A new £185m tram line, the construction of which unearthed hundreds of bodies in a burial site, has opened in Manchester city centre.
The Second City Crossing runs from the neo-gothic town hall to Manchester Victoria station and is the final part of a £1.5bn transport expansion plan.
Two years ago, engineers discovered the remains of 280 bodies in a cemetery less than half a metre (1.6ft) below Cross Street.
The 18th-century graveyard belonged to nearby Cross Street chapel, which opened in 1694 and was destroyed by bombing during the second world war.
The chapel was known as the Dissenters’ Meeting House, where clergy and worshippers gathered in protest at new rules relating to the Church of England.
The discovery of the graves is thought to have set construction work back by several months as archaeologists exhumed the bodies, which were double the number experts had expected.
Manchester’s 25-year-old Metrolink is the largest light rail system in the UK, serving 93 stops across seven lines spanning nearly 62 miles.
Sir Richard Leese, the leader of Manchester city council, said the new line highlighted “how much the city has changed in such a short space of time, and represents a major milestone in Manchester’s continuing development and growth”.
Peter Cushing, Transport for Greater Manchester’s Metrolink director, said: “The route really gives us the capacity to run more trams through the city centre, but also gives us resilience, because if we ever have an issue, for example, in Piccadilly Gardens, we can run things along the Second City Crossing rather than have to wait to resolve that issue.
“So what that means is that we will be able to run things with a lot more surety and a lot more reliability.”
The Second City Crossing’s first phase opened between Victoria and Exchange Square, which bore the brunt of the 1996 IRA bomb, in December 2015.
A new line to the Trafford Centre is expected to be running by 2020, by which time the network will cover more than 66 miles and have 99 stops.
