Platform 15 and 16 project at Manchester Piccadilly.

[notlob.divad]

The latter was achieved by sending Liverpool trains via Vic, no?

Sadly some people are so entrenched in their view they cannot comprehend the notion that someone travelling from Yorkshire or the North East change trains when travelling to a relatively small airport.
Some of us are fully aware that the issues at the Piccadilly throat (caused by the two Liverpool Trains crossing over and the Middlesborough train reversing) could have been solved, for zero cost, simply by diverting them via Victoria and sending the Middlesborough service through to Chester.

Access to the airport would still have been maintained by a single interchange at Manchester Piccadilly. And would be significantly more reliable than the current mangle of services passing through the Castlefield corridor. Reliability which is an order of magnitude more important than direct connectivity when you are trying to catch that important flight.

However someone decided it was more important to be seen spending money on Infrastrucutre in the North (something I fully agree with) than it was to actually spend it on the right things.

 

[js1000]

The latter was achieved by sending Liverpool trains via Vic, no?

Yes, all the moaning about the Ordsall Chord being a failure does forget the extra capacity and reduced conflicts for platforms 1-12. The chord has been blamed for problems that are partly occuring due to increasing the frequency of service on the Castlefield corridor from 8/10tph to 12/15tph.

That removed one of four crossing movements (Liverpool - Scarborough). Airport-Newcastle/York and Airport-Middlesbrough conflicting moves have been resolved by the chord, leaving only Airport-Cleethorpes services crossing the station throat.

Also the Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly stoppers now continue onto Liverpool. It's not a completely reliable route but it does mean they don't have to cut across 13/14 into one of the terminating platforms.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Sadly some people are so entrenched in their view they cannot comprehend the notion that someone travelling from Yorkshire or the North East change trains when travelling to a relatively small airport.
Some of us are fully aware that the issues at the Piccadilly throat (caused by the two Liverpool Trains crossing over and the Middlesborough train reversing) could have been solved, for zero cost, simply by diverting them via Victoria and sending the Middlesborough service through to Chester.

Access to the airport would still have been maintained by a single interchange at Manchester Piccadilly. And would be significantly more reliable than the current mangle of services passing through the Castlefield corridor. Reliability which is an order of magnitude more important than direct connectivity when you are trying to catch that important flight.

However someone decided it was more important to be seen spending money on Infrastrucutre in the North (something I fully agree with) than it was to actually spend it on the right things.

Nearly 30 million passengers is not a small airport in the grand scheme of things...

 

[notlob.divad]

Yes, all the moaning about the Ordsall Chord being a failure does forget the extra capacity and reduced conflicts for platforms 1-12. The chord has been blamed for problems that are partly occuring due to increasing the frequency of service on the Castlefield corridor from 8/10tph to 12/15tph.

That removed one of four crossing movements (Liverpool - Scarborough). Airport-Newcastle/York and Airport-Middlesbrough conflicting moves have been resolved by the chord, leaving only Airport-Cleethorpes services crossing the station throat.

You seem to be forgetting the Liverpool - Norwich Service, which seems to be one of the services most severly impacted by the opening of the chord.
However the Airport-Newcastle and Airport Middlesborough service conflict could easily have been removed by sending one to Chester and one to Blackpool (in place of the forthcoming Northern Connect Service). This would have had the added benefits of keeping Warrington on the Transpennine Express Map, as well as adding Blackpool, and Chester. Giving a population of 466 000 people direct access to Express cross-pennine services.

 

[LM93]

Nearly 30 million passengers is not a small airport in the grand scheme of things...

3rd busiest in the country as well!

 

[notlob.divad]

Nearly 30 million passengers is not a small airport in the grand scheme of things...

Its not even in the top 50, it is small fry. If I lived on the edge of Newcastle I'd be pushing for an extra couple of KLM flights to Schipol everyday, or a direct link to Frankfurt, before the pathetically slow crawl around all the stations in Manchester to get to Ringway.

 

[Ianno87]

Its not even in the top 50, it is small fry. If I lived on the edge of Newcastle I'd be pushing for an extra couple of KLM flights to Schipol everyday, or a direct link to Frankfurt, before the pathetically slow crawl around all the stations in Manchester to get to Ringway.

Those links would exist in the commercial air market if there was demand for them.

Reality is that people travel from far afield to access flights from Manchester, for the destinations it can offer.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, all the moaning about the Ordsall Chord being a failure does forget the extra capacity and reduced conflicts for platforms 1-12. The chord has been blamed for problems that are partly occuring due to increasing the frequency of service on the Castlefield corridor from 8/10tph to 12/15tph.

