Great Ancoats Street is one of Manchester’s most important roads. It forms one of the crucial stretches of the city’s inner ring road. It’s a gateway to north Manchester and Oldham.
It’s also a dividing line — in a literal sense — between the council wards of Piccadilly and Ancoats & Beswick, which share one side of the carriageway each.
It was revamped at the start of this decade, with more than £8 million being spent to improve the road and its surroundings. The aim was to 'improve the look and feel of the area for pedestrians' and provide a more natural link between the city centre and the rapidly-expanding Ancoats and New Islington neighbourhoods. Work included installing new crossing facilities, 'modern' road surfacing to reduce noise and, tree planting down the central reservation.
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But some think it didn't go far enough. Now, two years after work finished, there are calls for Great Ancoats Street to cease being a part of the inner ring road - from councillors on both sides of Manchester’s town hall political divide.
One suggestion is to re-route traffic along Alan Turing Way, to better connect Ancoats and New Islington with the rest of the city centre. The town hall, however, says it is 'incredibly happy' with how the work has turned out. But what do businesses based on Great Ancoats Street think?
'The work has made a difference...for now'
Any regular on Great Ancoats Street will know how much the area has changed over the last decade-or-so, with the arrival of the retail park which Aldi occupies on the south side of the road, in 2009, and the former Central Retail Park, on the north side, which closed for good in 2019, having been there since the 1980s.
Most significantly, the regeneration of Ancoats as a fashionable residential neighbourhood has been a roaring success, with mills converted to luxury flats, new public squares were created, canals restored, and new independent shops springing up to serve a young and affluent influx of newer residents.
But with Great Ancoats Street serving as a central stretch of the ring road - linking the Mancunian Way to Trinity Way - snarling traffic and a symphony of rush hour horns are fixtures. And that butts against the idea of Great Ancoats Street as the heart of a residential neighbourhood, with European touches like al fresco dining.
Ancoats General Store is right on the corner of the main road and Blossom Street. It’s not just a corner shop, with tables outside mirroring some of Berlin’s spȁte — convenience stores that stay open late and serve hot food and drinks to customers.
“In the summer people sit outside, and people always mention the traffic,” Sam Moyes, the manager of the General Store, explained, although he likes that the road marks a clear dividing line between neighbourhoods.
“Sometimes it can be unclear if you’re in one area or another,” Sam continued. “It’s not with this. The Northern Quarter is grimy but cool, whereas Ancoats is clean and has a different vibe.”
The owner of the General Store group, Mital Morar, believed the £8 million spent ‘definitely made a difference’ and ‘smartened up the landscape for now’ - but things 'more changes' might be needed as the city centre population continues to grow.
“Great Ancoats Street is still a busy road and defines the area of Ancoats in relation to the city," he said. "As the population increases more changes may be needed to slow things down and allow for easier access between areas.”
Soul and Surf, the relaxed restaurant that serves a plethora of seafood over the road from the corner shop, also uses outside space on Great Ancoats Street.
Chef-proprietor Titi Adeleke said: “In summer customers do sit out there — sometimes we have space inside but they prefer to go outside. I do not know if the traffic affects anything… we have only been here 18 months so we only know it [after the road works finished]. The traffic can be bad at 4pm or 5pm, but it’s just rush hour.”
While Titi isn't overly concerned at the traffic, the manager at one of the street's oldest business, the Crown and Kettle pub, which has stood on the corner of Great Ancoats Street and Oldham Road since 1734, is worried about the number of road accidents at the junction, which was remodelled as part of the works programme.
He told the MEN that staff were surprised at how popular outside seating was when it opened a couple of years ago, but also dubbed the junction his pub overlooks ‘idiot corner’.
“When we first got the space outside, we thought ‘who would want to sit outside next to smoky exhaust fumes?’, but in the summer it’s absolutely booming,” he explained while repainting the pub’s bar. “It’s always really busy.”
He went on: “This junction [between Great Ancoats Street and Oldham Road] has so many crashes. It would be comical if it was not dangerous. I could not tell you [how many I’ve seen].
“I don’t drive, but it seems the junction is quite confusing for a lot of people. That’s where I have seen accidents — people want to go down Oldham Street but they go over the kerb or hit another car.
“If there was a crash there today, no one here would be surprised. I don’t know what the solution is but there has got to be one to stop the idiot corner.”
Sam did however add that staff ‘never see much congestion so if the goal was to alleviate that, it’s worked’.
“I don’t think we can treat Great Ancoats Street as we have done”
Great Ancoats Street is shared by two Manchester City Council wards — Ancoats and Beswick, plus Piccadilly. That means there are six representatives for the road, although all of the councillors currently in post had not been elected when plans for rejuvenating Great Ancoats Street were being drawn up.
The MEN spoke to all six councillors — five Labour and one Liberal Democrat — and the majority felt that the £8m work was an opportunity missed, raising questions about whether it should remain on the inner ring road.
