Community consultation on Transport

TTWK had a stall and carried out a community consultation at the recent Community Day held at St Michael’s Church, Newton.

The subject of our survey was the current planning for the third Merseyside Transport Plan (LTP3) and specifically what proportion of the spending should be on facilities for motor vehicles and what proportion should be on walking and cycling. We asked people to give their views by affixing a sticker to their chosen box (see photo). This method was based on a Chester City Council consultation on different options for restructuring one of its parks. That consultation was successful in terms of a good response rate, and in that the Council’s preferred option was in fact chosen by the community.

There were 31 responses. The average response was that people wanted 24% of their transport funding to be spent on facilities for motor vehicles and 76% to be spent on walking and cycling. The current proportion spent on facilities for motor vehicles is over 90%. In the Transition Town submission to the first phase of
the LTP3 consultation, we suggested that 50% of transport budgets should be spent on walking and cycling.

The method was simple, easy to set up and worked well. It was good at engaging people and stimulating discussion. We will be planning to use it again in future.

We are sending a summary of our results to Wirral Council and to the Merseyside Transport Partnership with the suggestion that they use it in their coming LTP3 consultations.