.

I really don't know where you get this idea that people go to Chester and Cheshire Oaks to shop over liverpool. Assuming that people have cars and travel completely out of their way to shop when Liverpool is only 20mins away....why do polls consitently show that most Wirral people do their shopping in Liverpool?



People like that woman are fucking idiots make no mistake. MPTE money goes on MPTE projects and does not finance Capital of Culture in any way....obviously.

BUT! Why should people (wherever they're from) pay tunnel fees? Especially when Dowd has gone on record as saying he will specifically exploit tunnel fees to pay for future tram projects, if government funding is not given.

Again....how does anyone form the Wirral benefit from a line to Kirkby which is already served by a perfectly decent integrated transport policy?

No seems able or willing to answer that key question.

Alright mate(by the way the more blues on here the better). I'm not ant-wirral,me dad worked in Lairds for 30 years.I think Wirral and Liverpool should work a lot closer for the benefits of both areas .

[Evertonian]

It's a massive prohobitive problem for Liverpool, but ask scousers about this and 99% of them think it's not their problem and it's just a bunch of moaning posh wools having a cry about having to pay.

They don't realise that it's actually THEM that suffer. If there was no tunnel fees the free trade would go up even more benefitting the city even more.

The arguements about Cheshire Oaks and Chester are daft.

The reason they're building PSDA is because they can own VAST areas of downtown Liverpool for 99 years for dirt cheap....Paradise St was virtually given away.

The reason they WANT to do it is precisely because they know that the very few 'upmarket' Wirral and Liverpool discerning shoppers who currently do go to Chester for Debenhams department stores....will shop at the new Debenhams, Lewis', Armani, Macys, etc....in town.

The L1 area didn't have these high end shopping experiences there so it was a no brainer to build them in a rapidly expanding exciting vibrant city.

Romablue is spot on, Grovsenor should should say "you know that 10 million we were going to give you towards the trams....well it's now dependant on you removing the tunnel fees altogether and allowing free trade into the city".


Whats frightening though is that Merseytravel point blank refuse to show figures telling us how much debt the tunnels are still in.

[Blabbernsmoke]

My experience of people on the Wirral is that they are scousers and frequent Liverpool on a regular basis. Sure, there is some snobbery amongst the more wealthy, private school types about "scallies" and people with very broad accents. But they apply this as much to people on their peninsula as they do to those on the other side. By and large, you can't divorce the Wirral and Liverpool.- Their fates, in a day to day basis are totally inter twined. People sound the same, look the same, follwo the same football clubs, and work for the sme employers.

The problem as far as I can tell lies with the politicians on both sides. Stupid, fat, sad little tossers who have their own interests to serve in trying to establish this 'us and them' mentality. After all, the manifestations of these places that we see tend to be represented by decisions made by councils, and objections of one side to the plans of the other, etc. It's all the work of a hand full of porochial dickheads who think "hey, let's get everybody wound up by the tunnel, that will get us some support... Let's object to those plans to build certain structures on that side- becuse that is for 'them' and not 'us'..."

By and large, councillors are incredibly stupid, senile people. I fucking hate them. Instead of people talking about the Wirral and Liverpool, they should instead be thinking about LCC and WBC- and the very small number of people that run these bodies.

[Evertonian]

Absolutely spot on sir!

[Dello]

The problem with liverpool City Centre is that it is not very user/family friendly. we live in south liverpool, but my Mrs will shop in New Mersey Retail Park, Cheshire Oaks, Trafford Centre or Aintree before Liverpool CC. That is because there you can park right next to the shops. Hopefully Grosvenor will solve this problem

[romablue]

Strikes me that if there was one local authority (under an elected mayor) calling the shots and not letting Merseytravel (a quango) dictate a key element of the bay area infrastructure you may find the tolls removed.
I' m also of the opinion that some of the worst errors ever made regarding the Wirral was because nobody looked strategically enough at issues. Examples that spring to mind were the flyovers which were built to move people to Liverpool and never shop in Birkenhead. Apart from being ugly the town has never really recovered.
The M53 is also far too far away from the Mersey to have taken traffic away from the A41 Chester Rd which it was supposed to have eased. The M53 is too long a route for people in south wirral and Chester to go to Liverpool (partly because it drops you in Scotty Rd) but is a good route for people from west wirral to go to Chester and Cheshire Oaks. This road to my mind took trade away from Liverpool when built in the early 70s!!

