Most residents of Blackpool will agree that the town has been lacking a comprehensive, integrated transport plan for decades. When the 14-platform Central Station closed in 1964, the throat of the tourism industry was slit and Blackpool’s lifeblood has been ebbing away ever since.
Blackpool used to be unique as a seaside tourist destination and was a crowd puller, but has been left in the dark as city breaks have become more popular, cheap foreign holidays have materialised and other coastal tourism hubs have modernised. No longer are doctors recommending that tourists visit to drink the salty seawater in order to encourage 8 bowel movements per day, though some might say the mindset of some current councillors remains in the era when they did. Blackpool is, as locals are only too aware, degenerating and when Paul Daniels gets support for slating the town in the press, you know there are problems.
The Council has stepped up and has injected a lot of cash, but they have arguably neglected key issues with the town. One of these is transport.
Whilst it’s undeniably a good move that the Council are taking action to acquire neglected but very important buildings in the town with a view to using them for the grand purposes, I believe the lack of focus on a proper transport system and proper avenues for people to flow into and out of the town are asphyxiating any possibility of a growth period.
In this Zeitgeist people have no time to do anything and disposable incomes are going down. We don’t want to be sat on trains for hours, or drive round some banal one-way, shared space mash up looking for a place to park. If it’s a lot of effort to do something, particularly when there are other similar choices, we’re likely to opt for the easiest and cheapest.
The state of play is as follows.
The town centre road system is chaotic and not motor vehicle friendly. Parking is more expensive than most places in Lancashire, and traffic wardens are encouraged to be militant and unforgiving. I’ve ranted and raved until the cows come home about this.
There is limited capacity for direct access for cars and buses from the M55 into town via the single-carriageway Yeadon Way.
Blackpool council wish to truncate the Blackpool South railway station despite its usage increasing year on year.
Blackpool North station is horrendous and the lines lack electrification, limiting the scope of the station. Its location is also far from ideal, being in proximity to very little of prominence.
Blackpool International Airport is one of the most expensive to fly from in the UK, they apply a surcharge just for entering the departure lounge and there are very few destinations anyway. This airport isn’t linked into any other transport system.
The tram system, despite its usage being in decline, is currently undergoing extensive and expensive modernisation, but the route still fails to bisect any zones of dense population making it pointless for locals. It is not being integrated into a larger transport plan to make better use of it although there is some speculation that it could be linked to Blackpool North station as part of the Talbot Gateway.
So on the whole conditions are not ideal.
For a rail traveller to get to Blackpool it takes a long, long time. The journey from Preston can be completed more quickly by car and for less money. Destination stations Blackpool North and Blackpool South are in poor condition and soon Blackpool North will be the only station left if Maxine Callow has her way. Its location makes it poor for visitors, though. It’s nowhere near any guesthouses and when you leave the station you instantly get a bad impression of Blackpool. This will hopefully change with the Talbot Gateway.
For someone travelling by car, getting into Blackpool can be hell during any remotely busy time and once you hit the centre the car parking is extortionate. As I mentioned, the only direct route into Blackpool from the motorway is Yeadon Way. Until 1967, this road used to be the Marton railway line that linked the former Central Station and Blackpool South station with Preston. This line went directly into the heart of Blackpool, terminating where the current Coral Island is and provided direct access to attractions such as Blackpool Tower.
Further to this, the tram system was also much more widespread. Even in 1895 there was a tram line down Lytham Road into South Shore. It closed in 1961 yet in 2010 the council don’t even entertain renewing it. There were plenty of other local tram links, too.
Who would have thought that over 40 years later we still don’t have transport links this good?
Blackpool South rail line is, as I have mentioned, under threat from Maxine Callow’s nut-cracking sledgehammer: she wants to cut it in order for the rail line to terminate at the Pleasure Beach instead. But surely, looking back, the town has declined ever since cuts in the railway line were implemented by Dr Beeching. Cutting it even more can’t be a good thing particularly given that the line itself is being used more and more.
It has been suggested that extending the line back into central and completely re-doing the Central Gateway is an option. It might have been up until fairly recently, in fact. But now, under all of the car parks that enclose Seasiders Way, there are immense overflow tanks that were installed by United Utilities in a bit of a debacle several years ago.
Construction work on these tanks seemed to deliberately coincide with the tourism season, and the entire area between Waterloo Road and Rigby Road was fenced off whilst work was under way. This immediately wiped out hundreds of car parking spaces and forced bus loads of day trippers to get locked into traffic chaos as they had to find another way into town to drop off at Talbot Road or another way into Lonsdale Road in order to park. Add to this the frustration that car travellers must have felt.
The tanks, when completed, proceeded to collapse; so United Utilities had to come back on site for another season, causing similar problems. Then, as ever, the council decided to start their Central Gateway, which meant the whole area was dug up again for a few years. These constant works did serious damage to Blackpool visitor numbers and I remember many businesses putting in for compensation from United Utilities.
