Transport plans in place for busy bank holiday weekend

Metrolink

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is confident it has the plans and experience in place to help customers stay on track with their journeys next bank holiday weekend.

Greater Manchester welcomes a number of high profile and large scale events and the weekend of 26-28 May promises to be an exciting one with competitors, spectators, shoppers and music fans visiting the region.

Friday 26 May sees the annual Great City Games taking place along Deansgate and 50,000 fans are then expected at Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground on Saturday night to watch Middleton based Courteeners.

The Simplyhealth Greater Manchester Half Marathon and 10K both take place on the Sunday with the running routes including the Etihad Stadium, Old Trafford football ground and Manchester City Centre.

The size and locations of the events mean that they’ll be changes to public transport and a number of local roads will be subject to closure and route diversions.

Aside from providing specific travel advice through a dedicated web page, TfGM will be implementing a number of measures to help those travelling make their journeys as easy and as stress free as possible.

Additional capacity and staff will be provided on Metrolink services across the weekend, all Greater Manchester park and ride facilities will be fully open, bus diversions will be clearly advertised and mobile information screens deployed across the region’s road network.

As for all large scale events of this nature, TfGM, will also be providing live assistance through its dedicated Travel Control Centre. The Control Centre is a fully equipped facility which provides CCTV coverage of the transport network and is staffed by representatives from Metrolink, bus and rail operators and highways officers with direct links to both event organisers and partners such as Greater Manchester Police.

The facility allows for operations specialists to monitor and react to incidents across the network whether that is from altering the timings of traffic lights and signals through to working with operators to adapt bus and tram services as needed. Live customer support will also be provided via TfGM social media team from the Control Centre.

TfGM’s Events and Operational Coordination Manager, Ryan Carter, said; “Greater Manchester is well rehearsed in hosting major international events and the bank holiday weekend promises to be another exciting time for the region. We have developed detailed and robust transport plans and we are confident we have the skills, technology and experience necessary to keep customers moving.

“There will be extra capacity, additional staff and dedicated monitoring throughout the weekend.

“Of course we are expecting large numbers of customers to travel and our advice is to plan ahead and allow extra time for journeys.”