Final Local Transport Plan 2006/07 - 2010/11

A complex development pattern

Greater Manchester is a large and complex urban area, covering some 500 square miles and has around 2.5 million residents. There is a mix of high density urban areas, suburbs, semi-rural and rural locations, but overwhelmingly the pattern, and therefore movement, is urban. It has a strong Regional Centre, formed by Manchester City Centre and the adjoining parts of Salford and Trafford. However, it  is also a polycentric conurbation with ten local authorities ⁱ, each of which has a major town centre - and in some cases more than one - with  local foci reflected in the transport network. It is arguably the most complex urban area in the UK outside London, and this is reflected in the density of its transport network and the scale of needs for investment to meet the growing and diverse movement demands generated by its development pattern. Fig 1.1 quantifies these movements.

Economic importance

However, it is not just its scale and pattern of development which is of significance. The Manchester City region, which covers the wider travel to work area, is the economic centre of the North of England. It generated £47.1bn of Gross Value Added in 2002, nearly 50% of the regional total, and is the largest single contributor in the UK outside London and the South East and, broadly, equals the output of Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield combined. Furthermore, between 1995 and 2002 Manchester was one of only two cities outside of London & the South East which achieved an economic growth rate of more than 10 percent above the English average.ⁱⁱ It is not, however, a homogenous area, and a number of the most deprived areas in the country lie close to high performing economic centres.

The Manchester/Salford regional centre is the primary economic driver and main retail, leisure, cultural and tourism centre for the city region. Many of the Region's 6.7million residents travel to this centre for these journey purposes, in addition to the daily commute for the current job total of 134,000. The Regional Centre has undergone a transformation in recent years. The key elements of the masterplan drawn up following the IRA bomb in 1996 are now in place and are acting as a catalyst for the regeneration of the rest of the central area, which is identified within the existing and draft revised Regional Spatial Strategy as a focus for new development and a primary economic growth for the North West. Furthermore, the Northern Way Growth Strategy, the Regional Economic Strategy and other national, regional and local strategies have identified the Manchester City Region as having the potential to make the most significant contribution to the future economic growth of the North of England.

Manchester Airport lies to the south of the regional centre. It is the third largest airport in the UK, and the largest regional airport outside London, acting as the ‘gateway’ to the north of England, parts of the Midlands and North Wales. Around 19,200 staff are employed on site, and it accounts for a further 25,000 associated jobs around the region. By 2015 it is forecast that this will increase to 28,000 staff on site and 36,000 jobs around the region, hence it has been identified within the Regional Economic Strategy as a key driver of economic growth for the region.

Whilst there has been significant economic growth in parts of Greater Manchester over the last five years, some areas are still not performing well. Thus, regeneration remains a key theme for us, with a particular focus on the Urban Regeneration Companies in Central Salford and New East Manchester and the Housing Market Renewal Initiatives in Manchester/Salford and Oldham/Rochdale. In addition, all the main town centres are developing master plans or have significant proposals for regeneration.

Transport networks

As a consequence of this scale and complexity of development, Greater Manchester has extensive public transport, road and motorway networks. There are over 9000 kilometres of roads, and annual traffic on the motorways and A and B roads amounts to 12.9 million vehicle -km. The rail network carries 18 million rail journeys per annum, and is of significant importance in relation to commuting. In addition, there are 19.5 million passengers per year travelling on the Metrolink system, which is also heavily used for commuting. In 2004/5, 221 million passenger bus journeys were made. This scale of movement on the system not only generates extensive maintenance demands, but also considerable improvement needs. Many rail facilities, for example, are in need of renewal, and ever-increasing volumes of road traffic are taking their toll on carriageway surfaces.

As regards external links, the orbital M60 links to the east-west M62, serving Liverpool and communities across the Pennines, together with the M67/A628 route to South Yorkshire, the M61 and M66 serving south Lancashire and the M56 to Chester, North Wales and the Wirral. The main north-south links to the West Midlands, Cumbria and Scotland are the M6 and West Coast Main Line, which is being upgraded. Trans-Pennine rail routes offer an alternative mode of travel to many destinations along the Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - York and Manchester - Sheffield - Hull lines as does the northern route to Preston and Blackpool. Greater Manchester currently generates around half of the rail journeys to and from the North West, underlining the importance of the City Region to the North West.ⁱⁱⁱ