Will the City Council cut City Centre traffic by 40%? We think not!

The community we represent, Marybone, can be considered as an 'Island' and is one of the oldest existing communities in Liverpool City Centre. We can trace our ‘Liverpool Heritage’ back to over 200 years. It covers an area of roughly 500 yards square and is surrounded by four major roads, Byrom Street, Leeds Street, Vauxhall Road and Great Crosshall Street. These four roads take all the traffic to and from both Mersey tunnels. These roads also provide access from the North, East and West to the City Centre, the Dock Road and act as a ‘bypass’, through the city centre for all other traffic.

It is within one of two areas designated as an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) along with the M62 Rocket junction. This should give you some idea of the volume of traffic already flowing through our estate.

Contrary to the popular conception of 'Inner City Communities' ours is a quiet, peaceful and thriving community, much sort after by big developers of luxury apartment blocks and student accommodation.

We have a thriving and growing Infant school, nursery, a youth centre, sheltered accommodation, old people’s bungalows, family housing with front and back gardens, a medical centre, local shops, student accommodation and luxury apartment blocks.

Your article, 19th February 2005, mentions plans to reduce poisonous emissions by 40% in order to comply with European Regulations. While the proposals made by the City Council to reduce pollution seem admirable, what it doesn’t mention is that plans to add extra lanes to divert traffic from Dale Street to Leeds Street, Vauxhall Road and Great Crosshall Street by 2008 are still going ahead. After two years of fighting, Marybone Inner City Residents Association (MICRA) has received no assurances that Nitrogen Dioxide emissions will be reduced.

On the contrary, at a meeting attended by Marybone residents on the 3rd of February, Mervin Thornhill (Manager of the City Centre Movement Strategy) presented his report :- ‘CCMS Impact Upon Marybone’. In this report he admitted that ‘initially no information was available for residents’ during the consultation stage. He concluded his report by stating that CCMS ‘does have impacts’, which by the way were not itemised, ‘upon the Marybone Estate and that, in total, it’s impact on the estate is possibly negative’. This was followed by vague promises that some measures would be taken to offset negative impacts.

In an earlier report it was stated that: ’Clearly the movement of traffic from more core areas of the city centre to the periphery, although advantageous for the centre as a whole, must have an adverse impact on those areas adjacent to the increased traffic flows and it is accepted that Marybone falls into this category.’

The Impact Upon Marybone Report was a rambling, disjointed collection of uncorroborated and out of date statistics cobbled together with the intention of bemusing residents. This report now seems to have been devised as a smoke screen to hide the real implications of CCMS, reported by the Daily Post, from residents of the City Centre as a whole and Marybone in particular. We would like to thank the Daily Post for reporting the truth of the matter.

We demand our right, as long standing members of the Community of Liverpool, to breathe clean air and watch our community thrive and be supported by the City Council, not poisoned out of existence by them!