Transport for Leigh campaign

[telstarbox]

There is a campaign for Leigh to have a station on HS2, backed by Andy Burnham MP:

From ITV:

The campaign for a railway station in Leigh in Greater Manchester will be stepped up later. Campaigners who want the town connected to the High Speed Rail link will unveil their plans.

The Leigh MP and Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham is backing the campaign.

Ged Tyrrell from Transport for Leigh said it was almost 50 years to the day since Leigh's station closed. "Transport for Leigh are relaunching their attempts to persuade the Government to open a station at the start of their flagship rail scheme HS2.

"A railway station in Leigh will be a huge boost to the local economy and it will enable commuters who live in Leigh and surrounding areas to commute to major cities such as Manchester, London and Liverpool with ease."

TfGM have thrown their support behind the Leigh Busway so not sure how far this campaign will get.

 

[Monty]

No point in building HS2 if every intermediate town between Manchester, Birmingham & London want their own station. The trains will never be able to take advantage of the high speeds if they have to stop every 10 minutes!

No offence to the residents of Leigh, but should they not try something that's a little bit more realistic?

 

[Spaceflower]

Slightly off topic but why build the HS2 route to Leeds the long way? Surely this loses much of its intended benefit. I thought following the existing flat and relatively straight route of the ECML would have been a better idea.

 

[HSTEd]

No point in building HS2 if every intermediate town between Manchester, Birmingham & London want their own station. The trains will never be able to take advantage of the high speeds if they have to stop every 10 minutes!

The Tōkaidō Shinkansen has stops every 20 miles and still has the stopping trains average ~110mph+ over the whole length of the journey.
And that is with trains running in between older sets that crawl at 170mph.

But we must copy France and not a country which has a similar settlement pattern to our own.

 

[Spaceflower]

Yes but we have different requirements of our network compared to those of Japan. Namely improved connectivity with the continental network.

 

[northwichcat]

Is Leigh even on the HS2 route or would HS2 have to be re-routed?

While in principle I agree that HS2 can't serve small places I actually think the little village of Ashley would be a suitable HS2 call (in lieu of Manchester Airport) for the following reasons:
1. With a new motorway junction it would be well placed for a parkway station and there is room to build a large car park. It doesn't really seem logical to send 'park & rail' passengers to Manchester Airport, when the Airport claimed in the past it needed to build on more land in the Styal area to provide enough car parking for existing demand. A 'park & rail' option is popular with business people which North Cheshire/South Manchester has lots of.
2. A relocated Ashley station could provide an interchange to local services. If tram-trains are introduced running beyond Altrincham towards Northwich then easy interchange options would increase.
3. A shuttle rail/Metrolink service could run between Ashley HS2 and Manchester Airport, which could improve local Airport transport links as well as allowing longer distance Airport links through a simple change on to HS2. I don't know why Manchester Airport needs a fast rail link to London given what Gatwick and Heathrow offer.

People may not agree with that but little Ebbsfleet got a HS1 station.

 

[sprinterguy]

Slightly off topic but why build the HS2 route to Leeds the long way? Surely this loses much of its intended benefit. I thought following the existing flat and relatively straight route of the ECML would have been a better idea.

There is capacity available on the London - West Midlands trunk of HS2 to accommodate all of the anticipated traffic from both the East (Leeds) and West (Manchester) arms of the network. Why go to the expense and public opposition of building a second high speed route out of London when that would leave the proposed one operating at less than optimum capacity?

Services between London and Leeds, York and Newcastle will still be faster via the East arm of HS2 than via the current ECML, and routeing ECML services that way will also dramtically improve journey times for cross-country passengers between Birmingham, Leeds, York and Newcastle (and to a lesser extent, Nottingham/Derby and Sheffield). Benefits for as many people as possible: Linking up as many of the major cities as possible with one line makes best sense.
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Yes but we have different requirements of our network compared to those of Japan. Namely improved connectivity with the continental network.

That's not the principal aim of High Speed 2 at all. As far as I know the proposed service specification shows all the intended paths being occupied by domestic services: While there will be scope for a limited number of international services running onto HS2 from the continent, this looks set to be very much a peripheral operation, and is dependent on suitable infrastructure for security checks being put in place.

