Andy Burnham announces ‘detailed update’ this year on Stockport’s Metrolink ambitions

Andy Burnham has offered the biggest sign yet that plans to bring the Metrolink to Stockport are getting closer to becoming a reality.

Speaking on the BBC Radio Manchester phone in today, the mayor said the ongoing work at Stockport’s new transport interchange in the town centre will be “Metrolink ready” and that a “detailed update” on the case for bringing the tram to the area will be shared before the end of the year.

Stockport has long wanted a tram service to connect to other areas of Greater Manchester. Recent plans shared to replace two bridges in Stockport included tram-train futureproofing for one additional track.

Mr Burnham also confirmed that Greater Manchester has more funding from the Government as a result of changes to national transport projects such as HS2, which the Prime Minister confirmed would be scrapped to the city at the Tory Party conference earlier in October.

Answering a question on the BBC Radio Manchester phone in, the Mayor said: “TfGM have been doing a detailed assessment of all of our ambitions for Metrolink, and the Metrolink to Stockport is a big part of that. The new interchange that links to new infrastructure is going to be Metrolink ready, so it’s being built with that capability.

“What we’re doing now is looking at the precise schemes that we’ve got to expand Metrolink and looking at the cost of them and we’re going to publish that work later this year.

“We’ve got a big ambition to take Metrolink to Stockport but we’ve also got one to take it north up through close to Middleton, Heywood and up to Bury through the Atom Valley site, so these are part of our ambitions for Metrolink.

“We’ve got a bit more capital funding from the Government. We didn’t agree with their decision around high-speed rail, and east-west rail across the North, but as a result of that they’ve increased some of our local capital so we’ve got some extra ability to do more.

“The long and short of it is that it’s a really important ambition for the city region, we’re going to give a really detailed update later this year on the business case for bringing Metrolink to Stockport so look out for that.”