Re: Metrolink Challenge
Posted: 07 Nov 2014, 21:05
Metrolink is all grown up! With the opening of the airport line earlier this week (over a year early!), it is now quite a meaty challenge, with different possibilities for a route. Three other extensions opened earlier in the year (to Ashton and through Oldham and Rochdale town centres) so it was high time I did the challenge again.
The new lines:
Airport: It is shoe-horned in with great ingenuity, goes alongside and then over the M60 (scope for gloating in the rush hour) and then passes so close to the end of the runway that you duck when a plane lands. You don't do that on the Piccadilly Line!
Oldham and Rochdale: The diversion into Oldham was clearly built by Looney Tunes! It does a tight right-angled bend off the old formation jut before Werneth Tunnel, complete with black and white chevron sign! It's then cleverly and dramatically shoe-horned to reach the town centre. The Rochdale extension is more prosaic, but at least it now terminates next to the bus station!
Ashton: Rather unexceptional compared to the others, but mainly on reserved track.
I had planned an early rise with a drowsy bus ride to my start point, but at the last minute I found I needed to go to my daughter's assembly today, which led to an even earlier rise and a frenetic car drive! I caught my planned tram, but I missed my first connection, which put a vital bus in jeopardy., (shades of my FNC attempt in August), but there was only 6 minutes to the next tram instead of the expected 12, and that put me back on track. Victoria is closed for re-building and there is just a single track through at present. The services have also been recast, with no trams running between Market St and Picc Gardens, necessitating a quick run. Things went quite well until I got onto the Eccles line (it always seems to go wrong there!) with a wait of 23 minutes! I played snakes and ladders for much of the morning, with several just-missed trams , but I think it was a case of the not-quite getting a tram ahead rather than losing time. I finally broke the curse of Rochdale, with a perfect connection onto a bus in the now easy-to-find bus station, and no scary weirdos either. It's still not my favourite town, though. The GM Standard is still parked outside the hydroponics centre, much to my relief (I didn't see it last time I passed). My final time was 6:27:01, only about 10 minutes adrift on schedule, which I think is inevitable on a network with so much on-street running. Now we await the opening of Exchange Square (hopefully next year) and the rest of the Second City Crossing sometime in 2017, with the Trafford Centre line at some unspecified date in the future.
Pluses
- The plush (indeed airport-like!) bus station at the airport, and quite a nice one in Rochdale too.
- Swift connections onto two buses
- A warm fug on an early morning bus, on a day of what my dad would have called Manchester Weather.
- Catching a tram I didn't know about which let me get a bus I thought I'd missed.
Minuses
- Long waits at Altrincham, Picc Gardens and Bury
- 23 minute wait at Broadway
- Waiting for the token on the single track stretch through Victoria
What the *$%! Moments
- A car driving through the platform tracks at Piccadilly Gardens - not quite sure where she came from, but she must have driven over the entire (pedestrianised) square to get there!
- The huge number of passengers getting of a bus on an apparently deserted tree-lined lane
- A bus with a skew-wiff destination display. It was common in the days of mechanical blinds, but this bus had a DMI!
The new lines:
Airport: It is shoe-horned in with great ingenuity, goes alongside and then over the M60 (scope for gloating in the rush hour) and then passes so close to the end of the runway that you duck when a plane lands. You don't do that on the Piccadilly Line!
Oldham and Rochdale: The diversion into Oldham was clearly built by Looney Tunes! It does a tight right-angled bend off the old formation jut before Werneth Tunnel, complete with black and white chevron sign! It's then cleverly and dramatically shoe-horned to reach the town centre. The Rochdale extension is more prosaic, but at least it now terminates next to the bus station!
Ashton: Rather unexceptional compared to the others, but mainly on reserved track.
I had planned an early rise with a drowsy bus ride to my start point, but at the last minute I found I needed to go to my daughter's assembly today, which led to an even earlier rise and a frenetic car drive! I caught my planned tram, but I missed my first connection, which put a vital bus in jeopardy., (shades of my FNC attempt in August), but there was only 6 minutes to the next tram instead of the expected 12, and that put me back on track. Victoria is closed for re-building and there is just a single track through at present. The services have also been recast, with no trams running between Market St and Picc Gardens, necessitating a quick run. Things went quite well until I got onto the Eccles line (it always seems to go wrong there!) with a wait of 23 minutes! I played snakes and ladders for much of the morning, with several just-missed trams , but I think it was a case of the not-quite getting a tram ahead rather than losing time. I finally broke the curse of Rochdale, with a perfect connection onto a bus in the now easy-to-find bus station, and no scary weirdos either. It's still not my favourite town, though. The GM Standard is still parked outside the hydroponics centre, much to my relief (I didn't see it last time I passed). My final time was 6:27:01, only about 10 minutes adrift on schedule, which I think is inevitable on a network with so much on-street running. Now we await the opening of Exchange Square (hopefully next year) and the rest of the Second City Crossing sometime in 2017, with the Trafford Centre line at some unspecified date in the future.
Pluses
- The plush (indeed airport-like!) bus station at the airport, and quite a nice one in Rochdale too.
- Swift connections onto two buses
- A warm fug on an early morning bus, on a day of what my dad would have called Manchester Weather.
- Catching a tram I didn't know about which let me get a bus I thought I'd missed.
Minuses
- Long waits at Altrincham, Picc Gardens and Bury
- 23 minute wait at Broadway
- Waiting for the token on the single track stretch through Victoria
What the *$%! Moments
- A car driving through the platform tracks at Piccadilly Gardens - not quite sure where she came from, but she must have driven over the entire (pedestrianised) square to get there!
- The huge number of passengers getting of a bus on an apparently deserted tree-lined lane
- A bus with a skew-wiff destination display. It was common in the days of mechanical blinds, but this bus had a DMI!