Manchester Metrolink’s E-Ticketing
Manchester tram system, Metrolink, is introducing electronic ticketing. This is one of their trial readers.
Manchester Metrolink’s E-Ticketing
The system is called Get Me There and from what I can find, it will be on another different system to London’s Oyster.
As Oyster is being modified to accept contactless bank cards, I would hope that Manchester will do the same.
As we are still a united kingdom, surely we need a set of ticketing rules that are the same across the country.
First amongst these rules is that all ticketing systems for public transport must work with contactless bank cards. Surely, the lack of any major opposition to the abolishing of cash on London’s buses, is proof that London has got their offering right. In two years or so, no visitor to London with a contactless bank card will need to buy a ticket.
This surely is a great attraction to all visitors to a city.
The next step in London, may well be that if you are over the requisite age, you can nominate a bank card to be your Freedom Pass, thus cutting the number of cards people have to carry.
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?
