Transport in Manchester


The transport infrastructure of Greater Manchester is built up of numerous transport modes and forms an integral part of the structure of Greater Manchester and North West England – the most populated region outside of South East England which had approximately 301 million annual passenger journeys using either buses, planes, trains or trams in 2014. Its position as a national city of commerce, education and cultural importance means the city has one of the largest and most thorough transport infrastructures which is heavily relied upon by its 2.8 million inhabitants in the Greater Manchester conurbation and further afield in the North West region. Public transport comes under the jurisdiction of Transport for Greater Manchester.
Greater Manchester still has an extensive citywide rail network compared with other British cities with over 200 tram and train stations - much of which dates from the Industrial Revolution. Two mainline termini and two through mainline railway stations in the central area form the Manchester station group.
Manchester Airport is the third busiest airport in the United Kingdom after Heathrow and Gatwick. The city also has an extensive network of canal systems which converge into Manchester. The Manchester Ship Canal, built in 1894, was the largest ship canal in the world on opening and is incomparable to any other canal in the United Kingdom, which are mostly built for narrowboats and barges.
It was the first city in the United Kingdom to re-introduce trams to the streets with the 1992 opening of Manchester Metrolink, which is currently the largest network in the UK, having surpassed the Tyne & Wear Metro. As of January 2022 it has 99 stops, with the line to the Trafford Centre having opened in March 2020.
Greater Manchester is in the midst of a public transport revolution, with a new, centralised entity - the Bee Network - bringing tram, bus and eventually rail into a unified transport network. The network is controlled by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, through Transport for Greater Manchester and has seen the area through bus re-regulation, allowing fares to be capped, routes protected and investments to be made into an all-electric fleet of buses. The network has become an iconic local symbol, especially its yellow liveries across tram and bus vehicles, the logo of a worker bee a nod to the city region's working past.

Ticketing

A variety of travelcards are available for passengers in Greater Manchester under the System One banner. System One travelcards provide a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly pass and have varying options, offering combined multi-mode travel passes for bus, tram and train.

Air

Manchester Airport

, formerly Manchester Airport, is the busiest airport outside London by a considerable margin with over double the passengers of its nearest non-London rival, Edinburgh Airport. With over 200 destinations, the Airport serves the most destinations of any airport in the United Kingdom and is viewed as the international flight hub for the whole of Northern England, North Wales and parts of the Midlands. In 2008 the airport handled 21.2 million passengers but was badly affected by the 2008 financial crisis. The Airport gradually recovered and had become the fastest growing major airport in the United Kingdom by 2014 with 20.7 million passengers.
North American scheduled destinations served directly include New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver and Barbados.
Middle Eastern and Asian destinations include Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Doha, Dubai, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Singapore. There are also firm plans for non-stop services to Bangkok. Many European and domestic destinations are served. Manchester to London is one of the highest density airline routes within the UK and is one of the busiest domestic sectors in Europe, but is now experiencing serious competition from the improved railway link.
It is served by a dedicated railway station and a dedicated Metrolink line.

Manchester Barton Aerodrome

A smaller Manchester Barton Aerodrome exists to the west of Manchester city centre. It was Manchester's first municipal airport and became the site of the first air traffic control tower in the UK, and the first municipal airfield in the UK to be licensed by the Air Ministry. Today, private charter flights and general aviation use City. It also has a flight school, and both the Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit and the North West Air Ambulance have helicopters based there.

