Only buses, taxis and cycles would be allowed on the half-mile stretch of Oxford Road - between Whitworth Park and Manchester Metropolitan University. Cars would instead have to use Upper Brook Street and Princess Street.
Major links to Salford and Oldham would also get new bus and cycle lanes as part of the £50m package.
Greater Manchester Public Transport Executive is launching a 12-week consultation into the proposals today.
Oxford Road is one of Europe's busiest bus routes with around 200 an hour passing the two universities and the MRI.
Around 55,000 people - almost one in five of the city's workforce - are employed on the stretch between Whitworth Park and Portland Street.
The bus terminus at Parrs Wood, Didsbury, and nearby junctions would also be improved, and a bus lane added to Wilmslow Road in Withington and more pedestrian crossings on Upper Brook Street.
Commuters would eventually be able to travel across the city without having to change services or pay more than one fare, GMPTE bosses said.
New bus and cycle lanes
North of the city, new bus and cycle lanes are planned along Manchester New Road and Rochdale Road to improve the Middleton service.
The Boothstown to Manchester route along the A580 and the A6 through Salford would also be redesigned, with new bus lanes along the East Lancashire Road.
Cars would also be banned from short stretches in the city centre, including Portland Street and Piccadilly between Lever Street and Newton Street. Maria Balshaw, director of the Whitworth Gallery on Oxford Road, welcomed the plan saying it would make Manchester `a better place for people to live, work and visit'.
Coun Keith Whitmore said: "These radical proposals will play a crucial role in improving the journey times and reliability of bus services that will, in turn, offer new and improved links to jobs, education, healthcare and leisure pursuits."
Work would begin early next year and should be completed in 2013.
Jackie Potter is chief executive of Corridor Manchester, a partnership between the council, hospitals and universities on Oxford Road.
She said: "This package will help to connect people in local communities and across Greater Manchester to employment, learning and leisure opportunities in the corridor.
"It will also help to improve the quality of the environment and make the corridor a more attractive place to study, work and invest." Tweet
Comments
Login or Register to comment
MMM GMPTE seem hell bent on creating as much congestion as possible - no doubt they will retry the CONgestion charge after this.
Here we go again on the nutters round about.More planning officers dreams of how to keep their jobs. It will end in tears as all the badly laid plans they come up with.
What's the point in giving an entire road to the tantrum prone drivers? It would be like a ghost town when the drivers spit out their dummies again and go on another selfish strike.
And will 'taxi' include private hire or should we be ready for more people protesting?
Leave the road as it is!
What idiot came up with this idea, a main route to to hospital, you can just image what i will be like when your stuck in traffic waiting to get to the hospital, or stuck on a cramped bus feeling sick, unless you can afford the luxury of a taxi.
This is no joke Mrs Potty! are you going to put the rising bollards there as well.
Its a main route for God's sake to the Manchester royal, eye, St Mary's and the Childrens Hospital, are you going to pay the taxi fares while the bus drivers are on strike, How are local people going to get to the hospital, the traffic on surrounding roads are tremendous at times and if you block off oxford road it will be the Cities worse nightmare.
Don't Do It Mrs Pottey!
Banning cars from some of the busiest roads seems a bit radical. But first....should'nt banning cars from the pavement be the first step?
Just a thought.
Speaking as someone who actually lives and works on Oxford Road, this sounds brilliant. Perhaps fewer cyclists will be injured. Perhaps my baby daughter will have a slightly lower risk of a respiratory complaint. I'm just sorry we'll have to wait until 2013 for it to be finished.
This must just be a figment of my imagination as it seems like a plan B. They seem to have found £50m to add a few signs at each end to 'BUSSES ONLY AT ALL TIME'.
Anychance the council will reclaim our council tax back from First or the drivers union given they have not kept up their end of the bargain and provided the services we have all paid for? I thought not. Weak councillors, taking our cash from every angle and giving in to corporate bullies. Sack em all.
Welcome to Stage Two, of the 'We may as well 'Charge' for the honour of driving to town' tax.
Stage One is the 'Well, we have done everything in our power to improve public transport [besides.... actually... making them... any 'better', but that's by-the-by?!])', pre-emptive boot between the legs!
Three... 'You pay to park anyway, and look how congested the 3 cars that drove through last week? Cough, cough... the 'smog' is horrendous and you will all suffer respiratory probs', threat. Then... 'MURDERERS of the Environment, the buses, taxis, trams, and trains, 'must' raise their prices so you don't lose your car when we put the 3 quid.... oops... meant £7.00 (damn those auditors, eh!)), obligatory 'donation'.