[John-MK]

Originally Posted by Evertonian

I've just illustrated the fact that tens of thousands of people are stuck 5-10 miles away from the Wirral line services. An incredibly highly densely populated area. We are talking about the whole of the Seacombe/Poulton/Egremont areas being cut off from it....when it had a railway stop there for almost a century up until electrification.

The new tunnel's approach road was built on the old Secombe track. I agree with you on that point, but the same situation exists in Liverpool, with countless abandoned stations, tunnels and lines, with large areas without any rail access. That is not unique to the Wirral.

[Accura4Matalan]

Its the same throughout the whole country, not just the cities either.
Glasgow is especially bad.

[John-MK]

Originally Posted by romablue

Strikes me that if there was one local authority (under an elected mayor) calling the shots and not letting Merseytravel (a quango) dictate a key element of the bay area infrastructure you may find the tolls removed.
I' m also of the opinion that some of the worst errors ever made regarding the Wirral was because nobody looked strategically enough at issues. Examples that spring to mind were the flyovers which were built to move people to Liverpool and never shop in Birkenhead. Apart from being ugly the town has never really recovered.
The M53 is also far too far away from the Mersey to have taken traffic away from the A41 Chester Rd which it was supposed to have eased. The M53 is too long a route for people in south wirral and Chester to go to Liverpool (partly because it drops you in Scotty Rd) but is a good route for people from west wirral to go to Chester and Cheshire Oaks. This road to my mind took trade away from Liverpool when built in the early 70s!!

It has been argued that the first road tunnel contributed to the fall of Liverpool. The upper middle classes could then live in small villages in the Wirral rather than around Canning and Toxteth.

[John-MK]

Originally Posted by Blabbernsmoke

My experience of people on the Wirral is that they are scousers and frequent Liverpool on a regular basis. Sure, there is some snobbery amongst the more wealthy, private school types about "scallies" and people with very broad accents.

Read this:

Being a nation of snobs there is inevitably a class snobbery angle to all of this, alongside the more international metropolitan versus provincial antagonisms. The Dee bank of the Wirral is picturesque, relatively wealthy and untouched by the industrial rise and fall that afflicted the working class conurbations of northern Wirral and the city of Liverpool. These relatively affluent areas of the south and west, and its pretenders who stretch the truth by manipulating their postal addresses so that they appear to be from further to the south and west of the peninsular than they are, resented being partnered with the working class industrial city of Liverpool and being torn from the supposedly historic city of Chester, from which the larger county gains its name. These people are known to effect southern accents, usually with pathetic results that just make them look like snobs, and also to distance themselves from those parts of the borough, and its demos, which are harder to divorce from Liverpool, essentially the Mersey coast of the peninsular to the north east along with what passes for the borough’s services centre of Birkenhead, basically a collection of standard high street stores, a few last chance saloon night spots and a minimum wage recruitment agency which I think might no longer even exist.

But there is a counter movement to this middleclass impetus to distance Wirral from Liverpool that runs in an ironic parallel to the shared history and contemporary socio-economic problems of the North and South banks of the Mersey. Many of the residents of the northern portion of Wirral seem to be attempting to out-scouse their cousins on the far bank, to such an extent that it seems to suggest that they are insecure in their scouse identities and that they need to reaffirm them by exaggerating every serviceable aspect of scouse culture they can lay their hands on – the gutturals in the accent, the machismo and especially the sportswear.

