Campaigners call for improvement in Greater Manchester’s provision of shared & zero-emissions transport
July 3, 2023
Thank You for Sharing report ranks 42 cities on shared bikes & scooters, EVs and zero-emissions buses
Greater Manchester has come in last place in a new ranking Thank you for Sharing from the Clean Cities Campaign. The report explores the rollout of shared and zero-emissions transport across 42 European cities.
The city region came out at the bottom of the ranking in 42nd place, with Greater London faring better at 24th – but still a poor performance compared to other European capitals including Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris.
The report looks at how well cities are doing on a range of indicators; these are -shared bikes & e-scooters; electric car-sharing; zero-emissions buses; and installing public electric vehicle (EV) charging points
Greater Manchester's ranking:
Indicator | Metric | Ranking (out of 42 cities) |
|---|---|---|
Zero-emission
buses
| Share of bus fleet that is zero emission | 34th |
Publicly accessible charge points | Publicly available charging power per capita | 34th |
Electric car clubs | Number of shared electric cars available per capita | 36th |
Shared bikes and e-scooters | Number of shared e-scooters + bikes available per capita | 41st |
Overall ranking | 42nd |
The findings suggest that the goal of reducing emissions from road transport in cities can be significantly supported by making it easier for citizens to ditch private ownership of vehicles. Shared and electric transport services can often be much simpler, cheaper and quicker to implement than rolling out major infrastructure projects (such as extending tramlines or building new stations).
Sarah Rowe from the Clean Cities Campaign explains “Greater Manchester is undergoing a huge change in its public transport system right now as the authority takes more control, and we applaud the work that is happening to clean up the bus fleet. But our report highlights that there are lots of quick and easy ways that Greater Manchester can move to a cleaner transport system, such as expanding electric car clubs.
“The UK government has not helped matters by delaying crucial legislation that would support a rollout of e-scooters, which have proven to be very popular in Salford. If this change can be unlocked then there is a clear opportunity here for the city region to seize the moment and to give people the support they need to ditch their polluting cars.”
There are only a handful of electric cars available as part of car clubs across the whole city region – home to 2.8 million people – whereas table leaders Copenhagen have 1.76 shared electric cars per 1000 population. The Greater Manchester Environment Plan prioritises the phasing out of fossil-fuelled private vehicles and replacing them with zero emission (tailpipe) alternatives.
Recent research by CoMo UK found that every car club car in GM removed 9 private cars from the road, so support for electric car clubs in particular helps to clean up our air as well as meet our climate targets.
CONTACT
Celeste Hicks (EN / FR)
Communications and Media Manager, Clean Cities Campaign
celeste.hicks@cleancitiescampaign.org | +44 7957 915 696
