Manchester Transport Links & Infrastructure
Around Greater Manchester and the Northwest Region

Manchester Rail Links

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 Road Links

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
Leeds1 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, and 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:

• Transport
• Manchester Airport

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