Picc-Vic tunnel

Picc-Vic Tunnel
An artist's impression of the Picc-Vic line (1971)
Overview
Type	Commuter rail
System	Greater Manchester Transport/British Rail
Status	Abandoned proposal
Locale	Manchester, England
Termini	Manchester Victoria Manchester Piccadilly
Stations	5
Services	1
Operation
Opened	1977 (planned)
Technical
Line length	2.75 mi (4.43 km)
Track length	2.75 mi (4.43 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)
Highest elevation	Underground

Picc-Vic was a proposed, and later cancelled, underground railway designed in the early 1970s with the purpose of connecting two major mainline railway termini in Manchester city centre, England. The name Picc-Vic was a contraction of the two station names, Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. The proposal envisaged the construction of an underground tunnel across Manchester city centre. The scheme was abandoned in 1977 during its proposal stages due to excessive costs, and that the scheme still retained two large expensive to maintain terminal stations in Manchester; other similar sized cities had reduced their terminals to one.

In 1992, the Metrolink system opened and linked both stations via tram, negating the requirement for a direct rail connection to an extent. In 2011, the Ordsall Chord was announced; it is an overground railway scheme designed to directly link Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria in a comparable fashion to Picc-Vic.

The railway network built in the 19th and 20th centuries by numerous railway companies resulted in various unconnected railway termini around the periphery of Manchester city centre. Unlike central London, which had linked its stations with the London Underground, Manchester had a large area of its central business district which was not served by rail transport.

The South-East Lancashire and North-East Cheshire Public Transport Executive (SELNEC PTE) - the local transport authority which became the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) in 1974 (now Transport for Greater Manchester - TfGM) - made a proposal in 1971 to connect the unjoined railways running through Manchester city centre under the Picc-Vic scheme. The Picc-Vic proposal envisaged joining the two halves of the rail network by constructing new tunnels under the city centre, connecting Manchester's two main railway stations, Piccadilly and Victoria. This new underground railway would be served by three new underground stations, joining together the regional, national and local rail networks with an underground rapid transit system for Manchester.