Found another use for Quattro!

[toff]

I popped into the Trafford Center on Friday night to watch a film (Yes Man - which I thoroughly recommend!)

When it was time to leave, I was horrified at the queue to get out of the carpark! Apparently it was taking more than an hour just to get onto the motorway! :bigeyes:

If you've never been, there are 10,000 car parking spaces!
http://www.toffweb.com/images/trafford.jpg
© Google Maps

Anyhow.. a few people were trying to skip the queue by driving up a small section of embankment onto the main exit road.. but they were just wheel spinning all over the place and sliding back down!

Thanks to Quattro (and the A4's sensible ground-clearance) I breezed it and saved myself an hour :biglaugh:

haha!

[kodkod.84]

LOL I like that story :biglaugh:, but how poorly designed is the Trafford centre if it takes that long to get out, is there only one exit?

[toff]

LOL I like that story :biglaugh:, but how poorly designed is the Trafford centre if it takes that long to get out, is there only one exit?

I think there are 3 main exists on the perinimter roads; the problem is that each carpark only has one exit onto the perimiter roads. The perimiter roads have zebra-crossings on them and when there's a constant stream of predestrians crossing them - no cars can get out!! :banghead:

I've sent them an email of complaint and I hope everybody else (who got stuck) does the same (otherwise nothing will ever be done about it!)

Having said that, I use the Trafford Centre a lot and there is never usually any problems like that - it's a trully amazing place.

Al.

[Rusk]

I used to live near the TC and used to go all the time as it is great. Never really had an issue in the car park even on stupidly busy days when there wasn't a space to be had.

Nice story anyway would have loved to see it hehe :biggthump

[toff]

Never really had an issue in the car park even on stupidly busy days when there wasn't a space to be had.

I've never seen anything like it before.. people parked all the way along the perimiter roads, up kerbs, traffic islands some plonkers had even parked on the roundabouts!

I guess even a complete lack of parking won't stop women getting to the sales :naughty:

[toff]

I got an email today in response to my complaint! (I bet they got thousands!)

It sounds like a plot from Holby City...




Further to your visit to the Centre on 2nd January 2009. I hope the following information will help you understand how the traffic situation on Friday 2 January 2009 occurred and the impact it created both on Trafford Centre car parks and on the major external routes to and from The Trafford Centre.

During the late afternoon we were made aware that the police had closed off the slip road at Junction 9 from the M60 to the south side approach to The Trafford Centre due to a vehicle fire. We later learned that the closure was extended as the road surface had to have temporary repairs carried out before it could be re-opened. As a result all incoming traffic, which was significant, was re-routed to Junction 10, causing incoming vehicles, and vehicles trying to leave to become ‘locked’ at major junctions to and from the Centre as drivers ignored the yellow box restrictions and blocked customer vehicles entering and exiting the site. In addition, there was another road traffic collision this time at Junction 10 which further impacted on Centre car parks causing even more delays. We were unable to use our emergency access route to ease the situation as the road to which the vehicles exit onto was also at capacity and delays there were significant also. The motorway at this time was free flowing.

Requests for the police to attend, on numerous occasions, were not responded to until quite late on during the evening by which time customers had already been delayed for some considerable time. Our own staff, of course, are not legally empowered to direct traffic on public roads and we therefore have to rely entirely on Greater Manchester Police.

The situation was far from normal; events occurred very quickly and severely impacted on our ability to deal with the traffic in our usual way. This also meant that our staff at that time were unable to give accurate meaningful information about the ongoing situation.

The delays experienced on Friday 2 January were unprecedented, very regretful and most certainly out of the ordinary, and I can only apologise for the dreadful situation.

I hope that you will continue to visit The Trafford Centre. I know you have stated that you are a regular customer and presumably have not experienced this kind of delay previously. Traffic issues of this nature are thankfully very rare and visitors to the Centre for the vast majority of the time have a very pleasant shopping experience.

I hope that despite this experience we will be able to welcome you back to The Trafford Centre in the future.

Yours sincerely


ELIZABETH EVANS
SECURITY MANAGER



I'm gonna write back suggesting more exists for the carparks for emergency situations!

Al.