EMTA – April 2007

About pteg and the PTEs Six English PTEs serving six of largest conurbations (population of 11 million) pteg brings them together to share good practice and pursue issues of common interest Support Unit established four years ago Strathclyde Partnership for Transport and TfL are associate members

Key challenges Effective management and development of city region transport networks dismantled during Thatcher era (in particular deregulation of bus network) With UK city regions on the rise and the success of the TfL / Mayoral model the momentum now is for more devolved powers to the city regions Forthcoming draft legislation will ‘reform’ PTEs – possibly giving them more influence over highways network

Key challenges More powers on bus – though network franchising still very challenging proposition UK government wants more road user charging pilots (West Midlands and Greater Manchester are front runners) and will make more funding available to ease the politics Some, but slow, progress on allowing city regions to raise more transport funding locally ‘funding gap’ on transport between London and the next tier of major cities

Modal progress Bus use, at best, flat-lining outside London (other than growing number of free riders) Heavy rail growing very rapidly – and recovering from worst of post-privatisation meltdown Light rail performing well but still seen as ‘damaged goods’ by government due to high costs…leaving BRT and tram-trains as ‘flavour of the month’

Getting there…? Still some way to go before we have the normal situation of public authorities determining, procuring and (to some extent) funding their sub- regional transport networks but…there is momentum in that direction

pteg and Europe North West region’s Brussel’s Office to represent pteg on trial basis pteg European group to be re-established Some PTEs dissatisfied with costs and benefits of UITP membership Exploring potential for combined membership of EMTA