Welcome to London! lol
This city was designed by the victorians to get millions of people to work in the centre with horse and carts railways Etc,Until the townplanners got their hands on the city and now with millions of workers missing, the traffic gets worse.that in my books is bad planning.Just like the millions of families that lived in manchester in housing that fed the factories,mines,and a port with workers now they have all gone and the city is moaning we dont have any housing? where have all thoses thousands upon thousands of houses gone.Even the most thickest of a planner would pull one house down and build another to replace it? Whatever happend, once again the planners got involved.MCC at its very best "I think not" .
Tim C, As long as you live in a city you will have problems with the air quality.If you want clean air move out of the city if your that concerned with your childrens health.Cities are places for traffic always have been always will be. Even going back a few hundred years they used horses and carts along with all that manure stinking the place up nothing changes only the source of pollutants.
Oxford Road/Oxford Street is one great big bus car park as it is. If only some of the buses were actually full.
The world has gone mad.Who are these people who seem hell bent on destroying manchester city centre?The bus drivers are going on strike now so what do the council plan to do.Thats right give whole roads to them.
Tim C, I am not sure why you think having a bus only route will improve the air quality. Picc Gardens is a bus only interchange and is the site of the second worse air pollution in the country. Maybe oxford road in 2013 will take that mantle and push picc gardens to 3rd spot.
Local lad, outsidethebox "Cities are places for traffic " NO THEY ARE NOT !!
They are places for people to enjoy, 'traffic' is the last thing they are they for.
Get used to it ... this is just the first step to wean the lazy off their crutch.
Is this for the city's workforce or is it to enable students easier access to spend their money in the city centre?
They need to ban bikes as well, they are a Nightmare weaving in and out the traffic on Oxford Rd, the students thinks its some of game, because they are near the Royal Infirmary....
And i pay road tax for? ...oh thats right to use my car on roads
a couple of questions:
1) Where can we see a copy of the plans in large format?
2) In London and Bristol motorcyclists are allowed to use bus lanes in most places. Why not in Manchester?
Tim C says "Speaking as someone who actually lives and works on Oxford Road, this sounds brilliant. Perhaps fewer cyclists will be injured."
The next time I'm walking on the pavement on Oxford Road and I'm forced to avoid a cyclist, I'll make sure he/she goes down instead of me.
Bus experience this evening was a late cram-packed cattle-truck. It left Piccadilly as a 203, but changed to a 201 before I got on at Ardwick. There were many disgruntled passengers when it sailed past it's usual turn-off at Reddish Bridge.
Public transport is the alternative when nothing preferable is open to you. You just endure it.
Anyone thought about limiting the number of buses that travel up and down Oxford Road? Everytime I've walked up and down that road there are always at least 3 or more buses? Always seems to be a bus bottle neck out side the bbc!
My spidey senses tell me there will be an increase in bus-cycle rage and more cyclist deaths.
There should be a fine for cyclists that studenly think they can ignore red traffic lights and cycle on pavements, and bus drivers should be fined for cycle lane blindness syndrome!
Hmm a truly terrible idea. This will leave only two arterial routes from that part of South Manchester into the centre. Given that they are already congested - how is this going to help? Hows about providing proper park-and-ride facilities around the city, with cheap, affordable, regular transport. It works in Chester, Oxford, Leeds and many other cities. It's rather pathetic and embarrassing that Manchester is so out of date.
If only buses with clean engines and exhaust filters would be allowed on Oxford Road, the current situation could improve already. Older busses should pay a "fine" which should be used to improve public transport.
Andy, Wythenshawe
I said the city centre was for people but you need these roads to get the people into the centre.And the victorians knew how to plan the roads and the street to do this.But over the years the roads and the railways have been altered and closed so now we have problems getting a few thousand people into the centre.Just look at the mess MCC has made out of the gardens in piccadilly.
Closing Oxford Road to 'general' motor car traffic was first proposed in the 1945 City of Manchester Plan, and we are still waiting, as well as arguing, over it!
Perfectly good, wide, higher capacity, multi-lane road (A34 Upper Brook St) runs right alongside it, which will probably be better for motorists, with the lack of bus lanes, fewer traffic lights, connections/slip roads to the Mancunian Way.
Lets just hope Manchester City Council gets the signage correct, after all, the ones outside Victoria station are still wrong, months after it was noticed! Some lovely bollards to catch out the idiots too, please!
THE TRAFFORD CENTRE IS LOOKING MORE ATTRACTIVE DAY BY DAY. PEEL HOLDINGS ARE DOING A GREAT JOB.