Picc-Vic tunnel

Picc-Vic Tunnel
An artist's impression of the Picc-Vic line (1971)[1]
Overview
Status	Abandoned proposal
Locale	Manchester, England
Termini	Manchester Victoria Manchester Piccadilly
Stations	5
Service
Type	Commuter rail
System	Greater Manchester Transport/British Rail
Services	1
History
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 key station names, Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. The proposal envisaged the construction of an underground rail tunnel across Manchester city centre. The scheme was abandoned in 1977 during its proposal stages due to Westminster's lack of willingness to invest in Manchester. The view was that the scheme still retained two large and expensive-to-maintain terminal stations in Manchester while other similarly sized cities had reduced their terminals to one.

In 1992, the Metrolink system opened and linked both stations via tram, to an extent negating the requirement for a direct rail connection. In 2017, the Ordsall Chord became operational; an overground railway scheme directly linking Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria in a comparable fashion to Picc-Vic.^[2]