Must agree with that. 13 and 14 are a significant distance away from the rest of the station and when the long slightly inclined walkway/travelators aren't working and you have luggage, it's a significant effort to get there.
If you're connecting from 13/14 to Metrolink you might like to consider the lift to the right hand side of the coffee shop located in the "sky lounge". It takes you straight down to street level/taxi rank/car park whereupon a few seconds round the corner you're at the Metrolink departure platform. No need to go down the lengthy escalators (two of them), then walk into the concourse area, turn left and go down yet more escalators, etc.
Victoria may have lost Bury/Oldham services but have gained Blackpool North which may well be bringing in a number of passengers not previously au fait with Victoria having previously no direct service west of Bolton. The building is certainly a throw back to the days of steam and all that was great about our railways but as is typical, decades of under/no investment have left it critically below par.
Deansgate offers an overbridge connection to Metrolink which means Deansgate is the most convenient interchange for passengers wanting to use the tram southbound. Perhaps with the opening of mediacity in the Quays, Deansgate will become more popular although in order to retain the express nature of many services, I'd hope we don't see all services now stopping at Deansgate...unless it's one I want to catch after a matchday!
Salford Crescent remains a joke and I must assume students continue to take an easy-going attitude. If I was using that station frequently I'd have written to Northern Rail/Network Rail/GMPTE to ask what was going to be done to it to make it safer. With certain TPE services no longer calling at Crescent I guess the footfall is down now which may help.
As for the the failed TIF/congestion charging bid, I can't say I looked at the plans for Manchester stations but were they specifically mentioned? One of the bid's failings, in my opinion, was the wonderfully vague pledges made throughout the official publications about what improvements were actually going to take place. In my neck of the woods in Bolton these were as "detailed" as comments such as improvements to the bus station. Fantastic. Gives us all a good idea what is planned!
Incidentally, I've noticed the GMPTE area stations have all recently undergone upgrades such as CCTV/information display boards which were again part of the vague improvements mentioned in the TIF bid documentation. Funny how even without the dosh they still went ahead!
My uncle has just spend the weekend with us and couldn't get over the cost of using the buses compared to London. All London buses cost £1 using an Oyster Card and he was shocked at a comparatively short journey costing him £1.60. One of the benefits of the TIF bid was to be a smartcard ticketing system which, if adminstered similarly to Oyster, would have made things so much simpler for travelling within GMPTE. Even now, having spent nearly 6 years living within the region, I'm only just about understandin it all!
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