Reality is that there are about 12 robust passenger paths per hour through the Castlefield corridor, pending an infrastructure solution.
That inevitably involves trading off routes against each other to make best use of these paths, whatever that looks like.
I do not disagree that this is the realpolitik. The Congested Infrastructure Report detailing the additional works necessary goes some way to addressing the problems .The Castlefield Corridor was.is a serious symptomatic failure that falls into the too little/too late category. There were as I have indicated above a number of systemic flaws with origins in the working of the now defunct franchise system. It is important to be able to recognise the difference between symptomatic and causal failure. I became involved in this as part of the local opposition to the dismemberment of the Southport services. Prior to this, I was one of the founding team at London Reconnections, analysts specialising in transport policy and practice in London. What I saw in Manchester was history repeating itself in that Thameslink had started with the clever idea of linking the MML north and Brighton line south side services but rapidly became enmeshed in conflicting junctions over which vociferous commuters with handy access to politicians. travelled. The answer was to completely rebuild the whole route including new stations at St Pancras, Farringdon, Blackfriars and the whopper that is London Bridge - East Croydon is the final brick in the wall. The Thameslink Press Office described it as the largest spaghetti unravelling exercise in the world which it was.
Manchester suffered from same form of transport sclerosis but on a smaller scale. Governments of both stripes have tended to regard railways as an expensive inconvenience. In his day Alastair Darling was as big a menace as Chris Grayling was to become. Keeping the railways out of the news post Hatfield was a DfT mantra. It remained so until the retendering of the Northern Rail Franchises and the creation of Northern and TPE franchises when the idea of a good and bad railway took root.In terms of timetable precedence the fastest services were first on the graph, followed by slower services with freight generally coming last. A number of infills had been built at Hazel Grove and the Windsor link. Each had yielded benefits but at the expense of junction congestion at Edgeley and Ordsall Lane. The new viaduct at Castlefield was the straw that broke the camel's back . It was Thameslink all over again.
A scratch team of representative from Network Rail, the PTE's and the County Council Rail Officers was formed, each experts in their area but without effective strategic leadership. They saw themselves as arbiters of scarce resource. They were advised by Steer Davis Gleave. However the data they used was fundamentally flawed. This is the executive summary of a report I prepared at the time:
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•We (OPSTA) contend that there has been a fundamental process failure in developing the Train Service Requirement upon which franchise agreements and associated documents such as timetables and rolling stock rosters have been prepared.
•We contend that there are causal and contributory causes to this failure.
•Causal factors
•The making of “irrevocable decisions” from inadequate information. In this case using Station Entry and Exit (SE&E) data prepared on behalf of the ORR for one purpose, (ORCATS allocation) for other purposes. The ORR specifically warns against this practice known as “data stretch”.
•This data stretch may not have been self evident as the tableau data base prepared by Steer Davis Gleave incorporates not only the SE&E data but also data from other sources and where necessary estimates are generated requiring simplifying assumptions. Such agglomeration is misleading with regard to the usage of Southport services.
•Manchester is one of two special cases recognised by the ORR in the preparation of their Station Entry and Exit Data. London is cited as the other special case. (In practice Manchester, London and “Manchester & London” are special cases). The planning team failed to recognise the implications of this special case(s) status designation.
• Contributory factors
•Whilst not appreciating the fundamental weaknesses of the data upon which their decision was based the team realised that their results could be controversial and adopted procedures that avoided scrutiny and/or constructive criticism. This has become evident not only from FOI evidence subsequently received from local LTA’s but also from the material discrepancies between the answers from the LTA’s.
•In order to reach a solution the team deviated from a decision process based upon an, albeit flawed, Evidence Based Policy to a “special case” variant based on policy based evidence. The STR is therefore dependent on a reverse-engineered business case ‘methodology’, in which the starting point for appraisal was the desired conclusion
•Questionable assumptions were made to support this special case argument. The team also saw the problem in terms of “either/or” trade offs rather than seeking logical “and” solutions
• The derived decision is without precedent and inconsistent with precedents accepted by the DfT in analogous cases.
The missing link in the team was that it failed to include the ORR because nobody realised that they needed to. The rest is history. The creation of TfN and its brain child NPR was a welcome response to resolving the issue - however this seems to have run into the sands of lethargy that flow in the corridors of the DfT.
With all due respect to the previous correspondent -unless people grasp all the complex systems engineering interplays at stake - the reality is we should not be surprised as the axiom has it - "If you do what you always you do - You will get what you always got. That is the reality.
I also used to go to Wigan a couple of times a month and it was great not having to change. Now it is the hideous 150.
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