Etihad Campus, Stadium and Collar Site Development Thread

Marvin said:
The Etihad is 1.5 miles from Manchester Piccadilly, OT is twice as far. It might be a similar distance from Manchester, but in terms of the transport centres once you reach Manchester City centre, Utd fans still face a long trek so largely they don't bother.

I live off Deansgate, traffic on match day at Man Utd is far worse than when City play though that maybe because Deansgate is an extension of Chester Rd.

I don't think you can compare transport as City to town is walkable and huge numbers of City fans walk it, but at Utd it's not walkable.
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I always walk it back to Town after going to a Super League Grand Final at the Swamp.

It’s 1.9 miles from Old Trafford to Atlas Bar (about a 40 minute walk) and 1.6 miles from the Etihad to Tib Street Tavern (just over a 30 minute walk). They are mainly the two places I go to after going to either ground.

But there are a lot of people who can’t make even that 30 minute walk back to Town from the Etihad and when we expand it’s going to take even longer to wait for a Met and the small amount of buses that are on Ashton New Road won’t suffice.

After the Spurs CL game the other week me and me Father didn’t get home (back to Alty) until about 00:30. The Met line from Ashton had a car crash on the tracks somewhere and delayed Mets coming to the Etihad. A monorail or underground wouldn’t have that problem, nor would a purpose build split line at Etihad Campus that has Mets backed up after the game.
 
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worsleyweb said:
We need a monorail back to the City Centre - would be cool.
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Indeed.

I’ve always thought the city centre should be seen like it is in Berlin where it’s a long thin line. Media City to Etihad Campus is really an almost congruent city centre with the actual Manchester City centre in the middle linking both areas West-to-East.

I’ve felt for years that there should be a separate transport system that operates across the city centre from Media City to Etihad Campus. Not on the roads. My preference would be an underground but a monorail would be, as you say, cool.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
Indeed.

I’ve always thought the city centre should be seen like it is in Berlin where it’s a long thin line. Media City to Etihad Campus is really an almost congruent city centre with the actual Manchester City centre in the middle linking both areas West-to-East.

I’ve felt for years that there should be a separate transport system that operates across the city centre from Media City to Etihad Campus. Not on the roads. My preference would be an underground but a monorail would be, as you say, cool.
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Wouldn’t cost that much to do a straight like monorail from media city to the ethiad.

Would be great as well.
 
worsleyweb said:
Wouldn’t cost that much to do a straight like monorail from media city to the ethiad.

Would be great as well.
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Good idea, but has as already been proven, anything to do with building transport infrastructure in this country is astronomically expensive.
 
worsleyweb said:
Wouldn’t cost that much to do a straight like monorail from media city to the ethiad.

Would be great as well.
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Roachy said:
Good idea, but has as already been proven, anything to do with building transport infrastructure in this country is astronomically expensive.
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I don’t know the ins and outs of companies that don’t have to be government funded doing things like this, even if they do or can. But there are businesses out there who want to invest their money in this city, a monorail would be something iconic for Manchester and I’d imagine many people would want to get involved with something like that.

Anyway, I’m getting well ahead of myself and going off topic a bit... but food for thought.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
I don’t know the ins and outs of companies that don’t have to be government funded doing things like this, even if they do or can. But there are businesses out there who want to invest their money in this city, a monorail would be something iconic for Manchester and I’d imagine many people would want to get involved with something like that.

Anyway, I’m getting well ahead of myself and going off topic a bit... but food for thought.
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I know what you mean. I experienced that horror journey after the CL game as well. Really pissed me off when the electronic signs kept saying that the next tram would be 2 mins and I was still stood there 20 mins later. Anyway, as was mentioned, expansion means more fans. I have mentioned it before on this thread and the metrolnk thread. Get a ruck of double units ready post match to get fans away pronto. I know the system has limitations but surely that could be done. I've been at Cornbrook and three E Dids trams have passed before the cattle car Alty service turns up.
 
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.
 
Bournemouth Blue said:
In 20 years people under the age of thirty won’t be going to live sports events, they will be in arenas or more likely in their bedrooms watching gamers playing stuff on the latest version of Playstation/Nintendo Switch/ Xbox or whatever. Sad but true.
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People said similar things fifty odd years ago. Crowds have gone up somewhat since then.

The dangers is that without stadium expansion, attending City matches could become a closed shop and a generation could be frozen out..
 
Marvin said:
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.
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An obstacle, no. An issue, definitely yes. Any expansion will only exacerbate the existing problem. Any one who uses the tram post match will generally say it's a nightmare.
 
Roachy said:
An obstacle, no. An issue, definitely yes. Any expansion will only exacerbate the existing problem. Any one who uses the tram post match will generally say it's a nightmare.
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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.
 
Marvin said:
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.
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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.
 
west didsblue said:
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.
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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.
 
west didsblue said:
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.
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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.
 
Marvin said:
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.
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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.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
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.
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You don’t need to worry HS2 north of Birmingham has been canned - govt just working out how to announce it.
 
west didsblue said:
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.
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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
 
Gordyola said:
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
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There must be some flex because the ones I get on are never on time!
 
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