Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "The north will rise again: the rebirth of the Manchester Ship Canal" video.

The ship canal will just be a wider barge canal, like those in France, with containers offloaded at Liverpool to be barged up. The canal and Manchester cannot accommodate the large ships of today. The locks are too narrow and the bridges are too low. The depth of the canal is OK, the locks can be made wider, but the prohibitive cost is the raising of the bridges.
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To prosper and use the canal again, Manchester has to turn to manufacturing again and stop trying to be a commercial city. The city must play to its strengths. Large ports naturally are commercial cities, like nearby Liverpool.
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Modern ships are much taller than the old cargo ships. They hold far more cargo for a given hull size. They get the accommodation and bridge aft and tall to get more freight in. There are a few ships a week still using the canal. They are dedicated bulk coasters, not general cargo. The canal is heavily used from Eastham to Runcorn, around the Mersey estuary. The long stretch from Runcorn to Manchester is just about dead. It could be filled in, or drained, from Runcorn upwards and HS3 run on it, also linking Liverpool and Manchester airports by very fast rail, merging the two. It is ideal.
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@markjones4704 Most ships could not go up the canal. They were not prepared to pay to adjust the ship to accommodate just one port which takes a day to get up a canal and day to get back.
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The canal could be partially filled, made half the width, so Northern Powerhouse Rail can run on it. From Runcorn to Manchester it is largely redundant. Being half the width, coasters can still run up it. It would be one-way, so just leave passing bays. It is going to waste as it is. I do not know how the Runcorn to Manchester section financially justified.
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After nine years nothing happened.
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