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There are no longer any bus services from Parrs Wood to Gatley, Heald Green or the Airport (excluding the roundabout 288 via Altrincham), from Gatley to Heald Green or the Airport, or regularly from Heald Green to the Airport. Styal Road has bus stops but no buses now call.
There are no longer any bus services from Parrs Wood to Gatley, Heald Green or the Airport (excluding the roundabout 288 via Altrincham), from Gatley to Heald Green or the Airport, or regularly from Heald Green to the Airport. Styal Road has bus stops but no buses now call.
Yes, I did read your post, though I am not sure you did mine given one of the examples given. To make it really, really clear, is there any considerable demand between Mauldeth Road, Burnage and East Didsbury (just to/from those three, not involving Manchester or Ringway) that the 50 does not do better?
Don't say Tesco. Hardly anybody does their weekly shop by train.
Given that people want direct trains to the airport because of convenience rather than speed (at least to some degree), why can't we just make every train to the airport stop all shacks?
Agreed - if we are going to have so many trains on the Airport branch then they should be all stops from Deansgate to the Airport - at the moment local passengers on the Airport branch get a terrible deal whilst they watch all of these non-stop services whizz past themA balanced eight/hour from Deansgate to the Airport would be a massive improvement on the status quo
You are also a poster on a railway forum. You can be sure of it that the only students who would even consider walking from Owens Park and thereabouts to Mauldeth Road, take a train to Oxford Road (potentially involving a change) and then walk down to the uni, rather than take a direct bus (or walk/cycle all the way as many do), are the rail enthusiasts.
Also don't forget that Spicehead Central, sorry, Piccadilly Gardens Bus Station, is about 5-10 minutes closer to the main shopping area than any of the railway stations, particularly if your train goes into 13/14
You're the guy who wants all long established bus services to be chopped at the nearest tram/train station, to force people to wait and change onto a rail service into the nearest city centre even if that means being dumped on the edge of town, as a lot of train stations are)?
Complaining that only train-fixated Students are likely contenders for actually wanting to actually changing services?
But you still want to force everyone to lose their direct bus links into the heart of city centres?
Yes, I did read your post, though I am not sure you did mine given one of the examples given. To make it really, really clear, is there any considerable demand between Mauldeth Road, Burnage and East Didsbury (just to/from those three, not involving Manchester or Ringway) that the 50 does not do better?
Don't say Tesco. Hardly anybody does their weekly shop by train.
Passengers between these 3 stations and Gatley/Heald Green/Airport have no alternative other than to use the train. Passengers just travelling along Kingsway (but not Kingsway extension, which no longer has a bus service) might find it more convenient to use bus route 50. However, for the overall train service, skip-stopping services are extremely confusing, messy and irregular, and deny some journey opportunities. Therefore a service stopping at all stations is preferable.
Passengers between these 3 stations and Gatley/Heald Green/Airport have no alternative other than to use the train. Passengers just travelling along Kingsway (but not Kingsway extension, which no longer has a bus service) might find it more convenient to use bus route 50. However, for the overall train service, skip-stopping services are extremely confusing, messy and irregular, and deny some journey opportunities. Therefore a service stopping at all stations is preferable.
Once again, to make it very, very, very clear, I am not proposing disconnecting any one of the stations from Manchester Piccadilly or the Airport. I am not sure how much clearer I can make that.
I very much doubt there are very many passengers who travel from Mauldeth Road/Burnage to/from Gatley/Heald Green. They are all residential areas, so the demand would be limited to the very small, potentially even zero intersection of "people who live in the former and have family in the latter or vice versa" and "people who don't have cars", and that small number of people would be provided for by an easement to allow travel via Manchester/the Airport.
East Didsbury is a sort of centre people might want to visit (though almost nobody does their shopping by train).
I could therefore see an argument for a skip-stop arrangement thus as making a bit of sense:
- 4tph non stop
- 2tph Mauldeth Road, Burnage, East Didsbury
- 2tph East Didsbury, Gatley, Heald Green
That both sets call at East Didsbury would allow interchange (with about a 15 minute wait in each direction) if needs be, and would provide for the one man and his dog who lives in Gatley and shops at Didsbury Tesco by train. He can even take his bicycle if he wishes.
I'd love to see a Merseyrail style service, but short of someone building a west-facing terminal station in Manchester city centre* we are stuck with sending stuff there to reverse.
* I was going to say "or some reversing sidings at e.g. Longsight", but unless you reopened a passenger station there that would still clog up 13/14 while you tipped the train out and checked everyone was off, so it would be unworkable to terminate lots of trains at 13/14.
