Greater Manchester Mayoral Elections: Virtual Hustings on Transport

With voters across Greater Manchester heading to the polls on the 6th May to elect the Greater Manchester Mayor for the next four years, the University of Salford is hosting this virtual hustings event to allow the candidates to put forward their vision for transport in our city region.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester has significant powers over transport and is politically responsible for the most connected city region outside of London. Covering Metrolink, buses, walking and cycling routes, and more, the Mayor oversees the connectivity of our cities, towns and neighbourhoods – all of which is vital to making Greater Manchester one of the best places in the world to live and work.

The Mayor will face major challenges in the coming years, including tackling air pollution, reaching net zero, getting our population more active, joining up public transport and reducing congestion. Join this virtual hustings event to hear from the candidates for Greater Manchester Mayor on how they plan to approach these challenges and what they will do to improve transport in our city region if they are elected.

Candidates

Andy Burnham, Labour Party

Laura Evans, Conservative Party (invited)

Melanie Horrocks, Green Party (invited)

Michael Elston, Independent

Simon Lepori, Liberal Democrats

Stephen Morris, English Democrats (invited)

This event is hosted by the University of Salford. With around 20,000 students - over half of whom do not live on campus but commute from across Greater Manchester and beyond - and 2,500 staff, ensuring our city region is well connected with high quality, affordable and sustainable public transport is very important to us. We are also home to the Healthy Active Cities research group which looks at active travel and sustainable transport, and actively pushes for policy making to take account of active travel when planning cities’ transport infrastructure and funding.

‘By means of creative research and wide-ranging stakeholder engagement, the Healthy Active Cities research group helps to shape policy on active travel and sustainable transport in Greater Manchester and beyond. We are excited to be hosting this hustings at the University of Salford with the mayoral candidates and future leader of the city region. Whether it’s about public transport, low traffic neighbourhoods, e-scooters, or many other pertinent issues, we’re looking forward to an evening of challenging and ambitious discussion about the future of transport in region,’ said Dr Graeme Sherriff, School of Health and Society, Co-ordinator of Healthy Active Cities

This event will be held virtually via Zoom on Wednesday 31 March at 7pm. You can register for a free ticket via Eventbrite and you will be emailed the Zoom link the day prior to the event.