Picc-Vic was a proposed, and later cancelled, underground railway designed in the early 1970s with the purpose of connecting two major mainline railway termini in Manchester city centre, England. The name Picc-Vic was a contraction of the two station names, Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. The proposal envisaged the construction of an underground rail tunnel across Manchester city centre. The scheme was abandoned in 1977 during its proposal stages due to excessive costs, and that the scheme still retained two large and expensive-to-maintain terminal stations in Manchester; other similar sized cities had reduced their terminals to one.
In 1992, the Metrolink system opened and linked both stations via tram, negating the requirement for a direct rail connection to an extent. In 2017, the Ordsall Chord became operational; an overground railway scheme directly linking Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria in a comparable fashion to Picc-Vic.
History
Background
The railway network built in the 19th and 20th centuries by numerous railway companies resulted in various unconnected railway termini around the periphery of Manchester city centre. Unlike central London, which had linked its stations with the London Underground, Manchester had a large area of its central business district which was not served by rail transport.
Proposal
The South-East Lancashire and North-East Cheshire Passenger Transport Executive (SELNEC PTE) – the local transport authority which became the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) in 1974 (now Transport for Greater Manchester – TfGM) – made a proposal in 1971 to connect the unjoined railways running through Manchester city centre under the Picc-Vic scheme. The Picc-Vic proposal envisaged joining the two halves of the rail network by constructing new tunnels under the city centre, connecting Manchester's two main railway stations, Piccadilly and Victoria. This new underground railway would be served by three new underground stations, joining together the regional, national and local rail networks with an underground rapid transit system for Manchester.
The objectives of the Picc-Vic tunnel were threefold:
To improve the distribution arrangements from the existing railway stations which are on the periphery of the central core To link the separated northern and southern railway systems To improve passenger movement within the central area.
It formed part of a four-phase, long term strategy for GMPTE over 25 years, which included bus priority and an east-west railway network, as well as a light rapid transport system.
Cancellation
SELNEC made an infrastructure grant application to central government to fund the construction of the Picc-Vic line. In the early 1970s, Britain was facing economic difficulties and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber announced a £500 million reduction in public expenditure. In August 1973, the Minister for Transport Industries John Peyton rejected the grant application, stating that "there is no room for a project as costly as Picc-Vic before 1975 at the earliest".
An underground excavation and construction project required a large initial outlay of public funds, and when the Greater Manchester County Council took on the project, it was unable to secure the necessary funding from central government. The Picc-Vic scheme was abandoned in 1977 owing to excessive cost.
Specification
Route
The proposed new link would have been long, and run from Ardwick Junction, a mile south of Piccadilly Station, to Queens Road Junction on the Bury line, about three-quarters of a mile north of Victoria. Just over of the new line would have been in tunnel, most of which would be beneath the centre of Manchester. The southern approach ramp would have been built on the surface and in a shallow tunnel.
There would have been two separate tracks, each electrified on the 25 kV AC system. In the deep tunnel section separate bores were to be tunnelled for each track. The track was to consist of continuous welded rails on concrete foundations – 'slab track'. The tunnel was to be controlled by British Rail's standard three-aspect colour light signals together with their automatic warning system (AWS). This would have permitted train frequencies of 90 seconds, although initial proposals envisaged a 2.5 minute headway.
Once opened, the underground line would have enabled through-running for trains across the city region by linking up several existing railway lines, including the Bury Line, Crewe–Manchester line, Hope Valley line, Stafford–Manchester line, and Styal line.