Yarra can learn from Manchester

Walking, cycling and public transport can work well in a large city like Melbourne. An example is greater Manchester, which has a comparable area to greater Melbourne.

Greater Manchester vs Greater Melbourne. Image credit: Google Maps

Winner of the Sustainable Urban Mobility award

Greater Manchester recently won the 7th Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) award

Plans to invest 3 billion over 10 years

Greater Manchester plans to invest 1.5 billion pounds (or 3 billion Australian dollars) over 10 years in high quality infrastructure for walking and cycling, because they’ve identified that each dollar invested returns over four dollars in taxpayer benefits:

Plan to invest 1.5 billion pounds over 10 years. Source: Transport for Greater Manchester.

Walking and cycling networks

The plan calls for walking and cycling networks of very high quality, across the whole metropolitan area:

Planned networks. Source: Transport for Greater Manchester.

Conclusion

Greater Manchester is delivering best practice urban planning across a large metropolitan region – our local (Yarra) and state (Victoria) governments should learn from this example.

How you can help

You can help by appearing on the Streets Alive Yarra website as a champion for your local street, neighbourhood, or school.

Let’s build a beautiful, liveable and accessible city