HE is the real-life "Terry from Rochdale"... but his views on congestion charging are not likely to appear in any council leaflet.

After the M.E.N. revealed that transport chiefs had created fake case studies to promote their road pricing scheme for Greater Manchester we decided to seek some genuine examples of our own.

In the leaflet posted to 2.5 million homes in the region, one of the examples was "Terry from Rochdale" who turned out to be a 22-year-old US model called Erich Dalke from Seattle.

But it didn't take us long to find the genuine article - Terry Mason, who runs his own car dealership and has lived in Rochdale for 50 years.

The 61-year-old travels to Manchester for regular visits to the theatre and many of his workforce come to the city to pick up car parts.

He was aware of the invented case studies and slammed those behind them for what he called 'blatant deceit'.

Mr Mason said: "I'm not surprised they have done this without consulting anyone. Nobody listens to what the public has to say until it's election time and after all their promises they just do what they want. There's no honesty these days."

Mr Mason believes that there needs to be 'major improvements' to public transport and said he thought congestion charging should only be used 'as a last resort'.

And he accused transport chiefs of `ignoring the man in the street'.

He said: "I know families who go to work and put their kids in nurseries. They make hardly any more money than they would if they stayed at home on benefits. If this charge comes in it's taking more off them and removing the incentive for them to go to work. Is that we want?"

The leaflet issued by the GMPTA also cited the case of Ann, a solicitor from Ashton who turned out to be a US model named Kiki.

Ashton

Ann Thomas, 60, on the other hand, really does live in Ashton and avoids travelling into the city centre because of "unreliable" public transport.

She slammed the pamphlet and said: "You see the government criticise firms who run competitions where there is no prize - making up four people is no different."

It proved slightly harder to track down a 'Neil from Beswick' in the time available, but we did manage to find Neil Hardy, a 32-year-old sales manager from neighbouring Openshaw.

Mr Hardy also claimed that public transport was not up to scratch. "If it was then congestion charging might be acceptable," he said. "But I used to get the bus to the city and it was hit-and-miss. To be honest it can be horrendous from this side of town."

And he was also not surprised that false case studies had been used.

"They're trying to direct people's thoughts towards it being a positive thing when I think that most people are actually against it," he added.

It emerged yesterday that the decision to create the fake case studies was taken by a group of twelve officials involved in preparing Greater Manchester's bid to the government's Transport Innovation Fund.

Asked why the case studies were invented rather than based on interviews with real people, a spokeswoman said: "They were worked out very carefully using all the details available.

"It is impossible to interview anybody about the situation in 2012. Nobody is paying it at the moment and it is impossible to interview anybody about that."

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