An even greater Manchester
Tram-trains seem to be the perfect fit for Manchester’s new, unified approach to public transport, reports RICHARD CLINNICK
Richard Clinnick reports on the prospect of tram-trains coming to Manchester and the North.
Britain’s largest and most successful Light Rail network, Manchester Metrolink, celebrated the successful completion of its ‘Big Bang’ expansion on February 26, when the Second City Crossing (2CC) opened.
Next on the agenda is the construction of the route to the Trafford Centre, due to open in 2020, and which will finally provide a rail link from the city centre to the major out-oftown retail and leisure complex.
But Transport for Greater Manchester ( TfGM) is already looking far beyond that; it’s looking more than 20 years down the line to meet the demands of a growing city in the UK’s Northern Powerhouse.
In its 2040 Strategy Document, TfGM has looked to address the issues facing its transport systems (not just Metrolink, but road and rail transport, as well as the local bus network) and tried to find solutions to the looming capacity and connectivity issue.
TfGM says in its report that: “While the concept of integration is not new, the delivery of a truly integrated transport system has, in the last 30 years, been beyond our reach due to a range of regulatory and institutional barriers.”
It says it will now stop treating the different modes of transport as separate entities, and instead plan its system as a single, integrated network. This, it says, will enable TfGM to prioritise investment in improvements where they are needed.
“We will enhance our public transport so that bus, rail and tram services and facilities are planned and delivered in a much more integrated way to minimise the time and cost penalties of changing between services,” it says.
In the next 22 years, TfGM says it will take a much broader view of rapid transit, and will focus on building the most appropriate, integrated public transport network for meeting the needs of different parts of the city and its surrounding areas.
It has already identified the changes needed and devised various new operating practices. This means that “traditional boundaries” between heavy and light rail and bus networks will become increasingly blurred. “We will now be able to focus on providing the right rapid transit system to meet the existing and future travel markets in Greater Manchester, and to support the significant population and economic growth.”
To meet these goals, TfGM is examining the possibility of using tram-trains. They are nothing new in Europe, but the first UK trial, planned for Sheffield, has been delayed. Proposed in 2009, there are now seven tramtrains in the UK, but the infrastructure is not ready, and so is not yet in place for their introduction onto the national rail network.
Nevertheless, TfGM discusses tram-trains in its strategy. It reasons: “in the medium term, tram-trains (vehicles which can travel on both street tramway and all-purpose railway lines) offer the potential to deliver metro services to more areas without laying new track.
“The tram-train approach can help to improve access to the city centre at peak and off-peak times, while also releasing valuable capacity on the heavy rail network.”
It also states that: “Where demand is not sufficiently high for rail-based rapid transit, other types of rapid transit, such as busways, segregated bus lanes and express bus services can offer many of the same benefits with much lower infrastructure costs. They may also serve to build up demand for rapid transit to a point where a Metrolink extension can be justified in the future.”
The regional centre for the area will continue to be Manchester city centre. This will continue because of the high concentration of what TfGM calls “trip attractors” and also the role it plays as the key interchange node in the Greater Manchester public transport network. The strategy highlights new inter-city rail services being created by HS2 and transPennine Northern Powerhouse rail services.
Tram-trains offer the potential to deliver metro services to more areas without laying new track.
These, it says, will mean the city centre will become even more important and that the rapid transit strategy will seek to maximise the benefits of strategic rail services to the region. It does hint that in the future a second rapid transit hub could be created at Manchester Airport, but this proposal will remain on paper for the foreseeable future.
The immediate priorities highlighted in the 2040 Strategy Documentt include providing additional cross-city capacity in the Regional Centre for existing and future rail-based rapid transit services, and this features the potential for tunnelling beneath the city. This was first mooted in the 1970s, to link Piccadilly and Victoria stations.
Other priorities include converting suburban rail services that have a relatively poor financial performance to metro-style services, where there is a good financial case and the potential to attract both peak and off-peak passengers. This, states TfGM, would be achieved by track-sharing between light and heavy rail services.
TfGM wants to provide additional capacity to accommodate predicted growth on other suburban heavy rail services to the Regional Centre, while ensuring excellent local rapid transit connections with the Northern Powerhouse and HS2. As part of that, it also proposes the creation of a network hub at Piccadilly.
New sections of a rapid transit route will be built, says TfGM, but only where there are opportunities to provide substantially faster journeys than with a stopping bus service. According to TfGM, developing new busbased rapid transit routes to the Regional Centre from areas poorly served by heavy rail could, in time, create opportunities for future Metrolink routes. So that’s ‘how’. What about ‘when’? TfGM suggests that in the short-term (until the early 2020s), capacity demands will be met by the new 2CC, along with the Northern Hub works and the introduction of enhanced, higher capacity heavy rail services. And then there’s the delivery of the Trafford Park line, and the chance to increase capacity on the busiest Metrolink lines by running more four-car trams.
In the medium-term (to 2030), TfGM adds that it is seeking to develop and deliver tram-trains as it looks to “improve rapid transit connectivity into and across the Regional Centre and develop potential crosscity metro proposals to complement the Northern Powerhouse Rail network.”
Long-term (from the mid-2030s), TfGM seeks to implement cross-city rapid transit capacity enhancements (potentially through tunnelled metro services) and deliver suburban rail enhancements to complement Northern Powerhouse rail.
Manchester has led the way in the UK for light rail, and it now wants to transform the way the system serves the city, while embracing up-to-date technology. Following the success of Metrolink, you would not bet against it working again.