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Manchester Recovery Taskforce (timetable) consultation

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Purple Orange

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This all tells me that the route is more trouble than it's worth, and a Metrolink-Merseyrail solution can't come too soon.

The more lines converted, the better.

I’ll tell you what else can’t come too soon though. The splitting of the Southport-Alderley Edge service. 2-car 150 on the peak service running through Manchester at half 5. Why is that service, one of the busiest of the day for that route, scheduled for a 2-car DMU? It’s too regular a pattern for it to be one-offs.

Give me the reliability and consistency of everything starting in the Piccadilly main platforms, with EMUs, over the unreliability and inconstancy of Castlefield. It’s a huge shame that Castlefield can’t be made to work intensively because there is so much potential to use it as a regional metro line (Salford Central to Victoria too).
 
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JonathanH

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Why is that service, one of the busiest of the day for that route, scheduled for a 2-car DMU?
It isn't scheduled for a 2-car DMU, it should be a 769. However, working back, it is dependant on whatever reaches Wigan the previous evening and in turn on what was at Newton Heath that morning.
 
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YorksLad12

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Does Lime Street have the platform capacity to accommodate overlapping 40 minute layovers?
Interestingly (or not) the Newcastle-Liverpool service arrives around xx02 and heads back around xx54. Same unit (or it was on Thursday when I was there, the 12.02 arrival was the 12.54 departure). So I would say probably not and that there would have to be some form of inter-networking.

(I'm guessing it does this because there's a second Liverpool-Yorkshire service not running at the moment.)
 

IanXC

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Likewise the 3% of responses from Slaithwaite, again supporting a second train per hour. Pity we weren't listened to.

It’s not just on the Southport route where the taskforce has decided to ignore its stated principles of seeking to have a simplified repeating 30-minute service pattern along each corridor.

Both options B & C had a half hourly daytime service for the stations between Stalybridge and Huddersfield, something long overdue. In B+, the proposal for a half hourly service is dropped, seemingly to appease civic leaders in Hull.

The reasons given are pretty unconvincing:
  • To manage capacity (hardly likely to be an issue off-peak)
  • To protect performance (if there was no significant performance risk when options B & C were drawn up, and nothing else has changed, why has it become an issue now)
  • To maintain Hull-Manchester journey time (since it has to fit into a heavily used route from Guide Bridge within a repeating 30-minute pattern, the scope for speeding it up must be negligible).
It looks like one of those trade-offs where one party loses out but the other gains next to nothing.

From an East of Leeds perspective Hull gets a very poor deal - as a major city the idea that the principal service to Manchester should call at a collection of very local stations between Huddersfield and Stalybridge doesn't really make sense when you really think about it.

As it currently stands a Hull - Manchester Piccadilly service which does not call at the 'shacks' typically takes 1hr56m, whereas a service which calls takes up to 2hr10m as timetabled. 14 minutes makes all the difference to whether you're in front or behind something joining the route around Guide Bridge.

If we can accept breaking the 15-15-15 service pattern from York to Manchester Victoria (to some degree this has been for Dec 2021 with the Scarborough - Stalybridge etc) then I'm convinced the answer is that the Scarborough becomes a stopper west of Huddersfield and the Hull becomes the express to Manchester Victoria (or Liverpool should it be reinstated).

Scarborough has a very good case for a direct service to Leeds, but beyond that Hull has an infinitely better claim on the express. If it was a Scarborough to Piccadilly that was proposed to call at the local stations all day I bet it wouldn't have even resulted in a comment in the consultation outcome.
 

Watershed

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From an East of Leeds perspective Hull gets a very poor deal - as a major city the idea that the principal service to Manchester should call at a collection of very local stations between Huddersfield and Stalybridge doesn't really make sense when you really think about it.

As it currently stands a Hull - Manchester Piccadilly service which does not call at the 'shacks' typically takes 1hr56m, whereas a service which calls takes up to 2hr10m as timetabled. 14 minutes makes all the difference to whether you're in front or behind something joining the route around Guide Bridge.

If we can accept breaking the 15-15-15 service pattern from York to Manchester Victoria (to some degree this has been for Dec 2021 with the Scarborough - Stalybridge etc) then I'm convinced the answer is that the Scarborough becomes a stopper west of Huddersfield and the Hull becomes the express to Manchester Victoria (or Liverpool should it be reinstated).

Scarborough has a very good case for a direct service to Leeds, but beyond that Hull has an infinitely better claim on the express. If it was a Scarborough to Piccadilly that was proposed to call at the local stations all day I bet it wouldn't have even resulted in a comment in the consultation outcome.
The service patterns you suggest do indeed make more sense - the pairing of destinations has always been somewhat arbitrary, mainly being based on how the paths happen to work out. And with any luck, we'll see exactly that in a few years' time.
 

IanXC

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If 1tph isn't enough for Newcastle (probably only Newcastle), you could operate a separate connection at York or Leeds to what is in the opposite half hour to the through service.

I've been reading too many Hull and East Yorkshire demands - but a Hull to Newcastle connecting at York would seem eminently suitable.
 

Bletchleyite

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I've been reading too many Hull and East Yorkshire demands - but a Hull to Newcastle connecting at York would seem eminently suitable.

For what it's worth, this is classic Swiss Takt - if you have a trunk route X-Y, and branches to A and B from Y, you operate an hourly fast X-Y-A and an hourly fast X-Y-B, and also local stopping Y-A and Y-B in the opposite half hour to each, if you see what I mean, with everything timed to connect, ideally opposite sides of the same island. One place I've come across it myself is Zuerich to Konstanz and Romanshorn, but it seems eminently suitable to TPE. It's also a bit like Windermere, but with that the stopping services don't connect as well with other stuff and there's a lot of hanging round at Oxenholme.
 

4-SUB 4732

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From an East of Leeds perspective Hull gets a very poor deal - as a major city the idea that the principal service to Manchester should call at a collection of very local stations between Huddersfield and Stalybridge doesn't really make sense when you really think about it.

As it currently stands a Hull - Manchester Piccadilly service which does not call at the 'shacks' typically takes 1hr56m, whereas a service which calls takes up to 2hr10m as timetabled. 14 minutes makes all the difference to whether you're in front or behind something joining the route around Guide Bridge.

If we can accept breaking the 15-15-15 service pattern from York to Manchester Victoria (to some degree this has been for Dec 2021 with the Scarborough - Stalybridge etc) then I'm convinced the answer is that the Scarborough becomes a stopper west of Huddersfield and the Hull becomes the express to Manchester Victoria (or Liverpool should it be reinstated).

Scarborough has a very good case for a direct service to Leeds, but beyond that Hull has an infinitely better claim on the express. If it was a Scarborough to Piccadilly that was proposed to call at the local stations all day I bet it wouldn't have even resulted in a comment in the consultation outcome.
I think to some extent Scarborough has an argument for simply being disconnected.

If they can find a way to build a path that runs every 30 minutes between Liverpool and Leeds, not stopping at Staly or Dewsbury (aka, real express), then that should be a Newcastle and a Hull.

After that, a pair of Piccadilly starters that do Staly and Dewsbury, and are a semi-fast service. That’s a Redcar and another Newcastle if everything is done right.

A half-hourly 185 shuttle to Huddersfield from Victoria bay platforms; and Scarborough as a York shuttle.

Moderator note: As the discussion has become speculative and some posts are no longer discussing the actual proposals in the consultation, the moderation team have locked this thread. Some posts have been moved to the following thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...es-be-improved-in-the-manchester-area.220804/
 
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