The planning decision everyone has been waiting for has finally come, with approval of Peel's inland port on over 100ha of unmanaged openspace between Irlam and Barton. The scale of this development is huge, parking for a 1000 vehicles, a new rail spur across Barton Moss, 4 600m railway sidings, 180,000 sq m of warehousing, 8 25m loading gantries. Romantically the development restablishes the city as a port, and undoubtedly will impact on regional development. However, important improvements to the surrounding road infrastructure, such as a connection to the M62 and a new road bridge across the canal at Cadishead are no longer part of the planning application. A new road bridge linking the port to the Trafford Centre (another Peel development) will be created along with a complex reworking (again) of the M60 high level section. In other words, the transport plan for this development is a dog's dinner - a typically British approach of build it first, and then spend decades trying to sort the infrastructure. In a normal country, this development would not start until the surrounding access and transport issues had been dealt with first. However, the financial and political expediences of the regional governance regime take priority.
Source: Port plan could create 2,000 jobs - News - Manchester Evening News
No comments:
Post a Comment