Manchester's transport system struggles through the UEFA storm

And to think that a couple of days ago we were worried about how Manchester's transport infrastructure would cope with what we called "several thousand" Rangers fans.  In reality, an estimated 200,000 of them descended on the city centre and the infrastructure certainly did struggle.

Such a large amount of people were crammed onto the city's streets that by the afternoon peak many bus services were suffering significant delays (we waited 40 minutes on Princess Road for a service with a timetabled 5 minute headway).  The Metrolink, meanwhile, avoided the city centre completely with Altrincham and Eccles services terminating at G-Mex and Bury services at Victoria.

We avoided the city centre yesterday and we were glad we had when reports started filtering through via Twitter that the the big screen in Piccadilly Gardens had failed and trouble was brewing.  The trouble turned into an all-out riot as some of the Rangers fans vented their frustration on the police.  This CCTV footage from Newton Street will show you what we mean.  For a look at how the day descended from good-natured fun into violence, this blog is the place to go (it's best to view the posts from the bottom up, even though the timestamps on the posts are wrong).

So, how did the buses cope with the trouble?  To be honest, we don't know.  If you were in the city centre last night, fill us in!