"I don’t think (the work) was a good investment,” Lib Dem Alan Good said. “I think there were huge gaps in what was promised and what was delivered.
“Personally, I think with the inevitable expansion of the city centre that’s happening, I do not think we can treat Great Ancoats Street the same as we have done. Alan Turing Way is perfectly serviceable for the same purpose,” the Ancoats and Beswick councillor continued.
“It’s quite accessible from Ashton Old Road and Fairfield Street. It’s also a lot wider than Great Ancoats Street. Those streets only have a sizable gap between the buildings on the road, whereas it’s different with Great Ancoats Street, as so many people are pushed up against the boundary.”
The three Labour members for the Piccadilly ward — Adele Douglas, Sam Wheeler, and Jon-Connor Lyons, also think the inner ring road should be re-routed.
“The key question is whether Great Ancoats Street should be an inner relief road, or a residential boulevard, as it cannot be both,” the trio said in a statement.”Our strong view is that it should be the latter, to support the growing neighbourhoods in our city centre, tackle issues of air quality and make the area a better place to live and work.”
Irene Robinson, also Labour but for Ancoats and Beswick, agreed. “I think that what has changed now is Ancoats is a neighbourhood and having a road like that with that much traffic means we are going to have to look at diverting that," she said.
“We want to connect Ancoats to the city centre. It’s a busy road, and particularly with new developments, we need to look at minimising congestion and making it more active travel friendly.”
Active travel is a buzzword within the local government universe. It simply means incentivising people to leave the car at home, and make a journey by walking, cycling, or public transport — or a combination of those.
One campaigner who wants to see more policy to encourage active travel in Greater Manchester is Harry Gray, who runs the Walk-Ride Salford Central group. He thinks the current ring road route is having an adverse effect on residents nearby.
“People will move to Manchester — making the city bigger and a better place to live — but it’s a struggle for them to connect the city centre with Ancoats and it makes people’s lives more miserable with traffic, pollution, and noise,” he told the M.E.N.
“It’s not the right place for a major road when we want to try and create a car-light city centre. I think the problem we have is that the city centre has a very dense urban core but after that the ring road [creates] a drop off in housing density. The ring road is a barrier.
“A ring road is important to stop cars coming into town but there’s an element of unluckiness with the ring road being there. I think something more out of the box with this issue is needed.
“Manchester has grown so quickly so decisions have to be made with future-proofing in mind. If you do it with what’s in front of you, in five or 10 years, that £8 million is badly spent.”
One supportive voice for the work came from Majid Dar, a Labour councillor for Ancoats and Beswick. He thinks the investment will benefit ‘his community for years to come’.
He said: “Some of the residents and businesses are so happy because the tarmacing of the road meant that 40 percent of the noise was dampened. People used to wake up at 5:30 am just from people walking by. The trees are also great — 70 trees are lovely to have.
“I think there are definitely pros and cons. It’s expensive to get things done. Is it worth it to the penny? I’m not sure, but is it benefiting my community and will for years to come? Absolutely.”
“The Council is incredibly happy with the improved amenity of the road”
Asked about re-routing the road, Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) pointed us to the ‘City Centre Transport Strategy to 2040’, which does not include an ambition to re-route the inner ring road.
A key metric some will use to judge if the £8.1 million spent — which is £1 million under budget, the MEN understands — has been worth it is whether delays have reduced. While the council say the work was never intended to improve journey times, it has confirmed work is being done ‘this year’ to fully investigate how the road is used by all users — not just cars — while an initial ‘snapshot’ of congestion shows there has been an improvement.
There is ‘a lower level of delay seen generally for motorists’ on Great Ancoats Street, a spokesperson said, but during rush hour delays can actually worsen — something the council puts down to ‘changes in commuter habits in the wake of the pandemic, where car use has increased to above pre-2020 levels’.
A statement from Manchester City Council added: “The Great Ancoats Street project was a hugely ambitious undertaking aimed at creating a new link between the city centre and burgeoning Ancoats neighbourhood and improving the public realm which surrounds it, and vastly improving pedestrian access.
“The programme was not intended to improve journey times, though, as set out above, this has been achieved to a certain extent. Rather, it was about connecting a vibrant neighbourhood and establishing it as part of the city centre rather than an outlier. In this aspect the Council is entirely satisfied with the outcome of this project, and would point to property, businesses and hospitality which can now be accessed safely by foot.
“Compared to its previous appearance the Council is incredibly happy with the improved amenity of the road which will continue as the trees planted mature over the coming years. The far-better provision for pedestrians and cyclists crossing is a significant change that makes it easier for people to travel through the city safely and quickly.
“The city has seen increased levels of car usage since the end of the pandemic, a situation the Council is aware of and monitoring. In the long-term the Council wants to see a switch from car use to more environmentally friendly modes of travel such as walking, cycling or using public transport."
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