Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effect on the level of road traffic-related casualties of introducing 20mph speed limits in built-up environments.
Answered by Grant Shapps - Secretary of State for Defence
In November 2018, the Department published its comprehensive three-year study of the effect of 20mph limits.
The report is available online at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/20-mph-speed-limits-on-roads
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans his Department has to increase the number of 20mph limit zones in built-up environments.
Answered by Grant Shapps - Secretary of State for Defence
The Department believes that local traffic authorities are best placed to set local speed limits based on local needs and priorities.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many passenger journeys were made from (a) Newton-le-Willows, (b) Garswood, (c) St Helens Central, (d) St Helens Junction, (e) Rainford and (f) Earlestown in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Heaton-Harris - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) estimates the number of passengers travelling to and from stations within Great Britain. The estimates for Newton-le-Willows, Garswood, St Helens Central, St Helens Junction, Rainford and Earlestown are presented in the table below:
Estimates of total departures by station
Year | Newton-le-Willows | Garswood | St Helens Central | St Helens Junction | Rainford | Earlestown |
2017-18 | 403,464 | 175,260 | 650,744 | 206,808 | 27,676 | 315,099 |
2016-17 | 398,629 | 161,553 | 583,364 | 192,630 | 23,137 | 276,406 |
2015-16 | 387,932 | 152,975 | 570,099 | 192,983 | 23,732 | 269,751 |
2014-15 | 373,708 | 139,181 | 521,904 | 179,515 | 24,785 | 249,559 |
2013-14 | 355,731 | 146,158 | 548,422 | 172,062 | 25,996 | 242,648 |
2012-13 | 335,469 | 151,473 | 337,009 | 125,788 | 25,707 | 211,921 |
2011-12 | 322,574 | 165,428 | 361,235 | 130,170 | 26,144 | 222,278 |
2010-11 | 302,060 | 157,399 | 361,905 | 128,299 | 25,678 | 209,165 |
Please note there have been methodological changes over the recording of these statistics so yearly figures may not be directly comparable.
Source: ORR Estimates of Station Usage (http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/station-usage-estimates)
The ORR data estimates the number of passenger journeys, based on origin and destination data from ticket sales. The methodology applied makes an assumption that the number of station arrivals and departures are equal.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 1062 on Electric Vehicles: Charging Points, what grant funding his Department has allocated to St Helens Borough Council to increase the number of electric car charging points in that Borough.
Answered by George Freeman
To date, drivers in the St Helens metropolitan borough have benefitted from grant funding for the installation of 125 domestic chargepoints, under the electric vehicle home charge scheme, and for the installation of 11 sockets, under the workplace charging scheme. Both of these schemes remain open for motorists of St Helens choosing zero emission vehicles.
St Helens metropolitan borough are also able to claim a grant towards the installation of chargepoints under the On-street Residential Charging Scheme; however as at this point in time, they have not yet made an application.
St Helens has also benefitted from the £4,701,629 awarded to Arriva and Merseytravel for 72 Biomethane, Electric and Hybrid buses, and £280,720 for accompanying charging infrastructure.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many electric car charging points there are in (a) St Helens, (b) the North West and (c) the UK.
Answered by George Freeman
Most chargepoints are installed and operated by private industry and Government does not keep a record of them. Current figures show the UK has over 13,700 charging devices. Some charging devices provide more than one chargepoint totalling over 21,000 publicly available chargepoints, of which over 2,100 are rapids - one of the largest charging networks in Europe. The North West has over 1,100 charging devices and St. Helens has 15 charging devices of which 3 are rapids. Government is supporting the further growth of our charging network through a number of grant schemes. The on-street residential chargepoint scheme is supporting 49 local authorities to install over 1,600 public chargepoints. Grants for private chargepoints have supported the installation of over 120,000 chargepoints in homes and over 5,100 chargepoints in workplaces.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to improve accessibility on the railway for disabled passengers in the North West.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani - Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
We are committed to improving access to the rail network and a further 10 stations in the North West were included in the recent Access for All announcement. Northern Rail are required to spend at least £250,000 on station accessibility improvements in each year of their franchise and in addition deliver 10 accessible hub stations.
New and refurbished trains that meet modern accessibility standards are being introduced in the coming months. These will provide audio visual passenger information systems, priority seating, and wheelchair spaces among other accessibility features for disabled passengers.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to improve rural train lines and services in the North West.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The Northern and TransPennine Express franchises will transform rail services across the north. Rural lines in the north west will benefit from the removal of all Pacer trains, and all trains operating will either be new or fully refurbished. Stations in the region are also benefitting from some of the £55m investment by both franchises in improving facilities.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of rail passenger numbers in the North West in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The Office of Rail and Road publishes annual statistics on regional rail usage. The number of rail journeys made to/from and within the North West region in each of the last 20 years is presented below.
Rail journeys to, from and within the North West: from 1997-98
| Total Journeys (thousands) |
1997-98 | 49,199 |
1998-99 | 50,009 |
1999-00 | 52,882 |
2000-01 | 51,924 |
2001-02 | 51,730 |
2002-03 | 51,022 |
2003-04 | 55,503 |
2004-05 | 58,678 |
2005-06 | 64,044 |
2006-07 | 67,167 |
2007-08 | 71,663 |
2008-09 (*) | 105,819 |
2009-10 | 106,098 |
2010-11 | 111,556 |
2011-12 | 115,182 |
2012-13 | 113,921 |
2013-14 | 121,741 |
2014-15 | 124,878 |
2015-16 | 128,005 |
2016-17 | 133,966 |
2017-18 | 134,420 |
Source: Office of Rail and Road
(*) Methodological changes have improved these statistics over time. Most notably from 2008-09, new estimates of rail travel in passenger transport executives (PTEs) areas were included in the dataset for the first time, providing a more complete representation of rail passenger journeys.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has allocated to St Helens Council to repair potholes in each year since 2010.
Answered by Jesse Norman
St Helens Council is a constituent member of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Since 2015 highway maintenance block funding has been paid directly to Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
The funding provided by the Department for Transport for highway maintenance, including pothole repair, to St Helens Council since 2010 is shown in the table attached.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 4 June 2018 to Question 146923 on M6, whether transport infrastructure improvements to Junction 23 of the M6 Motorway is planned to be included in the Road investment Strategy 2 to be delivered between 2020-2025.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Department plans to publish an investment plan for the second road investment strategy in 2019.