UKREiiF | Burnham weighs transport options for Atom Valley
A tram-train is the preferred option as the Greater Manchester Mayor looks to make the 17m sq ft industrial cluster in the northern GM boroughs a reality.
Speaking to Place North West following a panel session at UKREiiF this morning, Burnham said that a funding horizon was emerging, giving greater certainty to his hopes for a major infrastructure investment as he looked to drive forward a project he believed can elevate Bury, Rochdale and Oldham.
The funding relates to the £1bn Greater Manchester can access through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements programme, running to 2027 – extended in the recent Budget to 2032.
Burnham told Place: “It gives us confidence to move forward with our preferred option, which is not just an in-and-out route to benefit Atom Valley, but will have wider benefits for Middleton, Heywood and Bury. The front-runner is tram-train technology, but the detailed work is still coming together, and we’ll have greater certainty in the second half of this year.”
A Mayoral Development Zone is now in place for Atom Valley, as Burnham looks to make good his pledge to address Greater Manchester’s own north-south divide and drive forward a project of “national and international significance,” as he described it.
As for the sites, 13m sq ft of the 17m sq ft across Atom Valley is within the Northern Gateway, at the intersection of the M60, M62 and M66, with Rochdale’s Kingsway and Stakehill, both well-established industrial locations, also in the mix.
Burnham said that the Northern Gateway plans as they fit into the Places for Everyone strategy on housing and employment land are now with the Secretary of State – the Atom Valley area also includes 7,000 homes, potentially – and that “hopefully, planning certainty will soon emerge”.
Paul Ormerod, chair of the Atom Valley board, said: “It’s a very ambitious vision, and the good thing is it is within Greater Manchester’s power to address its own north-south divide.
“The Northern Gateway can accommodate a mega-factory with space to spare. We’re keen to make this a cluster of excellence in areas such as sustainable materials, advanced machinery, and intelligent machines. The benefits to clustering in productivity terms are massive across all industries – we only have to look at MediaCity locally to see that.”
Burnham told the event: “It’s a new era for Greater Manchester, and we need to fix the fundamentals – housing, transport, technical education. We talk about how our five universities drive forward R&D – well, Atom Valley can bring to mass production technologies developed at the Energy House at Salford University, and at facilities like GEIC.”
He is going to have to fight Manchester to get this needed shift in transport strategy for Greater Manchester because they are going to want money for transport to arena in Eastlands which will be doomed without it
By Anonymous
Big long term project and it needs some big long term thinking to get the best. Would be great to get an ev or battery giga factory here. That would take Whitehall though so too far North for them to understand….for now.
By Anonymous
When are we going to enjoy a good rail transport system in the Irlam, Monton, Worsley, Swinton and beyond areas???
By Barry Haines
Ambitious indeed, but 1 billion pounds is not much, when the Trafford Centre Metrolink cost half that alone, some years ago. The importance of a circle line, linking Bury with Rochdale via Atom, has been highlighted here.That would connect Bury with Oldham seamlessly, and provide two separate routes to this from all over GM.
By Elephant
The green belt around Middleton is fast disappearing without supporting infrastructure to support these new developments. Surrounding roads are gridlocked daily and Rochdale councils Middleton plan seeks to narrow existing arterial roads. Where are our trams? we don’t have any only a vague plan for sometime never.
By Save Middleton
Surely the most sensible option is to reinstate the closed lines? Some have been built on but not in a major way that could stop development.
By Heritage Action
Sorry Anonymous 12.53, already 2 tram stops within a few minutes of Eastlands . Must try harder.
By Anonymous
We need to have a word with ourselves about green belt that’s between GM towns as opposed to the periphery. You can argue places like Heywood and Middleton have weak transit options because green belt has left them sub-scale places, and they would have organically joined up with Rochdale and Bury. If we think this land is a valuable amenity then let’s buy and turn it into country park and green ways with proper rights of way and access, not just fetishise it as something we see, but can’t use, and comes at a high economic cost to some really hard pressed places.
By Rich X
Wen are we gonna get a tram from salford crescent to bolton and wigan
By Tony monks