Manchester's tube train that never was

[John Ashworth]

Manchester's tube train that never was

Martin Wainwright
Wednesday 14 March 2012 16.37 GMT
guardian.co.uk

Newly found plans and a big hole under the Arndale centre reveal the sad story of an underground, three ring roads and heliport which were to remain a wonderful dream

Shopping in Manchester's Arndale centre will never be quite the same after a visit to a current exhibition in the city which explores the spooky 'Arndale Void'.

Next time you pass Topshop, pause to contemplate the fact that 30ft below it is an enormous hole which was almost certainly dug to be part of a swanky Manchester tube system.

Not just that, but the city fathers in the post-war Enthusiast period also had plans for quadruple ring-roads – think Mancunian Way four times over – and a heliport for intra-urban hops on top of Victoria station.

Their dreams and destinations are on show at a small but fascinating display called Infra_MANC at the CUBE and RIBA Hub which follows intrepid research by Dr Martin Dodge of Manchester university and Richard Brook from the Manchester School of Architecture. As well as filleting archives for all manner of unrealised joys, they tracked down the Arndale Void by puzzling over detailed subterranean maps in Where's Wally fashion.

The hole duly turned out to exist, albeit closed to the public, even for use as one of Manchester's many imaginative nightclubs. It was almost certainly designed to link the Arndale to a proposed Picc-Vic tube line connecting Piccadilly and Victoria via a 2.3 miles route under various city centre landmarks.

The plan was dissed – boo, hiss – by a Conservative government making public spending cuts after almost two decades of preparation and the vaulting of all other planning hurdles. In 1972 the city council was given Parliamentary powers to start building in September 1973 with completion targeted for five years later.

There would have been three new stations, at the central library, Whitworth Street and the junction of Market and Cross Streets – the latter linked to the Void. Moving pavements were envisaged as well as escalators, connecting the system with Piccadilly Gardens, Oxford Road station and St Peter's Square.

It would have cost £9,271,300 at January 1973 prices (£86m at today's) to build the twin 18ft tunnels for trains running every two-and-a-half minutes in the central zone and every ten outside. But the timing was tragic, as Richard Brook explains:

"The infrastructure grant application (hence Infra_MANC) was turned down in August 1973 by John Peyton, then the minister for transport industries.

Everyone on the job received a copy of Peyton's letter refusing to provide the finance. It was a devastating blow to some who had spent 10 years of their life on the scheme.

Peyton cited announcements of £500 million reduction in public expenditure by Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber saying, 'there is no room for a project as costly as Picc-Vic before 1975 at the earliest'.

With hindsight we can see it was unlucky for the Picc-Vic scheme to be caught amidst this political and economic restructuring and seemingly without a powerful figurehead to champion its cause."

It was also a time of near-chaos politically, with Edward Heath's government heading for its calamitous clash with the miners which resulted in power rationing and the three-day week. Dr Dodge mourns the way that a byproduct of this was the death of Manchester's dream:

"The city has long desired to have an underground railway crossing its centre and perhaps the earliest plan was put forward in 1839. The Picc-Vic would have formed the centrepiece of a new electrified railway network for the region.

Our research has unearthed new engineering plans and architectural drawings that reveal how Manchester just missed out on having its own mini tube system. When we came across the space beneath the Arndale - by consulting old plans and a process of elimination we became certain that it was the location of the Picc-Vic station."

There is also a properly, dimly-lit spooks side to the story because of the presence of the then secret Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange in six miles of nuclear bomb-resistant tunnels below Chinatown. This was not a system for contacting people such as myself (which can be frustrating, I know) but a civil defence operation whose possible links to the tube cancellation resisted the two researchers. Brook says:

"We investigated the rumours, only to discover that the project team did know the location of the GUTE, but were forced to sign the Official Secrets Act in 197l."

Perhaps the coalition could make amends for Scrooges Peyton and Barber by freeing them from this restriction. Credit where it's due, though. In last April's budget the Chancellor George Osborne announced a new Picc-Vic, albeit one above ground in the fresh air.