Manchester bus congestion, again
Not wishing to tread on Geoff’s bus blog toes but…
I ditched my 41 today because, from the top level, I could see nothing but congestion ahead. Between the Precinct Centre and Cornerhouse (that’s just two bus stops) I must have walked past 50 static buses.
Manchester’s bus jam has been in the news a lot lately: Society Guardian ran a piece about the deregulated services here, while my local MP John Leech raised the issue in the House of Commons way back in January.
The MEN reports that congestion charges may be introduced and that ’super bus lanes’ will serve the north and south east of the city, but on Europe’s busiest bus route – up to 300 buses per hour – these steps probably won’t make a huge amount of difference.
So how about turning the Oxford Road corridor into a bus- and bike-only road? Cars can use Upper Brook Street and Princess Parkway.
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I walked passed a couple of Chanel M people interviewing some people that had abandoned buses on the morning of the 13th (on oxford road), the awful traffic was caused by an accident with a biker somewhere in the middle of town. The last severe traffic was the jumper stood on the mancunian way.
I agree that traffic in town can be terrible but it’s not that bad. The only time traffic is so severe is when there’s an accident or some other major type thing – if diversions were set up quicker or accidents dealt with differently we might see a pronounced difference – blocking oxford road corridoor to cars would do nothing but worsen traffic on backroads such as Lloyd street. Upper brook street and the park way are already horrific to drive on at rushhour, I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do.
Congestion charging, to me, is all about putting extra cash in the ever swelling council coffers. I doubt very much we’d see anything back for it.
By Tristan Welch on 10.16.06 11:07 am
Thanks for the information about last week. What do you think should be done in the long-term then?
By Mancubist on 10.16.06 1:58 pm
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