The Greater Manchester congestion charge was part of a bid to the Government's Transport Innovation Fund for a £3-billion package of transport funding and the introduction of a road congestion charge for Greater Manchester, a metropolitan county in North West England. In 2008, two cordons were proposed—the outer encircling the main urban core of the Greater Manchester Urban Area and the inner covered Manchester city centre. The Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund was rejected by a referendum on 12 December 2008.
The proposed charge was to help pay for improvements in public transport, with £3 billion in the form of a grant and loan, in particular for the Manchester Metrolink expansion, and to reduce congestion in Greater Manchester.
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More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
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—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
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—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
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—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)