Which was done because of the Chord!

 

[notlob.divad]

Those links would exist in the commercial air market if there was demand for them.

They demand would exist if Manchester wasn't sucking the life out of the rest of the Northern Economy, Just like London has sucked the life out of the entire UK economy. Anyhow this is going way off topic from the thread title.

If the wretched government's policy is to turn towns and cities across the north into the Manchester Commuter belt, like some kind of mini-London, then yes I agree 15 and 16 should have been built before or at least at the same time as the Ordsall Chord.

However if the government actually wanted to work for the benefit of the whole of the North, rather than a single city, it would maximise the opptions to commute in, around and across, all of the cities of the North. That would mean a brand new metro system for the Leeds City region. Completion of the Liverpool Metro, Extension of the Sheffield Metro, and full re-regulation of the local bus routes.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Its not even in the top 50, it is small fry. If I lived on the edge of Newcastle I'd be pushing for an extra couple of KLM flights to Schipol everyday, or a direct link to Frankfurt, before the pathetically slow crawl around all the stations in Manchester to get to Ringway.

Top 50 globally? No, that’s not a surprise - but it’s the busiest in the North of England and deserves direct links.

 

[notlob.divad]

it’s the busiest in the North of England and deserves direct links.

If you are going to start spliting up areas of land into arbritray distinctions and say the biggest airport in it deserves a direct link. Why are you only stopping at 'the north'

Belfast International is the biggest Airport in Northern Irelan. It deserves a direct link.
Leeds-Bradford is the biggest airport in West Yorkshire. It deserves a direct link.

I could equally say Heathrow is Europe's busiest Airport. Therefore every major city in Europe from Lisbon to Helsinki, should have a direct rail service to Heathrow Airport.

It is exaclty the same logic that you are using to justify an £85 million stretch of track that is causing missery for millions of everyday rail users.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Top 50 globally? No, that’s not a surprise - but it’s the busiest in the North of England and deserves direct links.

If those direct links;
1. Don't waste a load of DMUs that could be put to better use than being at best a third full of those making discretionary leisure journeys;
2. Don't cause congestion and therefore delays day in day out to trains through the core of the North West's rail network;
3. Don't cost £85 million to make the problem worse.

...that is.

I still maintain that simply terminating them in Platform 1/2 at Picc, and replacing the Airport runs with a dedicated EMU service from platform 11 or 12, would have been a far better option. Not to mention that reducing through trains on the Styal line to those that have to be sent there from 13/14 as a terminus of convenience could allow it to receive a proper Merseyrail style high frequency local service with excellent provision for large Airport luggage etc and no disruption caused from further away?

FWIW, do these direct trains, as they bimble their way through west Manchester on their way South East, take longer to get to the Airport than a train straight into Picc and a connection? Wouldn't surprise me.

 

[snowball]

You could argue that Piccadilly is not a very busy station in global terms, and is not even in the 10 busiest in the UK, and therefore doesn't merit any rail links.

 

[Killingworth]

Its not even in the top 50, it is small fry. If I lived on the edge of Newcastle I'd be pushing for an extra couple of KLM flights to Schipol everyday, or a direct link to Frankfurt, before the pathetically slow crawl around all the stations in Manchester to get to Ringway.

Newcastle Airport is doing quite well as it is. Flights via Dubai to the east, and choice of European hubs.

 

[MarkyT]

The saga is illustrative of the state of long term rail 'planning' in UK. NR and other bodies decided that train services planned through the corridor required the Piccadilly/Oxford Road elements together with the Ordsall chord. For whatever reasons, authorities did not tie the elements together into a megaproject like Thameslink, but when the go ahead for Ordsall was given, what were NR to do?
1. Wait potentially years for the other elements to be approved, or
2. Get on with whatever work they were able to in the short term.
The danger of 1. was that money or other authority for the chord could have been withdrawn during the wait and actually nothing would end up being built. At least with the Ordsall Chord now existing, the pressure for the other measures remains.

 

[mmh]

I still maintain that simply terminating them in Platform 1/2 at Picc, and replacing the Airport runs with a dedicated EMU service from platform 11 or 12, would have been a far better option. Not to mention that reducing through trains on the Styal line to those that have to be sent there from 13/14 as a terminus of convenience could allow it to receive a proper Merseyrail style high frequency local service with excellent provision for large Airport luggage etc and no disruption caused from further away?

Having to change trains will be a massive disincentive to using the train on a journey to an airport. With the Transpennine Express services, Piccadilly has 9 trains an hour to the airport, without them it would have 5 trains an hour - still more than Merseyrail's high frequency 4 train an hour service.

