Woodlands Road station - Mr S Price's further representations
| Section | Closures |
1 6320627
The Misleading Case for the Closure of Woodlands Road Manchester
Metrolink Station
Woodlands Road is “little used”;” least used on the Network”;” least used
on the Bury line” claims by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)
• The passenger survey commissioned by TfGM on Thursday 26th
November 2009 shows 967 passengers used the Station between 7
am and 7.pm. This equivalences to over quarter of a million
passengers were using the Station in a year.
• This level of usage was consistent with the level of usage found in
the surveys conducted by the Save our Station Committee (SoSC)
on the Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th March 2011.
• This level of usage is consistent with the 1300 plus who signed the
petition for the retention of Woodlands Road.
• At the times of both surveys the passenger demand at Woodlands
Road was suppressed by the lack of capacity on Metrolink at
weekday morning peak times which significantly impacted
Woodlands Road – it being the last Station on the line before
Central Manchester meant the trams reaching Woodlands Road
were consistently full so potential passengers used alternative
transport.
• The North Manchester Metrolink Stations – CIF Full Business
Case; and the Woodlands Road Metrolink Stop – Closure
Appraisal Report both state “The existing Woodlands Road stop on
the Bury line is the least used Metrolink stop on the system, earning
just over £200,000 per annum (around 1% of the total) in
revenue.” However, given that there at the time of writing these
Reports there were 37 stations on Metrolink this means the average
income of each is only 2.7%. If we take the heavily used city
centre stations out of the equation this average is reduced further
and a figure of 1% therefore would not be significantly less than
that for a number of Metrolink stations.
• No attempt has been made to investigate increasing the patronage
of Woodlands Road before contemplating closure as required by
the 2005 Railways Act. The peak time suppressed demand issue
referred to above would have been partly alleviated by the
introduction of more double trams but this only occurred after the
service at Woodlands road was reduced including no services at
peak times. Other means of increasing patronage suggested by
SoSC, yet ignored, include weatherproofing the pathway from
Hazelbottom Road and introducing a level crossing between the
platforms so reducing walk times for passengers.
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