Manchester City Council has secured £500,000 funding to improve safety and traffic efficiency at 20 pedestrian crossings.

This comes as a result of a successful bid made by Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) to the Department for Transport's Traffic Signal Maintenance Award Programme.

Improvements made will include:

• Upgrading crossings from remote monitoring systems to Urban Traffic Control - this allows crossing on the network to talk to one another as well as within the wider network helping to reduce congestion

• Improving pedestrian and cyclist safety when using crossings

• Reducing pedestrian delays

• Improving junction efficiency and therefore congestion

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• Reducing vehicle delays at junctions

With funding now available the Council will work to identify the 20 locations which will benefit from being upgraded.

The funding has been allocated for the next two years with plans under way to develop a timeframe for delivering the upgrades.

The upgrades will also play their part in the Council’s ongoing commitment to encouraging more people to travel either by walking or cycling. By making active travel journeys easier and safer the Council hopes to gradually shift people away from journeys by car to more environmentally friendly methods.

The road crossing improvements will support Greater Manchester's 'Streets for All' ambitions, as they will help to ensure that crossing busy streets is as direct and safe as possible.

The soon to be launched Streets for All Strategy (a sub-strategy to the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy 2040) will set out Greater Manchester's progressive approach to making streets easier for everyone to get around by putting people first.

Streets for All aims to ensure the city-region’s streets are welcoming, green, and safe spaces for all people, enabling more travel by walking, cycling and using public transport while creating thriving places that support local communities and businesses.