Manchester In The Slow Lane
An article published in The Times today says that a survey has shown that Coventry is the speediest city in the UK.
It also says Manchester is the slowest!
Could it be that Manchester has a terrible bus system, with little information and single door buses, that take forever to load and unload passengers? So buses waiting at stops, slow everybody down. I commented on the public transport system in Manchester here.
The Anonymous Widower 
The problem in Manchester for the past couple of years and still ongoing is the massive amount of roadworks caused by the extensions to the tram network. Some fairly main roads have had single line traffic for over a year. It will be great when it is finished, and one of the new routes actually opened last week three months EARLIER than planned.
Comment by Liz P | June 2, 2013 |
That’s good project management for you! Most of the Overground in London opened on the projected date, but some services also started early. I do sometimes think, that the London solution of reorganising train lines might sometimes be better than replacing them with trams.
Comment by AnonW | June 2, 2013 |
Trams arent helpful to me, as they dont allow mobility scooters on them, and anyway, there aren’t any near enough for me. I would have to drive to Altrincham or Didsbury and arrange to have a scooter from shopmobility waiting for me at the other end, and collected when I wanted to leave to come home.
Comment by Liz P | June 2, 2013 |
all London buses take some mobility scooters.
The full details are here.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/transportaccessibility/1171.aspx
there is a downloadable list of acceptable scooters. If London accepts your scooter, but manchester doesn’t, you had better give the Manchester buses a kicking.
Comment by AnonW | June 2, 2013 |
They are getting a massive public kicking from the press, the various disability groups and quite a few councillors etc. I think they do allow scooters on buses, but not trams. When I go into the city I drive, park outside shop mobility, pick up the scooter and go wherever I need to go. These days I mostly go to TC or shop online
Comment by Liz P | June 2, 2013 |
I’ve always thought, that compared to other places I’ve been, this part of East London has less mobility scooters, than you’d think there would be. Could it be that the buses are very numerous and nearly all stops have seats and roofs. There isn’t really any hills either and certainly in Hackney the pavements are flat. There are also lots of zebra and light-controlled crossings. And of course, TfL run a pretty good, so I’m told, Dail-A-Ride scheme. And all of the black taxis take wheel-chairs. So perhaps people don’t get mobility scooters, like they do in other places.
Have you seen this?
http://sath.org/page/Scooters_on_Public_transport_in_England/10541/859/
All other trams are mentioned, but not Manchester.
Comment by AnonW | June 2, 2013 |
It depends how old the document is, we havent had trams very long compared to some places. I havent seen this particular document, but have seen similar ones, including one relating specifically to Manchester. Many disabled people get very subsidised taxi rates, so possibly dont need scooters, and they do take up a lot of space
Comment by Liz P | June 2, 2013 |
what piuzzles me is that the disabled access rules for trains are laid down by the government and have to be adhered to. But nobody seems to enforce similar rules for buses except in London.
Comment by AnonW | June 2, 2013 |