 

[HSTEd]

Is Leigh even on the HS2 route or would HS2 have to be re-routed?

I think it would put Leigh on the section between Wigan and the Manchester triangle junction.

Which really kills the argument about "capacity can't take it" since that section of track is never going to be heavily used.

Would be a reasonable place to allow captives to couple up as well.....

 

[Spaceflower]

There is capacity available on the London - West Midlands trunk of HS2 to accommodate all of the anticipated traffic from both the East (Leeds) and West (Manchester) arms of the network. Why go to the expense and public opposition of building a second high speed route out of London when that would leave the proposed one operating at less than optimum capacity?

Services between London and Leeds, York and Newcastle will still be faster via the East arm of HS2 than via the current ECML, and routeing ECML services that way will also dramtically improve journey times for cross-country passengers between Birmingham, Leeds, York and Newcastle (and to a lesser extent, Nottingham/Derby and Sheffield). Benefits for as many people as possible: Linking up as many of the major cities as possible with one line makes best sense.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

That's not the principal aim of High Speed 2 at all. As far as I know the proposed service specification shows all the intended paths being occupied by domestic services: While there will be scope for a limited number of international services running onto HS2 from the continent, this looks set to be very much a peripheral operation, and is dependent on suitable infrastructure for security checks being put in place.

In other words to benefit London.

 

[WCMLaddict]

The proposed line goes much closer to Leigh than I thought. Plus there is planned train maintenance depot just outside of it.

I can't realistically see the station or rail link happening though.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

.....TfGM have thrown their support behind the Leigh Busway so not sure how far this campaign will get.

IMO, there is more chance of TfGM backing a Metrolink stop in Leigh, than there is of them supporting any sort of heavy rail solution.

 

[185]

There should certainly be a station provided between Eccles and Newton le Willows at the foot of the Atherleigh Way.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

There should certainly be a station provided between Eccles and Newton le Willows at the foot of the Atherleigh Way.

Have either TfGM as the "countywide" authority or Wigan Council (Leigh falls within their remit) made any formal statements on any new rail projects that are in their forward transport plans in the Leigh area. Surely, one would expect that both of these bodies would be aware of the rail requirements that are planned for Leigh, rather than any external body with aspirations. Who would fund such a project..would either TfGM or Wigan Council be expected to part-finance such a project ?

Both TfGM and Wigan Council have given their blessing to The Leigh Guided Busway project, that is already in the early stages of route clearance of agricultural land and areas in-between East Bond Street in Leigh and New Earth Road in Ellenbrook.

A projected HS2 railway station link to serve Leigh ? What would Leigh have in its case at that period of forward time to justify such a rail link ? Are there developmental proposals in the long-term strategic planning of Wigan Council that would benefit from this ? How can one envisage what the economic viability of large infrastructural projects will be so far into the future ?
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A relocated Ashley station could provide an interchange to local services. If tram-trains are introduced running beyond Altrincham towards Northwich then easy interchange options would increase.

What would the difference be between the proposed HS2 railway station at Manchester Airport and that in your proposal for Ashley. Distance-wise, there will be very little between these two sites.

 

[WatcherZero]

Yes, been studied and rejected though remains an aspiration.

http://www.wigan.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/831624FC-8ED7-45AB-BCBF-9177F4C8D002/0/LARSExecSummary.pdf

http://www.wigan.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DD06A339-F532-4AAA-A059-DDE5111998B1/0/LARSReport.pdf

http://www.wigan.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/79FA68C8-1575-4ED0-9C36-DD8E45BAD5EA/0/LARSAppendices.pdf

 

[LE Greys]

There is capacity available on the London - West Midlands trunk of HS2 to accommodate all of the anticipated traffic from both the East (Leeds) and West (Manchester) arms of the network. Why go to the expense and public opposition of building a second high speed route out of London when that would leave the proposed one operating at less than optimum capacity?

Services between London and Leeds, York and Newcastle will still be faster via the East arm of HS2 than via the current ECML, and routeing ECML services that way will also dramtically improve journey times for cross-country passengers between Birmingham, Leeds, York and Newcastle (and to a lesser extent, Nottingham/Derby and Sheffield). Benefits for as many people as possible: Linking up as many of the major cities as possible with one line makes best sense.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

That's not the principal aim of High Speed 2 at all. As far as I know the proposed service specification shows all the intended paths being occupied by domestic services: While there will be scope for a limited number of international services running onto HS2 from the continent, this looks set to be very much a peripheral operation, and is dependent on suitable infrastructure for security checks being put in place.

