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WORK is set to get under way to create a new 250 space park and ride site on the East Lancashire Road (A580) to encourage commuters to catch future busway services.
Over £30 million is being invested to deliver more than 2,000 new park and ride spaces at key locations for bus, train and Metrolink passengers across Greater Manchester.
The park and ride facility, being developed by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) underneath the M60 & M61 junctions, will serve a major bus priority route linking Leigh, Tyldesley, Atherton and Salford with the city centre and Oxford Road.
The brightly lit car park, which will be covered by extensive CCTV, will feature electric vehicle charging points, and parking will be free of charge to passengers with a valid ticket.
Work to build a new junction for the entrance to the park and ride site has already begun and is being carried out by Galliford Try, the contractor who is currently carrying out work to create dedicated bus lanes along the A580.
From Monday 16 March, contractors George Cox and Sons will start to carry out the work within the park and ride site, which will open when the busway services start running.
In order to access the construction site, there will be a one lane closure on the M61 on-slip road until late summer. Works have been planned to coincide with the school holidays as much as possible.
A further 175 park and ride spaces will also be available along the 4.5mile guided section of the busway, at East Bond Street in Leigh, and Tyldesley Interchange.
Over £30 million is being invested to deliver more than 2,000 new park and ride spaces at key locations for bus, train and Metrolink passengers across Greater Manchester.
Councillor Andrew Fender, Chair of the TfGM Committee, said: “We know from experience that a combination of free car parking and first rate public transport will encourage more drivers to switch to more sustainable modes of transport for part, and sometimes all, of their journey.
“When they open later this year, busway services will offer fast, frequent and reliable bus services to employment, education, and healthcare facilities in Salford, Manchester city centre and Oxford Road to the south of the city centre.”
An interactive map showing park and ride spaces across Greater Manchester is available at www.tfgm.com/parkandride.
For more information on the bus priority project as a whole, please visit www.tfgm.com/buspriority
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Total waste of money IMHO. Caused utter chaos for thousands of people.
Get the bus then.
It'd be 2 buses and a huge walk, so I'll stick to the car thanks.
Why the use of a very old black and White photograth to represent this road?.
Why not? It's rather cool actually, looks almost continental.
God this is depressing. When will the council realise that bus lanes CREATE congestion. Utterly stupid
Should just build more trams, not shitty bus ways. And trams that aren't on roads! Or... are underground. Second-rate solution, this.
Not if you go by bus. Loads of people in single occupant cars all travelling in and out of town at the same time deserve all the traffic delays they experience.
If everyone who complained about congestion got on the bus, there would be no congestion.
Indeed 2nd anon. 2nd rate options. A half decent metro/underground system is vastly superior to buses and clears roads for cyclists.
Well designed and used bus lanes increase capacity at peak times thereby reducing congestion and / or increasing the amount of people able to access jobs and services, helping to increase economic growth. Some people get very agitated by the idea of them and seem unable to grasp the simple concept of how they work, it's really quite amusing.
So why are numerous cities getting rid of them and seeing the benefits of doing so?
This is hilarious. The number of times I've seen clear bus lanes and buses stuck in the traffic behind them unable to access them because of the jams they create it's just bonkers. Also, is it beyond comprehension for some people that buses are not a viable option for everyone!??!?!?!??!
"Numerous"? You mean only liverpool and by no means is it getting rid of them all. It is a plain and obvious fact that bus lanes, if well used, have greater capacity than a standard traffic lane. It's simply a case of understanding which traffic corridors they are most effective on; those where bus patronage is low clearly don't make any sense. I'm sure someone has done their sums and deems this one to be effective.
Not just Liverpool, from memory there was 3 or 4 other places, Coventry being one of them.
Evidence, Darren?
Have a look on google. Liverpool are getting rid of them now.
Surely it is better to have some people travelling fast and congestion free by bus in dedicated bus lanes and the rest sat in traffic jams in their cars rather than having everyone sat in traffic jams in their cars. To me it seems obvious to give people a way to avoid traffic jams while respecting the right of the people who seem to enjoy sitting in them to continue to do so. Happy motoring!
JS: I think you should award a prize to the most sensible Anon of the week. So if this, above, is it.
so far .......
As it's Leigh and a mainly working class town and not one of the chattering class suburbs of Manchester they get a bus lane and not a tram or train connection.Hopefully the future Mayor of Greater Manchester will address the clear bias towards the city of Manchester in the provision of Metrolink lines.Its a disgrace that the biggest towns in Greater Manchester,Bolton,Wigan and Stockport have no tram lines,that's nearly one million people who are seeing no benefit from Metrolink.
All three of those towns you mention have excellent train connections to Manchester. Additional connectivity through Metrolink etc, particularly for intermediate journeys, would be good but to suggest they're ignored in terms of transport as you are, is bollocks.
There's like a train every minute from Stockport into Manchester!
A bus lane will be better than Metrolink. Cheaper and more reliable. Bus Rapid Transit systems are increasingly popular in many of the world's urban areas and can easily equal the carrying capacity of light rail systems for a much lower cost and with much greater flexibility.
Yes they are ignored.If you think Bolton has good transport connections you clearly don't live there or visit there.Bolton has a terrible train connection to Manchester.Also why should a disproportionate amount of the transport budget for Greater Manchester be spent on the suburbs of Manchester?.
Trains from WIGAN take too long to get into Manchester city centre..SECOND RATE....Greater Manchester..JUST...!!!
A logical point David, reached by ignoring plain reality (as per normal). Existing Metrolink lines go to Langworthy, Metrolink, Ashton, Droylsden, Clayton, Oldham, Rochdale, Crumpsall, Stretford, Newton Heath, Moston... are these 'chattering class suburbs' in your view? Or are you just ignoring them?
Name one city that has chosen a bus lane over a tram/underground for any reason other than the cost of building them? Here's a clue, what does London build?
You ask that as if is cost isn't a reasonable factor to consider. London is the most densely populated part of the country, so the high cost of an underground is financially justified. Where the population is smaller or less dense, there is less benefit to a more costly system. Pretty simple.
No, they're not ignored David. You're talking shite as usual. 8+ trains an hour from Bolton to Manchester, taking about 20 minutes.
To those believing that Bolton has good train links; the trains are 40 years old, massively overcrowded to the point that people cannot physically get on them and not fit for public usage (seats built for children, filthy and dangerous). For years, Bolton and Wigan have had appalling public transport links with Manchester.
The number of trains to Bolton from Manchester has actually gone down as result of electrification and the movement of some services to using the Atherton line to Wigan.Those numpties who keep saying what a great service a Bolton has firstly only state the number of trains per hour,not the number of carriages and secondly are totally ignorant that even that is totally inadequate given the size of the towns the biggest in the country,and the commuting population.Some Mancs are as ignorant about the rest of Greater Manchester as Londoners are of everything north of Watford.
THREE of the TEN BOROUGHS NOT served by METROLINK???
The three biggest after Manchester not served by Metrolink.Also where is Manchester circle line?.The whole system is useless if you want to use Metrolink to go from Bolton to Bury for instance,everthing goes through central Manchester that increases rather than decreases congestion.
What they should have done was re-instate the train station in Leigh. I live in Atherton and genrally the train service in to Manchester is great. Putting a station back in Leigh would mean less traffic on the East Lancs and help Leigh's economy. There is a higher cost for doing this but as the population grows, even with a bus lane, the East lancs will once again become too congested, meaning that something like this wil have to be done anyway. Do the more expensive stuff first and reduce the whole life cost, rather than patching a problem with a bus lane.
Agree totally.