Happy 30th birthday METROLINK
LOOKING BACK AT CITY’S TRAM SYSTEM... AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE
JUST before dawn on April 6, 1992 more than 300 trainspotters, photographers and journalists gathered in the dark and drizzle of Bury station. They were there to witness something unique - the departure of the first ever Metrolink service.
Just after 6am the maiden tram was on its way, making the 11 stop journey to Victoria station, and a new era in public transport in Greater Manchester was born. Keith Whitmore, chairman of Greater Manchester Transport Heritage, was among the passengers onboard.
“It was a gleaming tram - it felt new,” he recalled in 2016. “It was full and there were so many photographers, it was like a celebrity coming into the city centre.”
Three months later the Queen would visit that same platform to officially launch the Metrolink network. But it had taken 10 years of hard graft to get to that point - and many more years grappling with possible solutions to Manchester’s north/south rail divide.
Metrolink wasn’t Manchester’s first tram network. Starting out life as a horse-drawn operation the Manchester Suburban Tramways Company had run from 1877 to 1949. By 1930 the network had grown to 160 miles, making it the third largest in the UK.
But, after the Second World War, when buses became a cheaper option, trams fell out of favour and the lines were closed. However it soon became apparent that might have been hasty decision.
As cars filled the streets, congestion became a big problem and a glaring lack of cross-city train connections trains only worsened matters. Greater Manchester County Council - which held the reins from 1974 to 1986 - began to look at possible solutions to ease the logjam.
The problems stemmed back to the birth of railway travel in this country when, in the 1840s, competing Victorian rail companies built Manchester’s two main stations, Piccadilly and Victoria, at opposite ends of the city centre. Ideas for schemes to connect the two stations have been around pretty much ever since .
An underground railway tunnel was mooted as far back as 1839, while in 1903 and 1914, plans were drawn up for an underground tramway. In 1966, a proposal for a £21m suspended monorail came to nothing.
In 1971, the Pic-Vic tunnel - an electric rail route beneath the city centre to connect Piccadilly and Victoria - came closest to fruition.
But finally, in 1982, a Rail Study Group was formed to look at solutions to the challenge of moving Manchester’s growing population. Made up of Greater Manchester Council, GMPTE and British Rail, their solution was to create the country’s first modern street-running rail system.
They drew a draft 62-mile network consisting of three lines; Altrincham - Hadfield/Glossop; Bury - Marple/Rose Hill and Rochdale - East Didsbury. In March 1987 a demonstration showing how the line could work was held on a freight line next to Debdale Park in
Gorton using a London Docklands Light Railway train.
The group’s efforts paid off. In 1988 government funding was approved by two Acts of Parliament passed giving construction the goahead.
Metrolink initially opened with just two lines - Bury-Victoria and Altrincham- Piccadilly, with a street level tramline through the city centre connecting the routes. Over the next 30 years it would grow to cover a 64-mile network, with 120 trams serving 99 stops across all but three of the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester.
Transport historian Paul Williams says that before Metrolink came along, rail links between the north and south of Greater Manchester left a lot to be desired. “In the mid-70s there was no train service to Bury at all on a Sunday,” he said. “During the rest of the week you were looking at services every 15 minutes at best, but more likely every 20-30 minutes.”
It hasn’t always been all plain sailing though.
Hundreds of interred bodies from centuries ago were discovered on Cross Street during works for the Second City Crossing in 2014, and expansion works have demanded patience from businesses and the public. But there have also been visits by Prime Ministers and royalty - and a wedding celebration - along the way. In 1999, Tony Blair braved the rain to open the first part of the Eccles via Salford Quays line - jumping from the platform to glad-hand the public. Three years ago Boris Johnson took a tour of the building site at Pomona for the Trafford Park extension.
In 2016, a tram was wrapped in gold to celebrate the Olympic success for Team GB, and in 2013, actor Kenneth Branagh recorded a message for passengers heading to the Manchester International Festival. Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, Charlatans singer Tim Burgess, TV presenter Dermot O’Leary and Manchester City stars Roberto Mancini, Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany and James Milner have also all had celebrity guest stints as Metrolink announcers. Most dramatically, Metrolink took centre stage in a Corrie storyline in 2010, when an imaginary tram crash was the centrepiece of the show’s 50th anniversary. In 2019/20 - the last year before the pandemic sent passenger numbers tumbling - more than 44 million journeys were made on the network. Paul Williams says it’s been proved ‘time and time again’ that the Metrolink gets people out of their cars and onto trams, meaning it has crucial role to play in Greater Manchester’s fight to lower carbon emissions. “Metrolink is very, very expensive to build,” he said. .” But if you spend the money wisely it’s been proven, time and time again, that Metrolink moves people from their cars onto the tram.
“It also creates more journeys, which might sound like a bad thing, but what I mean by that we have people who feel isolated or lonely, they’re not able to get to the shops for instance. For them the option doesn’t tend to be car, or bus or tram. It’s more likely to be tram or not travel at all.”
Metrolink has also had a huge impact on the villages, estates, suburbs and towns it serves. In 2014 research by the Nationwide Building Society found that living near a Metrolink stop added an average £8,300 on to the value of your home. So what happens next? There have long been calls to create an orbital route connecting towns in the north and east of Greater Manchester, preventing the need to go through the city centre. In 2020 Oldham MP Jim McMahon MP called for a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport to discuss a proposal for a tram link between Bury and Middleton and extend through to Oldham.
He even published a map showing how the tram network could look, with a link between Heaton Park, calling at Middleton, and then connecting to Westwood tram stop, while also proposing a link from Oldham Mumps through to Ashton.
A year earlier a speculative map, which envisioned how the network could look in 2040, was drawn up by Ed Howe from property and development specialists Urban Info Manchester. It included including new lines to Warrington, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport and Glossop.
Officially Transport for Greater Manchester say the ‘short term ambition’ is to extend the Manchester Airport line to the new Terminal 2, using a £2.1m grant from central government. Studies are also being carried out looking at the feasibility of orbital routes, being pushed for by Mr McMahon.
Metrolink gets people out of their cars and onto trams Transport historian Paul Williams