Road

The city of Manchester is the least car dependent city in the United Kingdom with 243 cars for every 1000 people but remains one of the most congested cities in Europe due to the dense nature of the Greater Manchester conurbation. Research in 2008 suggested that Manchester is the fourth most congested city in Europe. Another study in 2014 ranked Manchester as the most congested city in the United Kingdom outside London.
In May 2017, Transport for Greater Manchester said that it was considering bringing in a revenue neutral £7.50 daily charge for drivers of polluting vehicles as part of plans for Clean Air Zones. However Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said that he would not introduce such a charge, although legal responsibility lies with councils rather than the Mayor. In September 2018, the leaders of the local councils in Greater Manchester met to discuss charging the most polluting vehicles in a bid to improve the poor air quality in Manchester, which is responsible for around 1,000 premature deaths a year. Around 20% of private cars in the region, mostly pre-2015 diesels, and 70% of buses would be hit by the charge. The council leaders have a statutory responsibility to present plans reducing the amount of harmful nitrogen oxide in the air to legal limits to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by 31 December 2018 and must implement a Clean Air Zone unless a suitable alternative compliance strategy can be identified. To meet the statutory requirements other cities such as Birmingham and Leeds have already decided to introduce Clean Air Zones while London is expanding its existing zones operating hours to 24 hours per day. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority after much delay decided to introduce a Clean Air Zone to the entire area of Greater Manchester. However, no vehicles are required to pay.
Greater Manchester and Greater London are the only two UK conurbations with a separately numbered orbital motorway. The Manchester ring road is called the M60. Unlike London's M25, the M60 actually runs within the Greater Manchester conurbation providing good inter-suburban links, rather than around the outside of the conurbation. The M60 has 27 junctions, numbered clockwise from junction 1 at Stockport in the south-east.
The M60 between junction 16 and junction 17 is the second busiest section of road in the UK, after the M25 at junctions 13 & 14. In 2010, it was decided that ramp metering would be used at numerous junctions on the M60 in an attempt to cut queues.
The city also has an inner ring road. Part of this is the A57/A57, which runs south of the city centre, linking the western M602 to the eastern M60 and M67.
The other main motorways serving Manchester are the M56, the M61, the M62, the M66 and the M67, which was originally planned as a route to Sheffield but was never completed. All of these motorways connect with the M60.

Cycling

To combat growing vehicular traffic and pollution, the city of Manchester actively encourages cycling and in recent years has introduced dedicated cycle lanes segregated from bus traffic on main thoroughfares into the city centre as well as a cycle sharing scheme delivered in collaboration with Mobike which was rolled out in 2017.
As part of their Bee Network initiative, Transport for Greater Manchester have designated several traffic-free routes within the M60 motorway as "cycleways". Several routes of Sustrans' National Cycle Network also pass through or near Manchester city centre including the 6, 55, 60, 62 and 66.

Rail

Manchester holds a pivotal position in railway history as a birthplace of passenger rail travel on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830. Railway links to London were established by 1842. By the turn of the 20th century, the city centre was encircled by large termini stations, which included:
Cutbacks followed the Beeching Report in the 1960s, with Manchester Central, Manchester Exchange and Manchester Mayfield closing to passengers. All rail services in the city centre were then mainly concentrated on Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria as well as the smaller Oxford Road and Deansgate stations. Manchester Piccadilly was the busiest railway station in England outside London in terms of passengers in 2005–2006.
File:Manchester Piccadilly Inside.jpg|thumb|Manchester Piccadilly, the principal station for the City of Manchester and busiest station in Greater Manchester by number of passengers.
Greater Manchester still has an extensive citywide railway network with two mainline termini and four through mainline railway stations in the central area. Rail use by passengers in Greater Manchester nearly doubled in the ten years from 2001 to 2011 and is predicted to rise by a further 54% from 2011 to 2020. Its central location means the city acts as a key bypass for rail to cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales all operate trains through Manchester. Manchester sits at a rail bottleneck, and it is hoped investment in the Northern Hub scheme by Network Rail will alleviate this.
There are several smaller stations around the city centre, including Oxford Road and Deansgate, and Salford Central across the Irwell in the City of Salford.
Piccadilly and Victoria are now linked by the city's Metrolink tram system and the Ordsall Chord, a short rail link that opened in 2017. The urban and suburban areas are covered by a sizeable , including to Ashton-under-Lyne, Bolton, Stockport and Wigan. Full timetables are from . The commuter rail network within Greater Manchester is the third most extensive outside Greater London and the South East.