In other words to benefit London.

Well, considering it's being planned from London that's not very surprising. I've gone on record several times stating that I consider anything more than 10tph to be impractical on a double-track inter-city railway, because the headways are too short. And that I consider the basic aims of the project to be flawed because of its over-reliance on routing traffic through Birmingham. The fact that (A) I live on the southern half of the ECML, one of the lines being bypassed and (B) I have a huge chip on my shoulder about the WCML getting so much investment since privatisation while the ECML upgrade was cancelled should be taken into account.

 

[WatcherZero]

I think it would put Leigh on the section between Wigan and the Manchester triangle junction.

Which really kills the argument about "capacity can't take it" since that section of track is never going to be heavily used.

Would be a reasonable place to allow captives to couple up as well.....

Just seen their proposals and nope not on the Wigan-Manchester spur. Their proposing to redirect the Chat Moss line to run alongside the A580 and have a station on the HS2 Wigan-Birmingham line less than 6km south of Wigan North Western.

They seem to think this station a couple of km south of Leigh would have a rather large catchment.

 

[northwichcat]

What would the difference be between the proposed HS2 railway station at Manchester Airport and that in your proposal for Ashley. Distance-wise, there will be very little between these two sites.

Where would be the easiest place to build a large car park for the business people who railhead?

There's talk of the HS2 station being a couple of miles from the existing station at Manchester Airport so it won't be useful for people from places like Alderley Edge and Didsbury to change to HS2 at Manchester Airport.

On the other hand Ashley is a low usage station despite being near a Motorway and an Airport, so moving the existing station 1/2 mile or so to put it adjacent to the HS2 route isn't going to cause much inconvience to existing passengers and in doing that you could create an interchange between HS2 and local stations without forcing people to go on a 20 mile round trip via central Manchester to then get on a line that goes 1/2 mile from their house.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

On the other hand Ashley is a low usage station despite being near a Motorway and an Airport, so moving the existing station 1/2 mile or so to put it adjacent to the HS2 route isn't going to cause much inconvenience to existing passengers and in doing that you could create an interchange between HS2 and local stations without forcing people to go on a 20 mile round trip via central Manchester to then get on a line that goes 1/2 mile from their house.

Is it envisaged that the minor roads in the Ashley area will be suitably upgraded in order that a proposed large park and ride facility can be accommodated ? One does have to query the raison d'etre of the proposed site for the HS2 Manchester Airport railway station, unless there are already plans for the existing road network in that proposed location to be supplemented by an extension of the Manchester Metrolink system to there.

I am mindful that much as this is an interesting topic to be further developed, it does not help overmuch with the thread matter of Leigh and the aspirations of the Transport for Leigh campaign, who will still be smarting from the decision of both TfGM and Wigan Council to throw their weight in favour of the Leigh Guided Busway project. A reading of the decision reached by the Places Scrutiny Committee of Wigan Council in 2012 in respect of that matter made quite interesting reading at the time as not just Leigh, but that of Tyldesley was also noted under the terms of the Wigan to Tyldesley Corridor project.

 

[tbtc]

First I see a suggestion on here that HS2 stop at Teesside Airport, now an MP wants it to stop at Leigh?

This is why politicians shouldn't run our railways - they all want their own local area to get a gold plated service.

What next? Falls of Cruachan gets an HS2 service? A Shinkansen from Breich to Sugar Loaf?

 

[snail]

Their proposing to redirect the Chat Moss line to run alongside the A580 and have a station on the HS2 Wigan-Birmingham line less than 6km south of Wigan North Western.

...does what? Is something missing from that statement?

 

[Bevan Price]

I am mindful that much as this is an interesting topic to be further developed, it does not help overmuch with the thread matter of Leigh and the aspirations of the Transport for Leigh campaign, who will still be smarting from the decision of both TfGM and Wigan Council to throw their weight in favour of the Leigh Guided Busway project. A reading of the decision reached by the Places Scrutiny Committee of Wigan Council in 2012 in respect of that matter made quite interesting reading at the time as not just Leigh, but that of Tyldesley was also noted under the terms of the Wigan to Tyldesley Corridor project.

