£45m Liverpool City Centre Transport Scheme

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£45m Liverpool City Centre Transport Scheme
Starting this thread to pool people's opinion on this new scheme announced yesterday:

http://www.liverpoolexpress.co.uk/radica...ty-centre/

In my opinion, this sets a good precedent by putting a core focus on public transport right throughout the city centre, while making it perhaps more difficult to traverse the city centre in a private car.

The scheme outlines Queen Square bus station being used for all northbound services, while Liverpool ONE is used for southbound services. It also proposes swallowing the northbound lanes of Lime Street into a new public 'event space' at St George's Platau, reducing the contraflow to one lane either way along Lime Street.

There will also be the addition of a much needed coach station and bus layover space. The article does not state where this is, but from what I have read and from my understanding of the road layout changes on Lime Street (both by the Empire and down the Futurist end), St John's Lane will be made into this coach station. I think this because Lime Street at The Futurist will be open to southbound traffic only from Elliot Street with no road access to the other half of Lime Street from both Elliot Street or Renshaw Street. Blocking access from Lime Street to Whitechapel and Renshaw Street to cars will mean that the only reason for cars to be down there is to get into and out of St John's car park, giving buses almost exclusive use of Lime Street in both directions.

As for The Strand, this is proving to be quite controversial on social media, but this method of vastly reducing capacity on main routes has been used in cities around the world as a traffic management solution. For a couple of days after opening, it will cause massive congestion, but following that, people find their own new ways around the city using a multitude of other routes, and this vastly reduces traffic numbers on The Strand. It has also been found to increase public transport numbers, while making public transport more reliable due to the decreased traffic congestion. The only thing that bugs me here is the closure of Mann Island - it doesn't explain what is happening here, other than the loss of a junction with The Strand. I presume this will be pedestrianised, or this could also be the site of the aforementioned coach station, though this does not make for useful bus layover.