Manchester Piccadilly area redevelopment suggestions

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Replying to a post in https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/manchester-piccadilly-planters-block-crossing.272803/

i) Pedestrianise the front totally.
ii) Compulsory purchase & seize that pointless flat car park at the back of Gateway house, and stick buses and RR coaches there.

I'd support this. I think there's even enough space that they could build a big interchange there and mostly get rid of the rather grim Piccadilly Gardens bus stops and Chorlton Street coach station. Would probably also be desirable to build a new passageway under the station connecting Metrolink to the buses without having to walk across the mainline rail concourse.

 

[Topological]

Has anyone considered how expensive that flat car park is?

The unknown of HS2/NPR/? means that it is hard to do much with Piccadilly at the moment. Moving the planters around is probably the best that can (and in that sense should) be done for now.

 

[edwin_m]

If they build something like the original HS2 terminus then the whole area north of the existing station will be a building site for some years and the ramp behind Gateway House may be an access route to it. If they build Burnham's underground station then it's quite possible the station approach area will need to be demolished too, to build the ramps down to the tunnel beneath the city centre. So I agree it's probably not worth doing anything drastic until more is known.

 

[HSTEd]

Replying to a post in https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/manchester-piccadilly-planters-block-crossing.272803/


I'd support this. I think there's even enough space that they could build a big interchange there and mostly get rid of the rather grim Piccadilly Gardens bus stops and Chorlton Street coach station. Would probably also be desirable to build a new passageway under the station connecting Metrolink to the buses without having to walk across the mainline rail concourse.

Moving Piccadilly Gardens bus station away from the centre of the city is not going to be amazingly popular with the public.

You'd probably have to run the buses near the gardens and then down the approach road - which would require a major redesign of the road layout and probably demolitions

 

[Topological]

Moving Piccadilly Gardens bus station away from the centre of the city is not going to be amazingly popular with the public.

You'd probably have to run the buses near the gardens and then down the approach road - which would require a major redesign of the road layout and probably demolitions

Yes, Piccadilly is too far from the shops.

I appreciate this is a rail forum, but Piccadilly is not set up to be a major transport interchange. It has very regular buses on the A6 corridor (Longsight, Levenshulme, Heaton Chapple, Stockport et al.), and the A57 corridor (Hyde, Denton et al.) so does not do too badly. Even diverting Oxford Road buses past Piccadilly would be problematic.

 

[HSTEd]

Yes, Piccadilly is too far from the shops.

I appreciate this is a rail forum, but Piccadilly is not set up to be a major transport interchange. It has very regular buses on the A6 corridor (Longsight, Levenshulme, Heaton Chapple, Stockport et al.), and the A57 corridor (Hyde, Denton et al.) so does not do too badly. Even diverting Oxford Road buses past Piccadilly would be problematic.

I think any attempt to develop a proper transport interchange in Manchester would require a new railway station.

Piccadilly is too remote, Oxford Road is way too constrained and Victoria doesn't really have the required rail access.

My personal pet project is redeveloping University of Manchester's old North campus into a new railway station, but it would be extraordinarily expensive.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Manchester Piccadilly once was a really nice place, with its sunken gardens and well-tended flower beds. I think that L S Lowry captured the scene in one of his paintings.

 

[Topological]

I think any attempt to develop a proper transport interchange in Manchester would require a new railway station.

Piccadilly is too remote, Oxford Road is way too constrained and Victoria doesn't really have the required rail access.

My personal pet project is redeveloping University of Manchester's old North campus into a new railway station, but it would be extraordinarily expensive.

Yes, I suspect that you would get an awful lot of bigger benefits for the cost of buying North Campus (which I can only ever call UMIST).

ID have been slow with their development, and all we have so far is the repurposed Reynold Building, but the plans for everything else exist.

Manchester Piccadilly once was a really nice place, with its sunken gardens and well-tended flower beds. I think that L S Lowry captured the scene in one of his paintings.

Indeed, though many who knew it are not so sure of the description.

