Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester is a city-region in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million people. It is made up of ten councils - Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and the cities of Manchester and Salford - working together with Greater Manchester’s directly elected Mayor, and other partners, towards our shared vision: for Greater Manchester to be one of the best places in the world to grow up, get on and grow old. This goal is supported by the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy 2040, which aims to ensure that people who live, work, visit and do business in Greater Manchester benefit from world class connections that support long-term, sustainable economic growth and access to opportunity for all.

Greater Manchester is a fast-growing city-region. By 2040, it is expected to have a population of around 3 million people. A key challenge for Greater Manchester relates to how it responds to the needs of this rapidly growing population, especially as more trips are made into the city-region’s Regional Centre (which includes Manchester city centre; Salford Quays to the west and the area around Manchester City Football Club’s Etihad stadium to the east).

Greater Manchester aims to deliver population, job and housing growth in a sustainable and inclusive way, so that all of our people benefit and the quality of our environment is improved. Our city-region’s vision is to improve our transport system to support a reduction in car use to no more than 50% of daily trips, with the remaining 50% made by public transport, walking and cycling. This will mean a million more trips each day using sustainable transport modes in Greater Manchester by 2040.

In order to help achieve this ambitious target, whilst addressing the challenge of rapid growth, Greater Manchester is developing ‘Streets for All’: our overarching framework for everything we do on streets in Greater Manchester. It is about making our streets work better for everyone whilst achieving our ambition for more travel by walking, cycling and public transport. It allows the challenges we face - including increasing demand for travel, improving the quality of the air we breathe and maintaining economically vibrant, sustainable places - to be addressed through a single, coherent approach to planning our transport network.