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Agreed - if we are going to have so many trains on the Airport branch then they should be all stops from Deansgate to the Airport - at the moment local passengers on the Airport branch get a terrible deal whilst they watch all of these non-stop services whizz past themA balanced eight/hour from Deansgate to the Airport would be a massive improvement on the status quo
The problem is that that isn't efficient use of long distance type stock, and raises the eternal Castlefield question of where you send that instead, to which there isn't a good answer.
You're the guy who wants all long established bus services to be chopped at the nearest tram/train station, to force people to wait and change onto a rail service into the nearest city centre even if that means being dumped on the edge of town, as a lot of train stations are)?
Erm, on no occasion did I say that. I usually cite Hamburg as a good example of how to do it, and that has some (about 10) bus routes penetrating the city centre.
My answer for the Oxford/Wilmslow Road corridor is and remains a street tramway down from St Peter's Square to Parrs Wood, with all road traffic other than cycles banned as-near-throughout-as-possible, certainly throughout except for access. Demand for travel on that corridor is massive, and there isn't really an alternative that provides for it other than running something direct down the road*, whether it has rubber tyres and a diesel engine or steel tyres and a pantograph.
* OK, if it were Germany "dig up the road and put an U-Bahn underneath" would also feature, but I can't see that here, however good it would be!
We aren't talking changing services, we're talking about walking 1-2km (depending exactly where in Fallowfield you are) to a station before taking the train, and then potentially walking another 800m or so at the other end. Only train-fixated students would do that. I never even did it and I'm fairly train-fixated and a lot of the time had a CountyCard so the price thing didn't even apply - if I wanted to take a train I took a (1)4x to Oxford Road or walked up (about 45 minutes).
You could run a student shuttle from Fallowfield Campus to Mauldeth Road for connections, but (a) it's about 1-2km in the wrong direction, and (b) that still is not going to remove the rest of the demand from the Wilmslow Road corridor. The idea of not having any form of public transport running down there is just like the Gateshead example, ones which are used by those opposed to integrated public transport systems to discredit the concept, when in truth almost no advocates would suggest the idea of not having anything at all running down that corridor, because the demand is just so massive.
Nowhere did I say that. I actually think it's the Gateshead examples that discredit the concept of fully integrated transport. You gain benefits from the kind of integration I propose where rail provides the significantly longer trunk part of the journey. Here it wouldn't.
I'd love to see a Merseyrail style service, but short of someone building a west-facing terminal station in Manchester city centre* we are stuck with sending stuff there to reverse.
* I was going to say "or some reversing sidings at e.g. Longsight", but unless you reopened a passenger station there that would still clog up 13/14 while you tipped the train out and checked everyone was off, so it would be unworkable to terminate
The problem is that that isn't efficient use of long distance type stock, and raises the eternal Castlefield question of where you send that instead, to which there isn't a good answer.
No long-distance trains, nor any trains from Southport, should be running onto the Castlefield line, bar the Sheffield-Liverpool services for which there is no practicable alternative route.
Fast trains from the Standedge line should be routed to Liverpool Lime Street via Victoria and the Chat Moss line as at present, or via Guide Bridge to terminate at Manchester Piccadilly platforms 1-3; the stopping trains from Huddersfield should be no more the 4 coaches so that they can re-routed to terminate in platforms 1/2 at Victoria.
The WCML trains from Scotland to Manchester and the TfW North Wales services to Manchester should terminate at Victoria and overlay in new sidings (or Newton Heath depot) to the east of Victoria.
Southport trains (which will be diesel for the foreseeable future) should all run via Victoria platforms 5/6 and onto Rochdale/beyond.
The bay platforms at Oxford Road station should be used exclusively for stopping trains from the CLC line, which should be 2 tph (rather than 1 tph as under the Manchester Recovery Plan proposals).
These suggestions should reduce crossing movements and pressure on the Castlefield/Airport lines.
Most Southport trains that run onto Castlefield are now 769s, which are electric at the point of reaching Castlefield. Whilst for historical reasons it should not be possible to reach Castlefield or Piccadilly from Southport, most passengers from Southport to Wigan now want Deansgate, Oxford Road or Piccadilly.
Whilst Southport is certainly not the most important place in the universe, it is a town of virtually 100000 people, making it the 13th largest in the North West. Some larger ones are not permitted to have a direct service to Manchester Airport by the track layout including Stockport, St Helens, Sale and Wythenshawe, the latter being served by the Metrolink. Neither are Northwich, Bury, Runcorn, Altrincham, Macclesfield, Leigh, Skelmersdale, Glossop, Marple, Fleetwood, Rawtenstall or Ormskirk, to name a few.
However, this leaves Liverpool, Warrington, Rochdale, Blackpool, Blackburn, Chester, Wigan, Bolton, Preston, Carlisle, Southport, Burnley, Barrow-in-Furness, Crewe and Widnes as the largest population centres in the North West that warrant a direct service to the Airport, but we will find that while a few logical routes could easily serve all of these destinations, some of them have never had a direct service to the Airport and Southport has had its removed! Clearly the service from Blackburn to Manchester Victoria via the Todmorden Curve and Rochdale should around the Ordsall Chord to Piccadilly and Manchester Airport.
