A revised service will operate on Manchester Metrolink on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th June due to the Parklife concerts taking place in Heaton Park. On both days the Altrincham direct service will not run and will be replaced by a Bury-Piccadilly service (still using double trams) with any passengers wishing to travel onwards to Altrincham being advised to change at Piccadilly where Altrincham services will be starting from. For most of the day these services will run every 12 minutes although on both evenings there will be other changes.
The Heaton Park stop will be closed at 1830 on both days with all passengers being directed towards Bowker Vale stop as it is easier for Metrolink to control crowds at that stop.
Then from 2000 services from Rochdale with be terminated at Central Park and services from East Didsbury will be diverted to Piccadilly, this is to allow extra services to run off the Bury line. Trams will depart Bury every 6 minutes with alternate departures serving Piccadilly and Deansgate-Castlefield. Any passengers who wish to travel from the city centre onto the Oldham-Rochdale line are advised to make their way to Piccadilly where a bus service will run to Central Park to connect with trams.
The following services will run on both days before 2000:
Altrincham-Piccadilly
Bury-Abraham Moss (until 1800)
Bury-Piccadilly
East Didsbury-Rochdale Town Centre
Eccles-Ashton under Lyne
And from 2000:
Altrincham-Piccadilly
Bury-Piccadilly
Bury-Deansgate-Castlefield
East Didsbury-Piccadilly
Eccles-Ashton under Lyne
Rochdale Town Centre-Central Park
It is also worth noting that as a result of this concert the Heaton Park Tramway will be closed to visitors on Sunday 8th June.
Completely depriving Oldham line passengers of a normal service on a Saturday evening for this sort of reason is just not on. Once again once-in-a-blue-moon passengers given complete priority over regular users. I certainly will not now be using Metrolink to go to Manchester this weekend.
I agree. If the bus operators picked which routes they were going to operate at short notice they would be fined. What is needed is a proper numbered route system so people know ehere they are at and run other special services as such on the day.
Putting on buses from Heaton Park entrance to the city centre to cater for the additional passengers would make much more sense than bust intuiting the Oldham line, and would be much more convenient for them too considering that Heaton Park tram stop will be closed in the evenings and passengers being expected to walk to Bowker Vale.
Regular Sunday bustitutions was one of the reasons we were glad to see the back of the train service on the Oldham loop.
The other option, which would have been done in the old days, would have been to draught in the old trams as specials. IE in this case the still serviceable T68s.
The problem isn’t shortage of trams, it’s an alleged shortage of paths through the single line. They managed to get the T68 special through though, and they manage to get empties to and from the depot through.
It’s not just Metrolink that’s affected – the City’s Heritage Tramway isn’t running at all!
Not ideal for the regular passenger especially from Oldham.
On the other hand credit to Metrolink for trying to provide extra services to Heaton Park , but because of the building work at Victoria they simply cant get any more trams through that section so to allow the extras from Heaton Park something else has to give. This time Id blame Railtrack for the disruption at Victoria rather than Metrolink.
(1) Railtrack hasn’t existed for over 10 years (2) The singling of the line through Victoria is in connection with alterations to the Metrolink layout to increase capacity, and nothing to do with the station roof renewal work being carried out by Network Rail (and which has needed doing since the IRA bomb in 1996) so I don’t know where you get that theory from. Also the decision to reduce the tram frequency through Victoria was not made by Network Rail.
Actually the blame for this farce lies not with Metrolink but with TfGM, who specify the service. I’m also beginning to wonder if there is somebody doing 2 jobs, one with TfGM and one with Blackpool council, both of which are showing a great deal of contempt for their ‘regulars’
Mary, blaming Network Rail is not an option. The work at Victoria has been years and substantial cost in the planning. Dont forget that Metrolink are also benefitting from the works there.
I agree with Ken, its a big problem moving so many people but why should regular users be inconvenienced. There is a lot of buses running to the park and also special shuttle services running as well.
It seems, as has been seen with the one direction concerts, that the residents are being penalised with disruption to their transport services.