Bee Network trains could be serving Tameside and Glossop within two years

Bright yellow Bee Network trains could be running in two Greater Manchester boroughs within two years, the mayor has confirmed.

Andy Burnham has long held plans to bring several commuter railway lines into public control, initially aiming to do so by the end of the decade. However, he pledged earlier this year to speed that process up and take over eight commuter lines by 2028.

The eight lines will be:

• Wigan – Victoria
• Stalybridge – Southport
• Glossop – Hadfield – Piccadilly
• Rose Hill – Piccadilly
• Buxton – Piccadilly
• Alderley Edge – Piccadilly
• Rochdale stopping services
• Manchester Airport stopping services

Work is ongoing to bring the eight lines into Transport for Greater Manchester’s (TfGM’s) remit — with the mayor confirming the first Bee Network rail services could start running in 2026. 

Vernon Everitt, TfGM Transport Commissioner, explained why those eight had been selected.

“We have chosen those because they’re core — the Airport is the gateway to the northwest, and they are core commuter and leisure lines,” he said. “We have selected those eight because it just makes sense.”

Mr Everitt added the ‘plan next year will set out the sequence by which we bring that in’, but crucially identified Manchester and Tameside will see the first Bee Network trains.

“We are going first with Glossop-Manchester and Stalybridge-Manchester,” he added. “They will be the first two lines that will get the pay-as-you-go system on it. Rather like buses have been done in tranches, we will do a similar exercise with the railways.”

The promise of taking over the railways is that passengers will be able to use different modes of public transport — trains, trams, buses, and cycle hire — interchangeably, and only pay up to a daily cap to make it easier to move around. It would take Greater Manchester to an integrated, London-style transport system.

Mr Everitt, formerly a senior boss at TfL, added: “I think about the [eight railway lines] as a Greater Manchester equivalent of the London Overground. They will be integrated with the tram network and the bus network — eventually we will be able to have a single unified cap for all of those journeys.”

However, the eight lines are ‘not the limit’ of Mr Burnham’s ‘rail ambitions’, the mayor added at the same press conference, believing ‘there’s a lot more that can come into the Bee Network’. Details of future plans have not yet been made public, nor have final dates been set in stone for the first eight railway lines.