If a cunning (probably southern) businessman set up a shop in Birkenhead high street selling moustaches and perms it wouldn’t surprise me if it made an absolute killing. I’m being silly there – perms and tasches have pretty much gone by the by but a distinct uniformity remains, presently based around very short gelly hair which the wearer carefully pats and strokes from time to time – not really long enough to be out of place anyway, but if it makes them happy…

So, in Wirral there seems to be a dichotomy between on the one hand those who are going to absurd lengths to distance themselves from the borough’s Mersey heritage and identity, and on the other hand those who are going all out to affirm their scouseness and contorting their language to the point where it is unintelligible to anyone south of Garston, let alone south of The Wash. But what do the inhabitants of the undisputable Cheshire and Liverpool think respectively?


the article

[Evertonian]

I think that article is pretty spot on. I would accept that there are areas on the Wirral of high wealth were the people are overly concerned with returning to the county of Cheshire (as it once was before the redrawing of boundaries).

There are MORE people wanting to remain part of Merseyside, not least because many working class Wirral people are of direct scouse decent and many scouser moved to Wallasey and still consider themselves to be from Merseyside.

The problem as I see it is that people are beggining to see that Liverpool is rising from the ashes, while we here on the Wirral are seeing some shocking urban decline.

When I was a kid and we moved from Toxteth the kids back in Liverpool used to take the piss "Eeeeee yer must be well posh! Are yer a millionaire lad!"....and to a certain extent it is true that compared with inner city Liverpool it was upper middle class.

fast forward almost 20 years and he same cannot be said. Liverpool is seeing record investment and regeneration. There are 5 schools being built from scratch alone and all kinds of schemes to improve the city.

The 'posh' side of the water resembles a fucking ghetto. There are vast, vast tracks of dockland and whole areas of Birkenhead that are slum housing and should be demolished....but theres no investment and no money.

EVERY road from Cleveland St downwards for almost a mile is derelict and prostitue infested....and even the so called upper middle class areas of Hoylake & West Kirby are going the exact same way New Brighton went in the 70s-80s when everyone seemed to believe the solution was more granny flats and nursing homes.

They are retirement villages not surburbia.

Something seriously needs to be done about the Wirral because theres no jobs, no industry, no new buildings and whole areas of the place that would look better if a nuclear bomb was detinated over it.



This! Is why people from the Wirral get pissed off at stupid tram schemes being paid for by the very tax they have to pay to get out of the shithole!

[JUXTAPOL]

Evertonian..

That is why Wirral council has to get their act together to regenerate, as Liverpool are starting/succeeding in doing. You shouldn't therefore see Liverpool as the problem. If 80% of the wear and tear of the tunnel is caused by Wirral users, then 80% of the cost of maintenance should be paid by Wirral users, not unless you are suggesting the other 20% of users should pay 80% of the maintenance costs. Liverpool does benefit from Wirral tunnel users no doubt, but Wirral tunnel users benefit from Liverpool jobs, all of which i have no problem with.

So an option would be for the tunnels to be toll free (i would love that to happen) but who would you see paying for the maintenance, maybe a percentage dependant on useage, but St-Helens council may then be upset as they don't see the benefit so much etc.

[Evertonian]

I don't see Liverpool as the problem mate. I love seeing the progress that's occuring and hope for much more. I wish WBC would get it's act together and do the same.

People objecting to Peel Holdings before they've even published any proposals....people living in the past and flat out refusing to allow anyone to develop on Cammell Lairds and people objecting to the £75mill regeneration in New Bro don't help, that's for sure.

With a bit of vision we could end up with a magnificent waterfront, starting with the magnificent New, New Brighton, a new Pier (facilitating the return of the New Brighton - Liverpool ferry service), Albert Dock/Princes dock style improvments to the 12 Keys/Birkenhead Docklands, a few stunning towers along the woodside to Cammel Laird stretch....finishing with some massive statement on the old Laird's site (just NOT the Cloud please!).



I'm glad someone agrees that the tunnel benefits boths sides and therefore should be made free. Wirral people don't object to paying to use the tunnels 'per se'.

Where people who live on the Wirral do get upset is when funds are diverted from the upkeep of the tunnel to poor projects in Liverpool that fail. After all we're paying 80% of the tunnel costs.

If they'd said right from the start 'we want to take tunnel revenue to pay for increased capacity and improvments on the Merseyrail network, station improvement or extra bus services', many wouldn't mind 'cos they'd see tangible evidence of the benefits, but the trams left a very sour taste in people's minds and people didn't see why people who would likely never use it, should pay towards bailing it out.