FWIW, do these direct trains, as they bimble their way through west Manchester on their way South East, take longer to get to the Airport than a train straight into Picc and a connection? Wouldn't surprise me.

No - in a lot of cases they're not particularly quicker than changing, but they're not slower.

 

[Killingworth]

You seem to be forgetting the Liverpool - Norwich Service, which seems to be one of the services most severly impacted by the opening of the chord.

Absolutely! Just look at the performance recently on the Piccadilly - Nottingham leg. And that's after some have missed out Sheffield altogether by using the Dore curve, or been diverted off their booked route via Beighton to the east of Shefield onto the mainline to Chesterfield to pick up time. They're averaging more than 10 minutes late. Maybe now that Lime Street is getting back to normal things will start to improve.

 

[mmh]

Belfast International is the biggest Airport in Northern Irelan. It deserves a direct link.

It may well do, I know nothing about the railways in Northern Ireland.

Leeds-Bradford is the biggest airport in West Yorkshire. It deserves a direct link.

It almost certainly does. Definitely from Leeds (and Bradford) itself (themselves).

I could equally say Heathrow is Europe's busiest Airport. Therefore every major city in Europe from Lisbon to Helsinki, should have a direct rail service to Heathrow Airport.

You could say that, but it'd be a rotten argument!

Whether it should be or not, Manchester Airport is by far the largest airport outside the south east, has a catchment area of about half the country (Britain, not England as it serves Wales and to a lesser but still significant extent Scotland too) and is the only airport outside the south east with a proper connection to the national network. Lots of people want to go there from outside the immediate area.

 

[158756]

I still maintain that simply terminating them in Platform 1/2 at Picc, and replacing the Airport runs with a dedicated EMU service from platform 11 or 12, would have been a far better option. Not to mention that reducing through trains on the Styal line to those that have to be sent there from 13/14 as a terminus of convenience could allow it to receive a proper Merseyrail style high frequency local service with excellent provision for large Airport luggage etc and no disruption caused from further away?
.

Terminating at Piccadilly 1/2 would destroy the frequent Transpennine service, clearly contrary to any aims for connecting the North. This could be solved of course - by withdrawing TPE services to Liverpool. Alternatively you could terminate the trains currently heading to the Airport at Victoria, but dumping TPE at the arse end of the city with no onward rail connections to anywhere anyone wants to go isn't going to increase usage.

 

[jfollows]

The saga is illustrative of the state of long term rail 'planning' in UK. NR and other bodies decided that train services planned through the corridor required the Piccadilly/Oxford Road elements together with the Ordsall chord. For whatever reasons, authorities did not tie the elements together into a megaproject like Thameslink, but when the go ahead for Ordsall was given, what were NR to do?
1. Wait potentially years for the other elements to be approved, or
2. Get on with whatever work they were able to in the short term.
The danger of 1. was that money or other authority for the chord could have been withdrawn during the wait and actually nothing would end up being built. At least with the Ordsall Chord now existing, the pressure for the other measures remains.

Agreed, but the next step was that the May 2018 timetable was devised and implemented in the likely knowledge and understanding that it would not and could not be supported by the infrastructure, but it had to be done because by being seen to try and fail it would send a message to someone important that the Piccadilly upgrade (the subject of this thread) was required. Just saying "it's not possible" was not an alternative. But in the meantime the people most hurt have been those who rely on the railway to deliver them to and from work on time reliably.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Terminating at Piccadilly 1/2 would destroy the frequent Transpennine service, clearly contrary to any aims for connecting the North

Why? The service was operated with trains reversing there before.

 

[158756]

Agreed, but the next step was that the May 2018 timetable was devised and implemented in the likely knowledge and understanding that it would not and could not be supported by the infrastructure, but it had to be done because by being seen to try and fail it would send a message to someone important that the Piccadilly upgrade (the subject of this thread) was required. Just saying "it's not possible" was not an alternative. But in the meantime the people most hurt have been those who rely on the railway to deliver them to and from work on time reliably.

Platforms 15/16 were always meant to be delivered later than the Chord - thus presumably Network Rail and whoever else was involved in the scheme believed it to be possible to have one without the other. Saying 'it's not possible' would also say that NR don't know what they're doing and that any money the North asked for was wasted.

 

[158756]

Why? The service was operated with trains reversing there before.

