Chorlton to Centre Commuting

Inspired by Prestwich Pootler's recent blog post, I thought I would compare my commute options too. I live in Chorlton, and for the sake of this blog post, we will say that I live at the Barlow Moor Road Co-Op. I do live a little away but not significantly so that it will affect my choice of transport. I commute to the top of Deansgate, to the junction with Blackfriar's Street, although this will soon change to Princess Street but it shouldn't change the outcome much.

I'm going to shamelessly steal Pootler's criteria, although I won't be assigning a numerical score, I'll just outline each aspect for each mode of transport. The below list is lifted from his article (hope you don't mind!):

• Speed: time taken from front door to office door (in-bound journey described for brevity, similar values assumed for return trip unless otherwise stated);
• Cost: how much each journey costs (for return trip purchased at peak time);
• Time active: how much exercise the respective mode provides;
• Pleasantness: how appealing it is to commute this way;

Bicycle:

I'm actually going to split this up into two categories, Vehicular Cycling and Low Traffic Cycling purely because of how different the experiences are.

Vehicular Cycling:

This is the fastest and cheapest method to get in and is what I most often choose, even in heavy rain. The only reason I wouldn't cycle in is if I had a mechanical failure or one of my lights was flat and it was dark.

My route goes along Barlow Moor Road, Manchester Road, Seymour Grove, Stretford Road, Upper Chorlton, Chester Road, Deansgate. I previously followed the Chorlton cycleway route (Chorlton Road/Upper Chorlton Road) and that is the most direct, but that stretch is rather unpleasant and the new Stretford Road cycleway is much nicer for only a few hundred metres extra.

When I say vehicular cycling, I mean using my 10 years of road cycling experience to keep myself safe. This includes taking the lane at pinch points, when the lane is narrow, staying out of door zones, and using signals and hand gestures to communicate to car drivers when I want them overtaking and when I don't (i.e. if there is a pedestrian crossing island coming up I will move to the centre of the lane and hold my right palm flat behind me to tell them to stay back, then move over to the left after and give them a thumbs up for waiting). This is actually extremely successful in moderating 95% of drivers' behaviour and keeps me safe, although there is definitely the odd idiot who ignores my signals and close passes anyway but it's not so bad.

• Speed: This is the fastest route possible for me, so can't get any better than that!
• Cost: Free other than very occasional repairs.
• Time active: Pretty much all of it, and I need to keep a decent speed for most of it too in order to keep up with traffic.
• Pleasantness: It has nasty bits like crossing Chester Road with no traffic light help, the entire stretch of Deansgate, and bits of Seymour Grove, but all in all it's fairly pleasant. It's not relaxing though: I am constantly looking over my shoulder, moving left and right in the lane as the width and obstacles change.

All in all, it may already be obvious why this is my first choice. It can be poor in the rain or in the dark but I change at either end anyway so I don't mind.

Low Traffic Cycling:

This is slightly different. This route avoids as much traffic as possible by going down the Fallowfield Loop and up Wilmslow Road and Oxford Road. Of course there are still heavy traffic sections at either end of the cycleways but they aren't too bad.

• Speed: Google Maps says that this is 33 mins vs the other route's 26 but I find they are more like 40 mins vs about 24, so there is a significant difference. Still fairly quick though!
• Cost: Exactly the same as the other cycling option although the extra 2 miles might wear some components out ever so slightly more.
• Time active: Pretty much all of it, there are much fewer red lights especially on the Loop so you can keep up a decent speed. That said, there is no obligation to unlike when you are in primary position in front of a car, so pootling at 10-12mph is often what I do after a long day.

Pleasantness needs its own section as it varies so much. The Loop is lovely most of the time, with lots of nature and wildlife around, completely traffic free etc. But at night it looks like this (this is WITH my camera flash):

 

Not really pleasant at all. This route is only really an option in the day not only because of this but because the standard of driving on Wilmslow Road is so terrible at night, and Oxford Road is opened to private traffic after 9:30pm, and the segregation kerbs there are designed for buses, they are totally insufficient to keep you safe from moronic private traffic.

However, in the day this is a lovely route and the only problematic section is from the end of the Loop to the start of Oxford Road, through Fallowfield and Rusholme. You have to be very careful here as cars turn over the cycleway without looking and people walk in it, but it's still very safe overall.

Bus:

The bus is just not a good option. The options are the 85/86 that go from the Co-Op to Piccadilly Gardens, but it's a poor service. They spend their time entirely on extremely busy roads with almost no bus lanes at rush hour, so they end up taking forever to get anywhere, especially now the Inner Ring Road Works are ongoing.