[John-MK]

Originally Posted by JUXTAPOL

but St-Helens council may then be upset as they don't see the benefit so much etc.

There is talk of renaming Meseyside "Liverpool Bay", which is more appropriate and should be done ASAP. Also its borders should be changed. St. Helens and Southport should go back to Lancashire - they are not us and should never have been incorporated into Merseyside in the first place. Liverpool Bay should only extend up to Formby Point.

[John-MK]

Originally Posted by Evertonian

I think that article is pretty spot on. I would accept that there are areas on the Wirral of high wealth were the people are overly concerned with returning to the county of Cheshire (as it once was before the redrawing of boundaries).

There are MORE people wanting to remain part of Merseyside, not least because many working class Wirral people are of direct scouse decent and many scouser moved to Wallasey and still consider themselves to be from Merseyside.

The problem as I see it is that people are beggining to see that Liverpool is rising from the ashes, while we here on the Wirral are seeing some shocking urban decline.

When I was a kid and we moved from Toxteth the kids back in Liverpool used to take the piss "Eeeeee yer must be well posh! Are yer a millionaire lad!"....and to a certain extent it is true that compared with inner city Liverpool it was upper middle class.

fast forward almost 20 years and he same cannot be said. Liverpool is seeing record investment and regeneration. There are 5 schools being built from scratch alone and all kinds of schemes to improve the city.

The 'posh' side of the water resembles a fucking ghetto. There are vast, vast tracks of dockland and whole areas of Birkenhead that are slum housing and should be demolished....but theres no investment and no money.

EVERY road from Cleveland St downwards for almost a mile is derelict and prostitue infested....and even the so called upper middle class areas of Hoylake & West Kirby are going the exact same way New Brighton went in the 70s-80s when everyone seemed to believe the solution was more granny flats and nursing homes.

They are retirement villages not surburbia.

Something seriously needs to be done about the Wirral because theres no jobs, no industry, no new buildings and whole areas of the place that would look better if a nuclear bomb was detinated over it.

This! Is why people from the Wirral get pissed off at stupid tram schemes being paid for by the very tax they have to pay to get out of the shithole!

As this guy in his article pointed out, the Wirral is in the same socio-economic group as Liverpool. Liverpool is the core, the generator. Yep, petty snobbery makes these tiny minded people think they are apart from the big historic city, which is very near, and provides them directly and indirectly with their living.

BTW, Chester is not visibly historic, it is mainly Victorian. The Tudor buildings are Edwardian mock. Liverpool has more historic visual buildings than Chester. All Chester has is the Roman Walls, not much else. We have filled in historic 1700s docks, which are older than 99% of Chester.

[Evertonian]

I agree totally with what i've read, you say, about the docks. They must be preserved.

Criminal.

[Gareth]

Originally Posted by Evertonian

I'd actually like to see Wirral get it's own MPTE and fuck off Merseytravel once and for all. With the exception of Conway Park they've done nothing for the Wirral in decades.

The council could then declare the tunnel approach road as a free road and remove the toll booths from the Wirral side....if Merseytravel then insisted on continuing with keeping and constantly raising the tunnel fee....fine!

They would have to build the toll booths on the Liverpool side, which would be an absolute disaster for them. They would be forced to use moneys from their budget to pay off the tunnel debts and make the road free.

It would, most deffinately, open up the eyes of my fellow scousers, who don't realise that there is this ridiculous £2.60 charge to enter and leave the city. When the evidence is there for them to see in tailbacks through the congested city going right back to the tunnel there might be more impetous to pay off the debt and get rid of the toll.


For the newly formed "WPTE" the power to issue their own tenders and maintain their own stations out of tax payers money....tax payers money NOT being diverted to ill concived tram plans....could be spent on new lines to Seacombe, connecting the docks and dock road business parks to a new Birkenhead loop line and better connections from west wirral to the south and east.