That was before the rest of the service moved to Victoria. It was IIRC 4tph from Piccadilly, becoming 4 Picc + 1tph at Victoria when the Liverpool-Newcastle started. Given the TPE stopping trains are so slow, it would be under your proposal effectively 2tph from both Victoria and Piccadilly, providing a frequent service from neither.

 

[Agent_Squash]

If you are going to start spliting up areas of land into arbitrary distinctions and say the biggest airport in it deserves a direct link. Why are you only stopping at 'the north'

Belfast International is the biggest Airport in Northern Irelan. It deserves a direct link.
Leeds-Bradford is the biggest airport in West Yorkshire. It deserves a direct link.

I could equally say Heathrow is Europe's busiest Airport. Therefore every major city in Europe from Lisbon to Helsinki, should have a direct rail service to Heathrow Airport.

It is exactly the same logic that you are using to justify an £85 million stretch of track that is causing misery for millions of everyday rail users.

You are using hyperbole to back up your point. The fact is Manchester has a wider range of destinations than most places - and the airport has grown hand in hand with the rail connection. The Ordsall Chord is a good idea in theory - but everything else (uniform rolling stock, for example) isn't there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Platforms 15/16 were always meant to be delivered later than the Chord - thus presumably Network Rail and whoever else was involved in the scheme believed it to be possible to have one without the other. Saying 'it's not possible' would also say that NR don't know what they're doing

In this regard they quite self evidently didn't.

and that any money the North asked for was wasted.

By not doing 15/16 first it clearly was.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You are using hyperbole to back up your point. The fact is Manchester has a wider range of destinations than most places - and the airport has grown hand in hand with the rail connection. The Ordsall Chord is a good idea in theory - but everything else (uniform rolling stock, for example) isn't there.

With an unlimited DMU fleet, closure of Deansgate, the North West electrification complete, Oxford Road 8-car platforms and Picc P15/16, it would be a good idea.

All those other items were needed before it was even thought about.

 

[Chester1]

Which was done because of the Chord!

The chord added 2 services not 4 or 5. There needs to be a rationalisation of services going through Piccadilly 13 and 14 to remove all the old DMUs and limiting end door units as much as possible.

Changing:

Preston (DMU via Bolton)
Middlesbrough (185)
Lime Street (156 via Warrington Central)
Wigan Northwestern (DMU via Bolton)
Lime Street (319 slow via Chat Moss)
Edinburgh/Glasgow (350)
Blackpool North (DMU via Bolton)
Newcastle (185)
Lime Street (158 - fast via Warrington Central)
Blackpool North (319 via Wigan Northwestern)
Llandudno (175)
2tph - Oxford Road - Lime Street (DMU - slow via Warrington Central)

To something like:

EMUs:

Blackpool North (319 via Wigan Northwestern)
Blackpool North (319 - via Bolton)
Preston (319 via Bolton)
Lime Street (319 - slow via Chat Moss)
Edinburgh/Glasgow (397)

BMUs:

Newcastle (802)
Oxford Road to Lime Street (Northern - 769s if they actually arrive - slow via Warrington Central)

DMUs and loco hauled:

Middlesbrough (Mark V sets)
Lime Street (195 fast via Warrington Central)
Lime Street (158 fast via Warrington Central)
Llandudno (175)
Leeds (195 via Calder Valley)

Diverting to Victoria:

Wigan Northwestern (DMU via Bolton)

 

[greyman42]

Sadly some people are so entrenched in their view they cannot comprehend the notion that someone travelling from Yorkshire or the North East change trains when travelling to a relatively small airport.
Some of us are fully aware that the issues at the Piccadilly throat (caused by the two Liverpool Trains crossing over and the Middlesborough train reversing) could have been solved, for zero cost, simply by diverting them via Victoria and sending the Middlesborough service through to Chester.

Access to the airport would still have been maintained by a single interchange at Manchester Piccadilly. And would be significantly more reliable than the current mangle of services passing through the Castlefield corridor. Reliability which is an order of magnitude more important than direct connectivity when you are trying to catch that important flight.

However someone decided it was more important to be seen spending money on Infrastrucutre in the North (something I fully agree with) than it was to actually spend it on the right things.

If you were to visit Manchester Airport Viewing Park, you would realise just how busy the Airport is.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Sadly some people are so entrenched in their view they cannot comprehend the notion that someone travelling from Yorkshire or the North East change trains when travelling to a relatively small airport.

For a moment in time, seeing the words "small airport", I thought you were referring to Teesside Airport...

 

[Chester1]

For a moment in time, seeing the words "small airport", I thought you were referring to Teesside Airport...

Yeah, I am not sure how the third largest airport in the UK can be considered small within the context of UK transport policy!