I noticed today that the guided busway scheme has become even more senseless. The actual busway covers only the "quietest" (Leigh / Tyldesley end) section of the route, then the buses have to use the A580 road towards Manhester. Some "clever ***" have now decided to apply a 40 mph speed limit for about 5 miles along the dual carriageway section of the A580, from near Walkden into Salford. Exactly what is not needed to provide a rapid public transport service. Even the previous 50 mph limit was a bit slow for this type of road, but 40 mph is just absurd.

It took the (X34) bus almost 40 minutes to get from the Wakkden junction on the A580 to Manchester city centre in the late morning today.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

First I see a suggestion on here that HS2 stop at Teesside Airport, now an MP wants it to stop at Leigh?

This is why politicians shouldn't run our railways - they all want their own local area to get a gold plated service.

What next? Falls of Cruachan gets an HS2 service? A Shinkansen from Breich to Sugar Loaf?

I am mindful of the joint proposal backing by Transport for Leigh and an opposition Member of Parliament for the HS2 Leigh station expressed at the start of this thread and then drawing a comparison to the joint campaign by Railfuture Yorkshire and the City of York council for a proposed station at Haxby under the terms of the Network Rail new station fund which looks like not making the short-list of three projects, as a reason why aspirations often are inherantly doomed to failure despite having "names" backing these.
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I noticed today that the guided busway scheme has become even more senseless. The actual busway covers only the "quietest" (Leigh / Tyldesley end) section of the route, then the buses have to use the A580 road towards Manchester. Some "clever ***" have now decided to apply a 40 mph speed limit for about 5 miles along the dual carriageway section of the A580, from near Walkden into Salford. Exactly what is not needed to provide a rapid public transport service. Even the previous 50 mph limit was a bit slow for this type of road, but 40 mph is just absurd.

It took the (X34) bus almost 40 minutes to get from the Walkden junction on the A580 to Manchester city centre in the late morning today.

Have you ever seen the route proposal and of road segregations that will apply to the Leigh Guided Busway project ?

 

[WatcherZero]

I noticed today that the guided busway scheme has become even more senseless. The actual busway covers only the "quietest" (Leigh / Tyldesley end) section of the route, then the buses have to use the A580 road towards Manhester. Some "clever ***" have now decided to apply a 40 mph speed limit for about 5 miles along the dual carriageway section of the A580, from near Walkden into Salford. Exactly what is not needed to provide a rapid public transport service. Even the previous 50 mph limit was a bit slow for this type of road, but 40 mph is just absurd.

It took the (X34) bus almost 40 minutes to get from the Wakkden junction on the A580 to Manchester city centre in the late morning today.

Its not just the guided section, the A580 is widened to add more bus lanes through most of the Leigh/Salford border area then in central Salford new bus lanes are created through reserving road space.

http://www.tfgm.com/buspriority/routes/Documents/A580-detailed-drawings.pdf

 

[HSTEd]

Just seen their proposals and nope not on the Wigan-Manchester spur. Their proposing to redirect the Chat Moss line to run alongside the A580 and have a station on the HS2 Wigan-Birmingham line less than 6km south of Wigan North Western.

That is what I meant.

The Manchester Triangle/Delta Junction to Wigan section.
(The line between wigan and the point where the line to Manchester Piccadilly diverges).

 

[LE Greys]

Just seen their proposals and nope not on the Wigan-Manchester spur. Their proposing to redirect the Chat Moss line to run alongside the A580 and have a station on the HS2 Wigan-Birmingham line less than 6km south of Wigan North Western.

They seem to think this station a couple of km south of Leigh would have a rather large catchment.

Isn't that a little extreme? Surely it would make more sense to have a spur from the A-road run down to a new station on the Chat Moss Line. Also, I'm interested in how they draw their catchment maps, it seems a bit difficult to get all the way from Southport in half an hour unless you allow for two-change connections.

