Back in 2013, I wrote a lament about how Manchester’s Metrolink tram network didn’t reach its biggest shopping centre, the Trafford Centre. Well, now it does, and I used it for our visits to the Legoland Discovery Centre and the Sea Life Centre.
Two tram stops
Being as it is Britain’s third largest shopping centre by floor area, the Trafford Centre is large enough to have two stops serving it. One is called Trafford Centre, and is the (current) end of the Trafford Park line. The second is the penultimate stop, and is called Trafford Palazzo. This is actually its third name:
- During development, it was known as EventCity which was the name of an events and conference centre located next to the tram stop. However, a few months before the tram stop was due to open, EventCity announced plans to move and the building has subsequently been demolished. The site is now due to become Therme Manchester.
- On opening, the tram stop therefore took the name of the road that went past it, Barton Dock Road.
- Finally, earlier this year, it was renamed Trafford Palazzo after the shopping centre next to it.
This is where I should perhaps explain the difference between the Trafford Centre and the Trafford Palazzo. They were once all the same shopping centre; what is now the Trafford Palazzo was the Barton Square extension to the Trafford Centre. The original builders of the Trafford Centre, the Peel Group, sold the Trafford Centre to Capital Shopping Centres (CSC) in 2011, and around 2013, it was rebranded the ‘intu Trafford Centre’ as part of a group-wide rebrand of CSC to ‘intu‘. The pandemic in 2020 resulted in intu going spectacularly bust, and its largest creditor, CPP Investments, took control of the Trafford Centre. In doing so, they spun out Barton Square as a separate entity, which was bought back by its original owners, Peel Group. They then rebranded Barton Square as the Trafford Palazzo. They remain linked by a covered footbridge, and use the same architectural style, but are technically competitors. It’s a bit like Eldon Square (another ex-intu property) and Eldon Garden in Newcastle, which are linked but owned and managed separately.
Opening
The Trafford Park tram line opened to little fanfare in March 2020. Partly because this was almost a year later than planned, but also because it was right at the start of lockdown. It splits off from the Eccles Line next to Ponoma tram stop, at a junction that was designed when the Eccles Line was first built. In all, it runs for just over three miles. Trams run approximately every 12 minutes (so 5 trams an hour). At present, they run through central Manchester to Crumpsall, meaning that I can get to the Trafford Centre from Sowerby Bridge with just a single change at Manchester Victoria. However, I gather this is a temporary arrangement, and normally the Trafford Park line trams only go as far as Deansgate-Castlefield. I hope the trams continue to go through central Manchester as otherwise we’ll have an additional change.
The Trafford Centre stop
Getting off at the Trafford Centre stop, you are presented with two ways into the shopping centre. One is through the back entrance of Selfridge’s, and the other leads you into one of the car parks where a series of escalators takes you into the upper level of the shopping centre roughly in the middle. It does feel like something of an afterthought, and it’s not the most welcoming way in, which was also my criticism of the bus station. It feels a bit like the tram stop was designed for people who work at the Trafford Centre and not shoppers.
Speaking of the bus station, this is located out on a limb at another part of the shopping centre. This seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to create a multi-modal transport interchange. After all, other out of town shopping centres like Meadowhall and the MetroCentre both have huge transport interchanges with buses, coaches, trains and, in Meadowhall’s case, trams. The Trafford Centre tram stop was designed such that it could easily be extended in future, and so maybe there could be a third stop added in a future phase which interchanges with the bus station. Original plans saw the line cross the Manchester Ship Canal and the M60, and head out towards the Salford City Stadium and Port Salford, but this hasn’t been built.
On the day we visited, the line did seem well-used, but it was also the day of the Manchester Half Marathon which starts and ends at Old Trafford. I’m therefore not sure how typical our experience was.
