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Transport
Transport has had a significant impact on Warrington's growth and development. For people living in Warrington public transport has only become accessible to them in the last fifty years. Before this many people, especially those living in the outlying areas, walked long distances. If you were lucky enough to afford a bicycle it could still be a long and bumpy ride along pot-holed roads.
A number of railway lines once criss-crossed Warrington and the town had numerous railway stations serving the districts. These provided regular passenger services. There were once stations in Sankey, Latchford and Thelwall. Warrington's first tramcars were horse-drawn affairs and operated a limited service in and out of central Warrington. The electric tramway network linked Warrington town centre to suburbs in the north, south east and west from 1902. An extension to the Wilderspool line was provided by the Stockton Heath Light Railway in 1904. Warrington's chocolate brown and yellow tramcars were gradually replaced by motor buses in the 1920s. The last tram ran to Latchford in 1935. |
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| The town's road network was expanded in the 1930s following a rise in private car ownership. The bridge over the River Mersey, familiar to many drivers today, has long been a bottleneck for traffic passing in and out of the town. The Kingsway Bridge was opened in 1934 to allow motorists to bypass the town centre. | |
| Warrington today has a difficult relationship with the surrounding motorways the first of which, the M6, opened in 1963. They allowed the town to develop further and brought new employment, but also create regular traffic chaos whenever drivers are diverted through the town. |  |
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Jean went to the County Primary School in Stockton Heath in the early 1930s. She had to walk a 3 hour round trip each day to school from her home in Thelwall. "From Thelwall village we used to start off probably about half past seven every morning to walk to Stockton Heath and the winters were bad then, but there was no transport, and then we used to have to walk home at night. You didn't leave school then until 4 o'clock so it was nearly half past five when we used to get home." |
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