The ability to travel to meet with family and friends, for work and to access key services, is fundamental to health and happiness. Inaccessibility is a main cause of emotional distress and mental deterioration.
We should all be concerned at the decline in public bus services. This has left many people, particularly those who are vulnerable, feeling isolated in their homes, or having to spend money they cannot afford on taxis.
We wish to see more and improved affordable public transport services, both to alleviate these problems and to provide more sustainable alternatives to car travel.
As your local Green Party, we will:
- Press the county council to
* restore its financial commitment to public bus services to match the higher levels of previous years.
* conduct surveys of potential bus passengers to identify routes and timetables needed.
- Support the promotion and membership of car sharing clubs in the District to provide an alternative to individual car ownership. This will also be helpful where only kerbside parking is possible.
- Campaign for more investment in dedicated cycle and foot-ways (away from the main roads), that link the district’s key population centres, including the key commuter route to Stoke-on-Trent.
- Press for more marked-out cycle lanes on main roads in urban, suburban and rural, that provide greater protection for cyclists.
- Ensure that our road surfaces are kept in good order – no more potholes.
- Campaign for more residential streets to be ’20mph zones’. The ’20’s Plenty’ campaign has proved very popular with local people residents, who recognise that 30mph is too fast for many local roads, especially where there is kerb-side parking.
- Empower parish and town councils to be more active in ensuring that front hedges do not overhang the footways. Additionally, press the district and county councils to increase the frequency of routine footpath and gutter sweeping/gully emptying to make walking safer and easier.