There is little point in sending buses to feed into trams as there is little "peak" capacity on Metrolink available to carry more passengers.
Whilst there are some limited plans for more trams to increase peak capacity, (15 I think? after taking the ten for the new Trafford Centre Line and two for the Wythenshawe loop) the whole system is constrained to a double M5000 length on platforms and track space at points etc.
so the only capacity increase can be more frequent services
This is the point that the "blue sky thinkers" on this thread seem to forget.
Sure, in an ideal world we'd make more use of trains and trams to get into the city centre, we'd have connections, we'd have interchanges, we'd all live like in those Artists Impressions, everything would be peachy. Great. But there's no realistic chance of Metrolink being able to cope with the increased volumes if we instigated a system where
(a) bus fares rose to be equivalent to tram fares (since it's apparently bad for buses to offer cheaper tickets than trams, despite the economics of running a bus being a lot cheaper)
(b) long established bus routes were chopped to force people onto trams (which is going to make a return journey from anywhere on the fringes of Greater Manchester pretty unattractive because which tram do you need to take from Piccadilly Gardens to connect to your hourly bus service at somewhere like Holinwood?)
...how is Metrolink going to cope with all of the current bus passengers from Oldham/ Stretford/ Didsbury/ Ashton etc? How are the local trains going to cope? Maybe, if you had a decade to plan for all of the increased capacity required it'd be a great idea, but we don't have such luxuries.
Whilst I'm all for idealism, maybe some people on this thread are unaware of Stagecoach's attempts to introduce "tram feeder" services linking Killamarsh/ Sothall/ Stannington etc with their nearest tram terminus in Sheffield. It sounded a great idea on paper - a ten minute bus service to connect with a ten minute tram service, through fares at no more than a "day"/"weekly" tram ticket (i.e. broadly comparable with a bus-only ticket). The council even built a new section of road at Malin Bridge to permit the minibuses to serve the bus stop next to the tram terminus. Trouble is, people didn't want to change. So the "feeder" services were scrapped and now Killamarsh has a direct bus into Sheffield along the Parkway instead.
Also, I do enjoy the idea that arch-capitalist Brian Souter is willingly spending more money than he needs to on extra buses and drivers so he can run too many buses along corridors like Oxford Road, when he'd have more money if he make huge cutbacks (big enough cutbacks to permit subsidising several marginal services elsewhere in Manchester). What a guy...