Transport
Links & Infrastructure
Around Greater Manchester
and the Northwest Region
|
Manchester
Railways
Manchester
has two mainline stations - Victoria
and Piccadilly, which provide direct links to most major
cities in Great Britain. London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh
are all directly accessible from Manchester. Piccadilly Station
runs an hourly service to London with a range of different pricing
options depending on travel times.
Manchester
Roads
Manchester
being is located in the very centre of the United Kingdom and
has one of the best road networks in Britain. The city has a
virtual girdle of motorways made up of the M56, M61, M63, M66
and M62 (much of which has now been newly designated as the
M60). These five motorways make getting in and out of Manchester
a fairly rapid process. Liverpool and Leeds take only about
1 hour to drive from the city centre and access to a motorway
link is only 10 minutes from the centre itself by the M602 which
runs straight in via Regent Road in Salford and up to the Knott
Mill end of Deansgate in Manchester city centre.
London is 185 miles distance from Manchester and can be reached
at average speed in around 3-4 hours depending on traffic and
time of day. As a general rule, the M6 motorway around Birmingham
is best avoided at rush-hours, as delays can be considerable.
Manchester
Air Links
Manchester
Airport is arguably the fastest growing airport in Europe
with around 15 million passengers travelling through it during
1997.
With the present expansions and the building of terminal two
plus further negotiations to build a second runway, the North
West is fast becoming the second most important industrial centre
in Britain after London. British Airways currently have daily
flights to all European capitals and major cities throughout
the globe. Lufthansa have also chosen Manchester as opposed
to the London airports as their hub from for the British Isles.
Virgin Atlantic have introduced a daily flight to Orlando, and
direct Virgin flights to New York and Washington are imminent.
Manchester's
Advantageous Location
Geographically,
Manchester lies at the centre of the UK and is ideally placed
for access by road, rail and air. Sixty percent of the UK population
is within two hours' drive of the city and London is only 35
minutes away by air. Ranked number 17 in the world for international
passengers, Manchester Airport provides access to over 56 international
destinations. Its plan to build a second runway will lift capacity
to 30 million passengers a year and lift it into the top ten
world airports. Current throughput at the airport is over 14
million passengers a year. Extensive investment into the airport's
rail link means air travellers are only 15 minutes away from
the City Centre, or can travel direct from the airport's new
£28 million rail terminal to a number of destinations to the
north and east of Manchester. The rail link carried over one
million passengers in its first year and the soon to be constructed
southern spur will increase its list of destinations.
The two mainline railway stations in the city provides direct
services to the UK's major cities. London, for example, can
be reached in two and a half hours. And the opening of the Channel
Tunnel means rail passengers can reach Paris in 5 hours 40 minutes
and Brussels in six and a half hours - a direct Manchester to
Paris service is planned for July 1997.
With a quarter of the nation's motorway system, the region has
one of the best road networks in the UK. The M66, M61, M56,
and M62 west connect Manchester to other parts of the region,
including Liverpool, Chester, Warrington and Preston. The M62
east links Manchester to Leeds, the Humber ports, the M1 and
A1. The M6 runs south to Birmingham and London, north to Scotland.
The final link of Manchester's orbital motorway is due for completion
in 1998.
And to ease congestion on its other roads, Manchester has shown
UK cities the way ahead for comfortable communicating by opening
the first phase of Metrolink, the UK's first on-street light
rapid transport system. The system links Bury in the north with
Altrincham in the South via Piccadilly Station.
The Trafford Park Euroterminal, opened in the summer of 1993
at the cost of £11 million, offers fast direct road-rail services
via the Channel Tunnel to the business markets of continental
Europe. One of nine serving the UK, the Euroterminal, situated
in the World Freight Centre, was funded jointly by Railfreight
Distribution and Trafford Park Development Corporation and has
the capacity to handle 100,000 containers a year on its 20-acre
site.
Rail
Times from Manchester
London:
2 hrs 40 mins
Leeds: 1 hr
Hull: 2 hrs
Bristol: 2 hrs 50 mins
Glasgow: 3 hrs
Birmingham: 1 hr 30 mins
The above
are average train journey times.
Drive
Times from Manchester
London:
3 hrs 30 mins
Leeds:
1 hr 40 mins
Hull: 1 hr 45 mins
Bristol: 4 hrs 30 mins
Glasgow:
4 hrs 30 mins
Birmingham: 1 hr 30 mins
Newcastle: 2 hrs 40 mins
Rail freight
transit time examples from Manchester include:
Bordeaux - 26 hours
Stuttgart - 26 hours
Milan - 33 hours.
The Manchester
Ship Canal, which celebrated its centenary in 1994, is one
of the country's busiest ports along its 35-mile stretch, with
more than 40 cargo berths. It handles over 2,000 vessels and
is served directly by the motorway and rail networks. The port
serves trans-shipment trade with North America and the Far East,
and has direct shipping links with Scandinavia, the Baltic states,
the CIS, Spain, Portugal and other deep sea regions.
See
Also:
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