Etihad Campus, Stadium and Collar Site Development Thread

10 trams an hour back into town carrying what 200 people a time, that's 2,000 people in an hour, and probably a lot less given that 20 minutes after the game is over, the place is emptying rapidly. This is a niche issue.

If you looked at the Etihad 30 minutes after the game ended. What would you find? 50,000 people well gone. There are probably some problems for drivers and tram users, but in terms of an obstacle to ground expansion, I don't think so.

We have an extant permission to expand the ground to 62,170 on matchdays and 63,834 for concerts, so transport infrastructure isn't an obstacle to expansion as such.

But poor transport accessibility will, in my view, increasingly become an deterrent to attracting the extra fans we need to fill the ground were it to be expanded, especially for evening and mid-week fixtures. I know people who already have stopped attending mid-week games because of difficulties in getting to and/or away from the ground, at least that is the reason they give.

We should also bear in mind that there is a lot of other development that the Council and its development partners are keen to see happen on sites within and next to the Sports City area. This could be up to 2 million sqft of commercial space, education facilities, student accommodation, sports technology businesses and a certain amount of retailing too. All of this will increase the amount of car traffic in the area and will create additional demands for public transport.

There's is now also the proposal for a >20,000 seat indoor arena in the area (as per the March 2019 regeneration framework). If this idea develops, proves viable and is built, we could be facing 20,000+ concert goers trying to get to/from the area on the same night as 54,000 football fans attending a PL or CL match.

Better transport management will certainly be needed to cope with all that. If only the stadium had been built sited a bit closer to a decent railway station...
 
A relatively simple thing that could be done would be a railway station on the goods line by the stadium with five or six special trains going in both directions to town after the match using track that’s already there to all 5 stations in the city centre. There’s only half a mile of new track required from Ashton Old Road to Ardwick along the disused viaduct to connect it to Piccadilly and the other way gets you to Victoria via Miles Platting. You could cram over a thousand into each train and a few trains could shift thousands of people in quite a short space of time.
 
A relatively simple thing that could be done would be a railway station on the goods line by the stadium with five or six special trains going in both directions to town after the match using track that’s already there to all 5 stations in the city centre. There’s only half a mile of new track required from Ashton Old Road to Ardwick along the disused viaduct to connect it to Piccadilly and the other way gets you to Victoria via Miles Platting. You could cram over a thousand into each train and a few trains could shift thousands of people in quite a short space of time.
This is a sensible idea. Anyone remember that train at Feyenoord away? Essentially shifted the entire away support from the away end to your choice of Rotterdam city centre or Amsterdam.
 
A relatively simple thing that could be done would be a railway station on the goods line by the stadium with five or six special trains going in both directions to town after the match using track that’s already there to all 5 stations in the city centre. There’s only half a mile of new track required from Ashton Old Road to Ardwick along the disused viaduct to connect it to Piccadilly and the other way gets you to Victoria via Miles Platting. You could cram over a thousand into each train and a few trains could shift thousands of people in quite a short space of time.


You could put a station next to the Merc garage. And if the viaduct was rebuilt you would have a loop joining Vic to Piccadilly. Only slight problem is HS2 is earmarked to enter the City alongside the existing track just to the north of Piccadilly I think? Even this relatively small scale infrastructure project would require capital expenditure s the City council woukdnt be able to either raise tjat kimd of money or justify it is suspect and sadly successive governments only seem interested in spending money in London.
 
There are problems for the individual and there are problems that are relevant for stadium expansion. The Metrolink is not a major factor because its capacity is small.
Agree, and it will not affect the expansion decision. However an improvement on the current situation should be a consideration. The provision of extra trams utilising the existing infrastructure is the easiest, cheapest way of servicing spectator numbers at the stadium, especially post match.
 
You could put a station next to the Merc garage. And if the viaduct was rebuilt you would have a loop joining Vic to Piccadilly. Only slight problem is HS2 is earmarked to enter the City alongside the existing track just to the north of Piccadilly I think? Even this relatively small scale infrastructure project would require capital expenditure s the City council woukdnt be able to either raise tjat kimd of money or justify it is suspect and sadly successive governments only seem interested in spending money in London.

You don’t need to worry HS2 north of Birmingham has been canned - govt just working out how to announce it.
 
A relatively simple thing that could be done would be a railway station on the goods line by the stadium with five or six special trains going in both directions to town after the match using track that’s already there to all 5 stations in the city centre. There’s only half a mile of new track required from Ashton Old Road to Ardwick along the disused viaduct to connect it to Piccadilly and the other way gets you to Victoria via Miles Platting. You could cram over a thousand into each train and a few trains could shift thousands of people in quite a short space of time.

The rail system is working at virtual capacity its not easy to add additional trains Each train needs a set time to travel through junctions / points According to my brother who worked on the railway it unlikely that there is spare capacity to run the trains you suggest
 
The rail system is working at virtual capacity its not easy to add additional trains Each train needs a set time to travel through junctions / points According to my brother who worked on the railway it unlikely that there is spare capacity to run the trains you suggest
There must be some flex because the ones I get on are never on time!
 

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