Riding Manchester’s Trams
I had hoped to see some Eccles cakes at Eccles, but I didn’t even see a bakers, as I walked from the train to the tram.
I took the tram from Eccles to the interchange at Cornbrook, from where I went south to Didsbury Village and then back up to the centre of Manchester.
The new line to Didsbury wasn’t open, the last time I used the system and new stations seem better than the old with to me, much welcomed local maps and other improvements.
Manchester is fairly unique amongst UK tram systems in that it runs two different types of tram; the voriginal T68 and the new M5000. The new ones can also be coupled into pairs to make a four car train.
Rochdale
To illustrate how bad some of our town centres have become, BBC Breakfast is looking at Rochdale, where 1 in 6 of the shops are empty, today.
Surely the problems of Rochdale are going to get worse in the next couple of years, when they open the Metrolink to Manchester.
As it opens in Summer 2012, it looks like some of the rats have left before the ship sinks, making the problems worse. Dorothy Perkins, Mcdonalds and The Body Shop were named in the program.
It looks a classic case of planning a city bit-by-bit in isolation. The new Metrolink will bring people into the centre for their shopping. But it seems, they haven’t thought about Rochdale.
On my travels I did go to Eccles and that town surprised me. So what have they done right in Eccles and wrong in Rochdale?
The Anonymous Widower 