You don't seem to understand the boundaries of what the councils and MPTE's preside over, quite like the lady in the Echo yesterday. In your fantasy above, you speak of a scenario where Wirral gets it's own MPTE and how this somehow makes the tunnels free. However, you don't state who runs the tunnesl, do Wirral MPTE take over or do Merseytravel retain responsibility? If Mereytravel maintains responsibility, they'd still have their toll booths on the Wirral side as the land they're on is part of the tunnel complex. The ironic thing would be that Merseytravel would now spend absoloutely none of the proceeds on Wirral transport projects as Wirral would no longer be under their jurisdiction. If the new Wirral MPTE takes over and they remove the tolls, the bill would then have to be footed by Wirral taxpayers. Anyone from the rest of Merseyside would benefit from using the tunnels and not have to pay for them.

We can scrap the tolls (which I'd like to see happen), but we'd have to pay for their upkeep in another way, probably council tax.

[Evertonian]

Originally Posted by Gareth

You don't seem to understand the boundaries of what the councils and MPTE's preside over, quite like the lady in the Echo yesterday.

The Echo woman misguidedly believed that money was going to Capital of Culture events.

I certainly know this isn't the case.

What I and many others object to is tunnel fares going on other schemes NOT to the benefit of the people paying for them

In your fantasy above, you speak of a scenario where Wirral gets it's own MPTE and how this somehow makes the tunnels free. However, you don't state who runs the tunnesl, do Wirral MPTE take over or do Merseytravel retain responsibility?

In my wildest dreams Merseytravel in partnership with the government, pay off the tunnel fees and make it a free road. It will no longer cost £2.60 to enter and leave my city.

Merseytravel have gone on record as saying they will not and will NEVER do this!

They have no plans to increase payments to reduce the debt, and indeed would STILL charge a toll even if there wasn't debts to pay towards other transport projects. It is a cash cow for them.

Therefore....I'd like to see Wirral form it's own PTE in order to use taxes from the Wirral to reduce the tunnel debts over a suitable period with a view to making the tunnels free roads. This would or could include apporaching the government to write off the debts and if they won't write off the debts, raise taxes (we are probably talking by about a pound a year for a few years!) in order to pay off the debts.

The new PTE would also raise funds for station improvement including but not limited to, a Birkenhead loop line linking the 12 Keys, wallasey dock road area (to attract more inward investment and business growth) a line linking Seacombe/Egrememont to the Wirral line, a new New Brighton - Liverpool Ferry sevice on the new purpose built pier built in partnership with Neptune.

The ironic thing would be that Merseytravel would now spend absoloutely none of the proceeds on Wirral transport projects

As, with the exception of Conway Park (the last MAJOR substantial works carried out on the Wirral) is currently the case anyway. Moneys from the tunnels have been used to fund the Ferries and have been mooted for use on trams to kirkby though.


Heres what should happen......

Originally Posted by MTUA

What should happen with the Tunnels then?

First there should be real consultation with the people who work in the Tunnels. Then there need to be discussions with the authorities that may take over the running of Tunnels and the government who may be asked to write off some of the old debt that is payable to them. We would expect that very gradually tolls would be phased out, possibly starting with reductions in off peak tolls.

[Gareth]

Evertonian, there's no such thing as a free road. In your scenario, only Wirral ratepayers would pay for the tunnel. Residents of the city borough, Knowsley and the rest would be able to use the tunnels for free. Would you not mind that. A Wirral MPTE would not really help in the continuity of the city. Who'd run Merseyrail for example? Yes, it wouldn't be spending any money on Kirkby but it'd have a fraction of the budget of a city-wide MPTE. It could do wonders and make monorails, undergrounds, trams connecting Birkenhead, Neston, Moreton etc but you'd have to pay for them at the end of the day, and virtually everyone moans about taxes don't they.

In my opinion, there's only two ways of removing the tunnel tolls. One is council tax from Wirral and possibly Liverpool City, or Merseytravel look after them, ultimately via council tax from all five boroughs. Debt or no debt, the tunnels still need maintaining, more so than any other road, so they'll never be free, nothing ever is.

[Tony Sebo]

the tunnels should be designated as part of the national highways system and so would be 'free' of tolls anyway.