• Speed: Absolute best case is 45 minutes: 32 mins on the bus and a 12 min walk from Picc Gardens to Deansgate. This will go down to an acceptable 35 mins theoretical total time when I move work to Princess St, but the buses take much longer than the 32 mins stated. It can often be close to an hour with bad traffic.
• Cost: I haven't got them for a while due to the above reason, but I believe a single has gone up to a ludicrous £3.20. Dayriders are £4.50 I believe, but of course there is the option of the megarider which has gone up to £15! (It seems like only yesterday I was buying them at a tenner, but of course it was 8 years ago now). £15 isn't that bad for a week's commuting cost plus any other journeys you want, but of course it is £15 more than the bike. And if you just want to get the bus to avoid a rainstorm for one day instead of being on the bike, the £4.50 dayrider is hard to stomach.
• Time active: Walk to and from the bus stops at each end. Currently a total of 15 minutes walk each way which is decent exercise but not really enough, meaning would have to supplement with a lunchtime/evening walk or a visit to the gym.
• Pleasantness: Both my stops are terminuses so I am guaranteed a seat, but the buses do get very busy, especially with students around the Loreto and Oxford Road areas. They can get pretty noisy and crowded with students, not unpleasant but it's hard to read a book or anything.

All in all, a pretty poor option. Would need some serious work to make it a natural choice, probably a combination of cheaper tickets and bus priority work (including private traffic bans on certain stretches of the route).

Tram:

I love the Metrolink but I actually very rarely use it. Its main benefit (at least on the Chorlton line) is complete segregation from the roadway, so it can never get stuck in traffic. I understand that other lines don't always have this luxury though and so the times aren't quite so reliable.

• Speed: The route would be a 13 minute walk to Chorlton Station, then a 16 minute tram to Exchange Sq or Market St (depending on which line), then a 6 minute walk. (Of course for my Princess St job this will be only 13 mins to St Peter's Sq and then a 3 min walk). This gives me a total time of about 30 minutes assuming I set off to catch a specific tram and thus have no waiting time. This is rather fast and nearly comparable to cycling!
• Cost: A return is £3.20 or £4.20 at peak, which is again rather pricey but cheaper than a bus dayrider. A week pass is £16.40 but restricts you to this one route rather than the "freedom" of a slightly cheaper megarider.
• Time Active: I'd actually spend more time walking to/from the tram stops than on the actual tram, they are just extremely fast and efficient. Perhaps I could combine this with a 3 minute bike ride from my house to the tram stop, but if I'm already on my bike, why would I not just ride the whole way, it's quicker and cheaper!
• Pleasantness: This REALLY varies. At rush hour, your face and a strangers armpit become firm friends over the 15 or so minutes, but outside of rush hour you get great views of the city, a smooth ride, and a very clean and attractive vehicle. But it's bad at the times that people actually use it...

Car

It will be no surprise to anyone that follows me that I think driving a private car into the city centre is almost always a terrible idea. While I'm sure its a necessity for some people, if you can reasonably make your journey via another method (I've detailed a few that I can use above) then I consider it even selfish to drive in when you don't need to.

I definitely don't need to and thus never have, but this is how it would go:

• Speed: As I write this at nearly 2am (it took longer than I thought), Google Maps says it is a 12 minute drive to Great Jackson Street. I know this will easily become 25-30 minutes at rush hour on a normal day, and given the Ring Road Works, possibly even 35+ mins at the moment? I say Great Jackson Street because that's the nearest car park I can find to work that isn't ludicrously priced (which I will get onto in a second). And then I have a 17 minute walk from the car park to work. This means it's easily over 40 minutes door to door at rush hour.
• Cost: The parking is £4.50 for all day and it's a 9 mile return journey, which is £3.60 at the 40p a mile estimate for car expenses (it's a relatively cheap car to run). That gives us a whopping £8.10 for the day's travel, which is double anything else. There is the option to pay £21 to park right next to work for the day but I'm not even going to entertain that. There is probably also the option of some closer on street parking but that's a complete gamble and you will waste a good 10 minutes trying to find it!
• Time active: Surprisingly for a car commute, there's a lot of walking involved, but again 17 minutes each was isn't really enough exercise for the day so I'd have to do some separate exercise later.
• Pleasantness: I hate driving in traffic jams. Even for the journeys where cycling takes longer, I always prefer it because I'm constantly moving and seeing things instead of being stuck in a queue. That said, there is the radio/podcasts in the car that don't make it fun, but make it slightly less shit. And of course in the freezing rain or sweltering heat the climate control is nice, but you'd still have to walk the last leg exposed to the elements anyway.

So yeah, car is a terrible idea.

It's not hard to see then, why 80% of the time I choose vehicular cycling, 15% of the time I choose low traffic cycling, and the other 5% when I've got a flat or whatever, I take the tram. That said, I don't do the exact same route each time. I'll mix it up, like by going down Oxford Road and turning right onto Cavendish St and picking up Stretford Road there, or going down to Didsbury to pop in a shop and getting Barlow Moor Road back (that stretch from Didsbury to Chorlton is the worst road I ever cycle on by far). Let's hope that Beelines makes it so that I don't have to choose between the fastest and the most pleasant/safe cycle route!