Wikipedia on the Lowry Painting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Gardens_(painting)

Piccadilly Gardens (painting)​

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Piccadilly Gardens
Artist	L. S. Lowry
Year	1954
Medium	Oil on canvas
Movement	Naïve art
Dimensions	76.2 cm × 101.6 cm (30 in × 40 in)
Location	Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester

Piccadilly Gardens is a 1954 oil painting by the English artist L. S. Lowry. It depicts Piccadilly Gardens, a large garden square in Manchester city centre, north-west England. The painting hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery on nearby Mosley Street.[1][2][3]

Description​

The painting presents a view of Piccadilly Gardens from the south-east corner, next to Portland Street. Visible are the former sunken gardens, with people walking, sitting on benches, standing in groups, exercising dogs on leads, and pushing prams.[1] In the centre of the gardens stands the Coronation Fountain, installed the year before Lowry painted this scene to commemorate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.[4][5]​

In the distance can be seen tall white Rylands Building, an Art Deco warehouse on the corner of Mosley Street and Market Street. Red Manchester Corporation buses run along Piccadilly and Mosley Street.[1]​

Sorry about the formatting on the Wikipedia Quotes.

 

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I agree that Piccadilly isn't the ideal place for an interchange, but neither is the current location. The current bus station is cramped with poor facilities, and there is no space there to build a better one.

You'd probably have to run the buses near the gardens and then down the approach road - which would require a major redesign of the road layout and probably demolitions

Would it?

Buses that terminate at Piccadilly Gardens bus station broadly approach the city from two different directions - Oxford Road and Salford. From both of those directions, buses could plausibly get onto Moseley Street. They could run along there before turning onto Piccadilly. Might require some changes to give buses priority for the involved right turns, and possibly more trams to go via the Second City Crossing if congestion on Moseley Street is deemed an issue, but certainly no demolitions.

Though if you're doing that, it would arguably be more sensible to send everything to Shudehill, roughly the way the current route 41 goes

 

[Topological]

I agree that Piccadilly isn't the ideal place for an interchange, but neither is the current location. The current bus station is cramped with poor facilities, and there is no space there to build a better one.


Would it?

Buses that terminate at Piccadilly Gardens bus station broadly approach the city from two different directions - Oxford Road and Salford. From both of those directions, buses could plausibly get onto Moseley Street. They could run along there before turning onto Piccadilly. Might require some changes to give buses priority for the involved right turns, and possibly more trams to go via the Second City Crossing if congestion on Moseley Street is deemed an issue, but certainly no demolitions.

Though if you're doing that, it would arguably be more sensible to send everything to Shudehill, roughly the way the current route 41 goes

If your aim is for buses to physically reach Piccadilly then the ones that currently use Moseley Street could use New York Street -> Portland Street -> Piccadilly
Buses that come in on Portland Street (Oxford Road, Princess Parkway set, Chester Road) could either use Portland Street onto Piccadilly, or Whitworth Street (or a combination). On the way out the same routes work.

However, you are taking the buses further away from the city centre for very limited gain (with the exception of the Salford ones that would still pass Piccadilly Gardens).

I do not really understand what the obsession with getting buses to Piccadilly Station is.

 

[py_megapixel]

If your aim is for buses to physically reach Piccadilly then the ones that currently use Moseley Street could use New York Street -> Portland Street -> Piccadilly
Buses that come in on Portland Street (Oxford Road, Princess Parkway set, Chester Road) could either use Portland Street onto Piccadilly, or Whitworth Street (or a combination). On the way out the same routes work.

However, you are taking the buses further away from the city centre for very limited gain (with the exception of the Salford ones that would still pass Piccadilly Gardens).

Buses don't currently use Moseley Street - I'm proposing that they could do so in order to travel to Piccadilly while still passing through Piccadilly Gardens.

I do not really understand what the obsession with getting buses to Piccadilly Station is.

I don't have an obsession with getting buses to Piccadilly station, I have an obsession with getting rid of the horrible mess that is Piccadilly Gardens bus station in its current form, and a sensible place to relocate it to seems to be the empty bit of land behind the railway station just up the road. I'd be equally happy with sending everything to Shudehill.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Is this thread actually concerned mainly with the aspirational property redevelopment of Manchester Piccadilly or just about bus and tram transport matters?

 

[Topological]

Buses don't currently use Moseley Street - I'm proposing that they could do so in order to travel to Piccadilly while still passing through Piccadilly Gardens.


I don't have an obsession with getting buses to Piccadilly station, I have an obsession with getting rid of the horrible mess that is Piccadilly Gardens bus station in its current form, and a sensible place to relocate it to seems to be the empty bit of land behind the railway station just up the road. I'd be equally happy with sending everything to Shudehill.

