Firswood is a tram stop on the

South Manchester Line The South Manchester Line (SML) is a tram line of the Manchester Metrolink in Greater Manchester running from Manchester city centre to Didsbury. The line was opened as far as St. Werburgh's Road in 2011 and then to East Didsbury in 2013 as part ...

(SML) and Airport Line of

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...

's light-rail Metrolink system. Located in the

Firswood Firswood is a suburban area of Stretford in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. Geography Firswood borders Whalley Range, Old Trafford and Chorlton-cum-Hardy. It was largely occupied by Rye Bank Farm, which remai ...

area of

Stretford Stretford is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is situated on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, south of Manchester city centre, south of Salford and north-east of Altrincham. Str ...

, it was built as part of Phase 3a of the network's expansion, and opened on 7 July 2011. Firswood Metrolink station is located on a section of the former Cheshire Lines Committee railway line, in a cutting adjacent to St John Vianney School on Rye Bank Road. The stop provides access to both Firswood and Whalley Range.

History

The station opened on 7 July 2011. and is the first newly constructed station on the new South Manchester Metrolink line out of Manchester. Firswood is a new station on a re-opened railway line, the Cheshire Lines Committee line, which closed to passenger service in 1967. It was planned to re-open the line as part of the expansion of the Manchester Metrolink tram network. Proposals to re-open the line have been put forward since the 1980s, - publicity brochure but remained unfunded until the 2000s. The line extension which was originally proposed would take over the disused tracks of the Cheshire Lines Committee as far as

East Didsbury Didsbury is a suburban area of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 26,788. Within the boundaries of the Historic counti ...

. In 2006, it was announced that Phase 3A would go ahead, including the extension of the network as far St Werburgh's Road. Following the rejection of the

Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund The Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund was a failed bid by the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA) and Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) to secure £1.5 billion from the Transport Innovation Fun ...

in a public referendum in 2008, extension of the line as East Didsbury (Phase 3B) will now go ahead with funding from national and local government. Construction of the line began in April 2009 and the new line became operational in July 2011.

Services

Firswood is located on the South Manchester Line with trams towards via Victoria and

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

and to running every 12 minutes Monday-Saturdays and Sunday daytime and every 15 minutes Sunday early mornings and evenings. Services extended from St Werburgh's Road to on 23 May 2013 and, from 3 November 2014, services ran to from .

Service pattern

*12 minute service to with double trams in the peak *12 minute service to with double trams in the peak *12 minute service to with single trams (every 20 minutes before 6 am) *6 minute service to with double trams in the peak *12 minute service to with single trams (every 20 minutes before 6 am)

Connecting bus routes

Firswood is not served by any direct bus service but some services stop nearby to the stop. Stagecoach Manchester service 15 stops on King's Road and runs westbound to Flixton via

and Urmston and eastbound to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

Gallery

File:Metrolink extension to Chorlton.jpg, Construction work on the line near Chorlton File:Metrolink phase south manchester line.png, Map of the South Manchester line extensions File:FirswoodMetrolinkConstruction.jpg, Under construction in June 2010 File:Firswood Metrolink station.jpg, Firswood tram stop, in August 2012

References

External links

Manchester Metrolink Extension Project
- map of the plans (Urban Transport Technology)
Metrolink stop information

Firswood area map
* https://web.archive.org/web/20130226053951/http://www.lrta.org/Manchester/city_south.html {{Greater Manchester Metrolink stations Tram stops in Trafford Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 2011 Manchester South District Line Tram stops on the East Didsbury to Rochdale line