But anyway, these tanks are why I don’t think it will ever be feasible to run the railway back into the central area even if they wanted to. Most people, these days, travel to Blackpool by car or bus anyway.
It has been mentioned that the Talbot Gateway will in future incorporate an integrated transport hub. They’ve said they are keeping the bus station but that it will become retail units, so one wonders where the bus station will relocate if this is the case. As far as I have seen, Blackpool North station will remain pretty much the same as it is, and there will not be a tram link up Talbot Road to the station because there is no demand. Is the Talbot Gateway ever going to be the gateway to Blackpool for most people though?
Thinking ahead a few years, we know that sooner or later there will be a very large housing development around the end of the M55 at Whyndyke Farm. They call it the M55 Hub and it has been nicknamed Fylde Village, Kensington-on-Sea and no doubt other names. Should these people want to go into Blackpool, how will they do so? By car, down Yeadon Way or the A583 most likely.
So surely there is a need here to kill two birds with one stone: a provision for an eco-friendly, fast and cheap means for people to get from the end of the motorway into the town centre. We already have a tram system, we already have a bus system and we already have a rail system. Roads are in poor condition and clearly the council are disinterested in repairing them, claiming a shortfall of something like £750,000. How a council can fail to live within its means and constantly whine about having no money is beyond me but that’s for another day.
Could the tram system be extended to the end of the motorway? Probably not, because of the water tanks. Could a park and ride be implemented, with buses going down Yeadon Way? Yes, but this wouldn’t necessarily be the silver bullet because the demographic of the M55 Hub development will be middle income groups that don’t want to use buses and have big expensive BMWs. It would, however, work for tourists, especially if you forced them to use it.
I know this is pure fantasy, even more so than some of Peter Callow’s visions, but I have been inspired by Merlin Entertainments Group. Can you imagine how cool a monorail would be going down Yeadon Way? I am of course thinking of something like the one at Alton Towers. It’d be workable over the water tanks in the Central Gateway, you could slot a station in anywhere and it’d be fast, new and exciting. With a station at the new Fylde Village, it would attract affluence and discourage use of gas guzzlers. With a station at a park and ride, it would make tourists happy. It’d be a gimmick which always works to pull a few extra people. Visitors would want to ride into town on that. It would be the new, exciting option that actually did get people out of cars.
It would also serve to drive business in Blackpool. Currently as I have mentioned, transport links into Blackpool are not that good, and this has a knock-on effect on business. If people can’t get to work or get to the business, then there’s no point in it being there and locations on out of town business parks win every time. Imagine if, for instance, a monorail linked Cypress Point across the Moss and down Yeadon Way into town and you could do the journey in under 10 minutes. It could pick up at the new Queensway development on the way. That’s got to be better than overloading one road with vehicles from thousands of new homes.
So why not Section 106 it to Kensington, Peter? 
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I love the idea of a mono rail Phil,it would be brilliant,it could be like the sky train in Bangkok,which is very successful in transporting people around the city. Lets face it we have plenty of room in the sky,its the road network that has been reduced so much that it is putting people of coming in to the town centre, and the thought of the trams sharing what is left of the roads would be chaotic. Just think the hundred million they are spending on the trams would have got this up and running,they could have just upgraded the track from Stargate to Red Bank road,so that the tourists could use them to see the lights,and lets face it the trams are now under used since the introduction of the free bus pass as most people use the No 1 bus to get to Fleetwood that runs the same course as the trams.
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Excellent article Phil, something needs to be done and fast. We need direct trains to London and Birmingham also, no more of this ‘change at Pretend City’ to anywhere far. Sheepdog is always saying ‘rebuild Central Station and reopen the line’ but that is never going to happen. You would have to reroute Yeadon Way traffic and rip up the Central Corridor (although that muppet Hamish wouldn’t mind as he called it a waste of money). That is just not realistic. I think a park and ride is a good idea, I would have one on South Car Park near South Station and another near Junction 4 near Whyndyke. I love the monorail idea, it would definitely attract a more affluent clientele in residents and visitors. Everybody wins. Some excellent ideas, but the trouble is with pessimistic jobsworths like Cavill and Weaver runnung the show there is a total lack of ambition for such exciting projects.
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Indeed the rebuilding of Central Station will never happen.
That’s why a high tech system such a monorail is so practical: the stations require less footprint, the track requires almost no footprint, the system is quiet, it’s fast, it has no emissions and it can turn corners that a railway cannot.
The drawback as ever is the lack of ambition from the council and the cost. But they’ve just lashed £100m on something pointless on the promenade so for something that actually seeks to solve current and future problems in Blackpool I am sure extra cash can be sought. If only!
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I agree completely Phil I would love to see something like that in Blackpool. I think the way forward is to get the private sector in, this Government has proven time and time again they don’t give a toss about Blackpool or seaside towns in general, so the private sector is the way forward.