 

[WatcherZero]

I agree, however the arguments around producing a valid business case dont seem to go down well with the locals, they have a bit of a world revolves around them attitude and take the approach of appropiating rather than integrating with the existing infrastructure. Same can be seen in the earlier plan they were advocating where they expected all Liverpool-Manchester trains to be quite happy to divert along a northerly spur into Leigh and then back out the same route again.

 

[WatcherZero]

To elaborate I dont believe theres any sane business case for a Leigh HS2 stop in addition to Wigan North Western, there may be a marginal case to add a passing loop on Chat Moss and build a station south of the town with the odd service stopping, though the distance of the line south of the town is the same or further than that to the existing stations north of the town. The Leigh station has been the main rail focus of the Council/TfGM for sometime and the feasability study was produced, now however their in the very early days of looking at a couple of other station ideas such as another stop on the Atherton/Bolton lines or a stop on the WCML at Golborne or Standish (Boars Head is a closed WCML station in Standish) along with a tramway between Wigan and Atherton town centres through Ince, Hindley and Hindley Green parallel to the Atherton line (the worst road congestion point in the borough is the crossroads in Hindley, main east-west road commute route).

The one thing that stops the Tfl idea being totally out of the ballpark is that HS2 Ltd under their options to Government presented the £2bn idea of continuing HS2 from Wigan bypassing Wigan North Western and the centre of town by threading between Wigan and Hindley then continuing onwards passing west of Preston with a small parkway station then continuing a bit further north rejoining the WCML at the village of Brock I think it was. This would from memory have featured a new interchange station between HS2 and the Wigan-Manchester Atherton/Bolton route just west of the existing Hindley station. In fact its probably where they got this idea of a Leigh HS2 station from.

 

[Phil6219]

Our MP (I never voted for this guy) - the aforementioned Andy Burnham is a total tit, constantly talks out of his arse and tries to take credit for other peoples work (so basically just like the majority of politicians then). He knows this will never work but is as usual just trying to get himself some more publicity and of course be able to claim "at least he tried"...

There will be a depot at Lowton so the route isn't too far away from Leigh but frankly while Leigh does deserve a railway station it most certainly doesn't warrant one on HS2. A commuter service is needed - not a bloody busway either...

The misguided busway is not popular with most residents I've spoken to over here, for a start the busway will be taking services away from our local routes and putting them on the busway (which is running along the old rail line) so means a longer trek just to reach a bus stop... Then there is the East Lancashire Road, it doesn't have the capacity to lose a lane in each direction for the sake of a bus lane nor does it have the potential to be widened to allow new lanes to be built.

Add that to the new speed limits of 50, 40 and now 30 & it all starts to fall to pieces. I think it is a ploy by Salford Council to make it such a slow journey in that they can claim a new bus lane will solve the problem as well as bring world peace, end world hunger and cure every disease known to man...

The reason the speed limit was dropped to 40 was allegedly a knee-jerk reaction to a teenage boy who was pratting about on the carriageway and was killed by a car. The driver of whom had to go into police protection as the usual Facebook hate groups insisted he was speeding etc... Not to point out Darwinism at it's finest but the lad was also directly under a bloody footbridge. The reason it's been dropped to 40 on the Leigh side of the Motorway flyover is that a new school has been opened up and has a level-foot crossing of the carriageway (why they won't build a bridge is beyond me).

The council got reported to the Highways agency for having rather small "40" limit signs stuck on lamposts every so far down the road (comparable in size to beer mats) and having mobile speed camera's out in action. Within a week they have put proper full size speedboards out now.

It's also dropped to 30 just past The Height, all the way onto that wonderful idea of single lane fun they call the Crescent where it's now 20 (and the only time it would actually be possible to do more than that there would be at night anyway - especially now Chapel Street has also been single laned...

* going off to calm down now, bloody TfGM, Leigh, Busways, First Group and Salford Bleedin' Council... Argh must calm down...

Phil

 

[dstrat]

That was some rant

 

[northwichcat]

Everyone seems to be thinking putting a station at Leigh on HS2 would mean High Speed Intercity trains calling at Leigh. Could there not be a case for using something like Javelin trains on a Manchester-Leigh-Wigan shuttle service without stopping High Speed Intercity trains there or using slow 75mph trains on the HS2 line which would restrict the number of high speed trains too much.