The thing that get's me is this.
United get 76,000 every home match. There ground is hemmed in. They have to walk a distance to the Metrolink stop. The roads are gridlocked around Old Trafford after the match. But the funny thing is, you never hear United fans complaining about getting away from OT. Especially the Cockney's, etc. Why are we different?
A walk into town. Buses outside the stadium. Better road network. Metrolink part of the campus. Onsite car parking. United fans would love our setup.
Because it’s worse at our place. Even though it was, up until very recently, half decent for me on the Met it was always bad in a car.
I go to the Super League Grand Final every year at Old Trafford and am always surprised at how much they have on offer to get you away from the ground.
Around Old Trafford the road network affords for a larger movement of traffic in all directions (apart from the roads going in the Chorlton direction), they have a train station basically within the stadium, they have water taxis on the canals, they have two [soon to be three] Metrolink stations with double units going on all directions as well as hell of a lot more pubs around the ground to take up a bit of slack of everyone leaving at once. Can even book canal narrow boats to take you from certain areas to Old Trafford in the Summer.
The shipment of people on the three lanes or 40mph two lanes of Chester Rd or three lanes of Trafford Rd makes a huge difference to their movement of cars buses and taxis compared to our one lane roads heading to Town where there are thousands of people walking in the road in the same direction (can’t do that on Chester Road as you’d be mowed down so the traffic moves more freely) as well as Mets on the same roads going in the same directions slowing the traffic down further. The Met lines around OT are on their own tracks away from the roads.
Plus a lot of their car parks are in Trafford Park where they have a lot of space and a lot of different roads to network around away from the car parks, whereas use little local Primary schools within a small distance from the Etihad and they all spill onto the same roads with everyone else.
The worst one for us is the recent change to the Altrincham Met line. Up until January I could be sat in my living room watching tele and be in my seat at the Etihad within 45minutes on a direct Met from Navi. Then even with a bit of an annoying wait in the queues at the Etihad stop I could be back in my living room within an hour and fifteen minutes of the final whistle on a direct Met from the Etihad to Navi. Now they’ve stopped the direct Mets to Alty and you can only get Eccles or MediaCityUK Mets from the Etihad and they only put on one single unit Alty Met on within a good length of time after the game so there’s a mad rush to squeeze on that either at Piccadilly or the Gardens, and if you’ve chanced it and gone up to St Peter’s/Deans-Cas/Cornbrook to wait for that single unit Alty Met you can’t fit on it and have to wait ages for he next one (and sometimes that’s been a single unit as well). I’ve emailed TFGM Metrolink about this and I just got a generic “we take our services very seriously and feel we provide the best service we can, we take on board your feedback...” reply.
It takes me less time to get to and from the Britannia, or whatever it’s called now, 35 miles away for an away game at Stoke than it does a home game just ten miles across Manchester.