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Some years ago a scheme was put forward for a monorail that went out to sea between the piers – it was doo able and surveys were started by First Leisure, but as part of the network the scheme included linking a full loop south station / central station / north station.
I did see the scheme but it was dropped when FLC pulled out.
It must be cheaper to contruct a monorail than diging all the roads.
If Disney can do it so could Blackpool !
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Indeed. I don’t know how far £100m goes in terms of a monorail but I’d have said it would make a good start!
The council need to look at linking up the various forms of transport that we have.
Both train stations are out on a limb and don’t serve the town centre. Both bus stations are the same, and both of these are horrendous.
Trams only run along the promenade which makes them more of a tourist attraction than anything else.
Cycling isn’t viable because there is nowhere to leave your bike in town, and the roads are in such a poor condition that cyclists are at risk of something happening as it did to that army Captain that Harold linked elsewhere.
The only real option is the motor vehicle, be it bus or car, but either way the road system is a joke. It says a lot when there’s a grand scheme to massively improve flow on a road/junction like South Park Drive/Preston New Road, and they scrap it in order to build a Comedy Carpet.
“The Local Transport Plan programme for 2007/08 contained provision for a large traffic management scheme at South Park Drive/Preston New Road aimed at reducing congestion and improving safety and accessibility in this area. These works have been designed to the point where they are ready to proceed to public consultation and implementing this scheme would have placed a substantial funding call on the 08/09 and 09/10 Local Transport Plan programme. However, the Council and Re:Blackpool became aware of an opportunity to bid for monies from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, supported by North West Development Agency funding, to create a major events space on the Tower Headland (currently under construction). In order to facilitate this project it is considered necessary to remodel the highway area in the region in accordance with the draft Promenade Movement Strategy. Local Transport Plan resources will form an essential element within the funding package for the remodelling work required to achieve the necessary highways and transport objectives and as match funding for the Commission for Architecture and Built Environment/ North West Development Agency monies. The Commission for Architecture and Built Environment/ North West Development Agency bid has been successful, thus approval to defer the South Park Drive/Preston New Road scheme until 2010/11 in order to support the Tower Headland project, is sought.”
See here and here for more.
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Peter Callow, like Gary Payne doesnt know what a 106 provision is.We have similar transport problems in Wyre and the A585;all of these problems have been exacerbated by WBC/Payne and when brought up, are IGNORED.Same issue with the Fleetwood station situation, acturally there were 2 sattion in Fleetwood.These clots seem to see transport as a liability and not an asset,little wonder the area has declined.You can regenerate all you want but without PROPER transport solutions,you will never be able to realise the areas economic potential.This farce has been going on for 50 YEARS!
This seems to be a Fylde coast disease and since its supposed to be a destination area,its simply unforgiveable.
If only we could rid ourselves of Fylde/WBC and Blackpool councils, if only……….
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“Roads are in poor condition and clearly the council are disinterested in repairing them, claiming a shortfall of something like £750,000.How a council can fail to live within its means and constantly whine about having no money is beyond me but that’s for another day.”Well it can waste 250k on solicitors for a start but………..
Failing to sort out the roads can have terrible consequences, how long before that BASTARD-FUCK Callow has blood on his hands, one may ask?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8594682.stm
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Fools and their money are easily parted.
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Phil
Excellent review of the history of Blackpool Transport. You should get a job with Blackpool Council and sort things out.
Regarding the state of the roads, I remember not that long ago reading that Blackpool had applied to the Government for permission to use the money realised from the sale of the Airport for road repairs. Not sure what the outcome was, but one thing is sure. They have neglected them for some time now.
Winter time used to be when they dug roads up and laid nice neat tarmac. We used to curse the duration of the repairs but at least we ended up with a decent road surface, just in time for Easter. Now the roads just get worse and they try to blame the harsh winter! They should stop making excuses and get on with it. Too late now though, Easter is upon us.
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Cheers Bill.
I know what you mean about the roadworks, I used to dread the inevitable spend-up that occurred before the end of the financial year but you’re right, it has not happened for a while.
Once again though, the council are fortified in their town hall and nobody is held to account for this outright failure and one could argue robbery of our council tax money.
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From North pier to Pleasure Beach the Tramway is esentially a tourist heritage railway, which sadly is now going to be modernised – bit like putting new efficient diesel trains on the Severn Valley steam Raiway.
For a commuter service it is in the wrong place. To the west there is only fish!
There are no links to car parking, airport or Raiway stations.
I am so sad to see the old trams being sold/given away. The Iconic tourist attraction will be lost. If you want to ride/ view a Blackpool tram – go to Crich!!
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Completely agree Clive. It does indeed seem wholly pointless to pump money into a modern urban tram system when the line doesn’t connect nor bisect anything of significance.
Who knows, maybe a brown envelope or two was passed to the council which “persuaded” them to go for the more modern trams than retrofit the older ones.
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