Do the 36 and 37 come in a different route now. I must confess I did not pay attention for a while. I know Oxford Road buses stopped coming in along Moseley Street a long long time ago (when they redid St Peters Square?)

Sending everything to Shudehill would be my choice too (if the buses have to go to a bus station) and otherwise I would be joining routes to run cross city (as some 41 and 42 do from the Oxford Road side and 18 does from Rochdale Road).

In essence I am not sure that the buses have much to offer to any redesign of Piccadilly Station.

Is this thread actually concerned mainly with the aspirational property redevelopment of Manchester Piccadilly or just about bus and tram transport matters?

Depends if they are an integral part of the redevelopment I guess.

 

[py_megapixel]

Do the 36 and 37 come in a different route now. I must confess I did not pay attention for a while. I know Oxford Road buses stopped coming in along Moseley Street a long long time ago (when they redid St Peters Square?)

Yes, 36 and 37 now use Cross Street. For some reason 35 and 38 join Portland Street and come in the same way as the Oxford Road buses. I don't believe any buses are routed via Moseley Street at the moment.

Sending everything to Shudehill would be my choice too (if the buses have to go to a bus station) and otherwise I would be joining routes to run cross city (as some 41 and 42 do from the Oxford Road side and 18 does from Rochdale Road).

AFAIK all 42 services terminate at Piccadilly Gardens currently. There are a few routes that could be described as cross-city, but not many, and most of them are still much longer on one side than the other - for which we can presumably thank the forced split of the GMPTE's bus operations before they were privatised, and the resultant situation where the north and south of the city were served by entirely separate companies.

My main reservation with cross-city bus routes is that they make it rather easy to import delays from one side of the city to the other. Ideally they'd be set up in a way that makes it easy to split the two "halves" from each other if this occurs.

Of course, with Metrolink expansion and hopefully Bee Network fare integration, it may well be the case before too long that fewer buses into the city centre from the outer reaches of Greater Manchester are needed.

In essence I am not sure that the buses have much to offer to any redesign of Piccadilly Station.

Yes, I'm starting to think that was well

 

[edwin_m]

Either Piccadilly Gardens or Shudehill bus stations are a short tram ride from Piccadilly.

Buses don't currently use Moseley Street - I'm proposing that they could do so in order to travel to Piccadilly while still passing through Piccadilly Gardens.

When they did, they caused a lot of congestion to the trams. Metrolink city centre is close to capacity now, so they really don't want to be disrupting the operation of a very busy network by adding an extra source of delay on one of the main legs.

Of course, with Metrolink expansion and hopefully Bee Network fare integration, it may well be the case before too long that fewer buses into the city centre from the outer reaches of Greater Manchester are needed.

If they get the sort of expansion of public transport that they are hoping for, they will need both.

 

[Topological]

Yes, 36 and 37 now use Cross Street. For some reason 35 and 38 join Portland Street and come in the same way as the Oxford Road buses. I don't believe any buses are routed via Moseley Street at the moment.


AFAIK all 42 services terminate at Piccadilly Gardens currently. There are a few routes that could be described as cross-city, but not many, and most of them are still much longer on one side than the other - for which we can presumably thank the forced split of the GMPTE's bus operations before they were privatised, and the resultant situation where the north and south of the city were served by entirely separate companies.

My main reservation with cross-city bus routes is that they make it rather easy to import delays from one side of the city to the other. Ideally they'd be set up in a way that makes it easy to split the two "halves" from each other if this occurs.

Of course, with Metrolink expansion and hopefully Bee Network fare integration, it may well be the case before too long that fewer buses into the city centre from the outer reaches of Greater Manchester are needed.


Yes, I'm starting to think that was well

Thank you. I hope this is helpful to those from outside Manchester looking at the building sites around Piccadilly as potential bus stations.

I must confess I thought that some of the 42s went to North Manchester General Hospital as an extension (though can now see none do).

For anyone who would like to experiment with Piccadilly as a bus terminus, try the 147. I can use that for free and still walk.

In terms of designs for Piccadilly Station, it would be good to see more walking over the footbridge and that way into Piccadilly Gardens rather than just along London Road/Piccadilly. However, that brings us full circle to the planters.