We then find that the likes of Leyland, Lancaster, Chorley, Huyton, Kendal, Newton-le-Willows, Wilmslow, Penrith, Windermere and Carnforth are deemed worthy of a direct service to the Airport, which of course they are, as they are all either centres of tourism or intermediate stations on logical routes to larger centres, but despite them being smaller than some of the places which do not have a direct service to the Airport.
Why has no one on this thread brought up the fact that quadrupling of the Castlefield corridor throughout, with 4 through platforms at Deansgate and Piccadilly and 5 at Oxford Road is required urgently within the next decade as the only workable solution to Manchester’s capacity problems, not only for destinations in the North West, but further afield. There are very few places where there is not space on one side of the viaduct or the other to widen it enough to fit 2 additional tracks. It’s just unfortunate that unlike many other lines, it has never previously had 4 tracks.
The whole of the Chat Moss route from Liverpool to Manchester could do with its original 4 tracks reinstating at the same time, to provide a 125mph fast route with a 20 minute journey time as well as excellent local stopping services and freight paths. The fact that the first part of the M62 would need demolishing is effectively irrelevant, as it would no longer be needed with the massively improved rail connectivity and there is no reason why it can’t start south of the railway anyway, without crossing it at Broad Green.
However, this leaves Liverpool, Warrington, Rochdale, Blackpool, Blackburn, Chester, Wigan, Bolton, Preston, Carlisle, Southport, Burnley, Barrow-in-Furness, Crewe and Widnes as the largest population centres in the North West that warrant a direct service to the Airport, but we will find that while a few logical routes could easily serve all of these destinations, some of them have never had a direct service to the Airport and Southport has had its removed! Clearly the service from Blackburn to Manchester Victoria via the Todmorden Curve and Rochdale should around the Ordsall Chord to Piccadilly and Manchester Airport.
Southport's Manchester Airport service was really one of convenience and isn't that long-established, unlike the service via Castlefield as a whole which has been there since the Windsor Link. The service pre-1998 was to Chester via Altrincham.
The whole of the Chat Moss route from Liverpool to Manchester could do with its original 4 tracks reinstating at the same time, to provide a 125mph fast route with a 20 minute journey time as well as excellent local stopping services and freight paths. The fact that the first part of the M62 would need demolishing is effectively irrelevant, as it would no longer be needed with the massively improved rail connectivity and there is no reason why it can’t start south of the railway anyway, without crossing it at Broad Green.
Wouldn't that basically be NPR, though, by the HS2 model i.e. "6 tracking the WCML doesn't require the new fast lines to be directly next to the WCML itself"?
Closing the M62 (or any other UK motorway other than some of the silly ones* is utterly fanciful.
quadrupling of the Castlefield corridor throughout, with 4 through platforms at Deansgate and Piccadilly and 5 at Oxford Road is required urgently within the next decade as the only workable solution to Manchester’s capacity problems
Are you living in fantasyland? This proposal is unaffordable. The solution to Manchester's rail problems is to remove long-distance services running along the Castlefield corridor to the Airport, facilitated by investing in a couple of turnback sidings east of Victoria.
Are you living in fantasyland? This proposal is unaffordable. The solution to Manchester's rail problems is to remove long-distance services running along the Castlefield corridor to the Airport, facilitated by investing in a couple of turnback sidings east of Victoria.
Though that would also need some considerable improvement works at Victoria to make it deal with those extra passengers and give it the sort of facilities one expects from a long distance InterCity type station rather than just a diesel, above ground equivalent of Liverpool Central.
Denton station is next to a motorway sliproad in a location which is difficult to access either by car or on foot, and remote from both the town centre and residential areas. From much of Denton, Guide Bridge station is easier to get to than Denton station, and has 3 or 4 trains an hour taking 11 to 14 minutes. One train an hour from Denton station taking twice as long is hardly going to be an attractive alternative.
Reddish South is within 1½ miles of two other stations which already have a frequent service into Piccadilly.
I'm really not sure how a new service via Reddish South and Denton to Victoria, with journey times and frequencies which are uncompetitive with existing services from nearby stations, solves a problem or improves the public transport provision for Denton or Reddish.
It would, however, add more trains to already congested locations such as Heaton Norris Junction and the route between Ashton Moss and Victoria.
Fair point-I've only traveled through those stations and not Boarded/Alighted. What I meant to say upthread was- I think a stopping service would be better than an Express-But as you've pointed out it isn't competitive.
Southport's Manchester Airport service was really one of convenience and isn't that long-established, unlike the service via Castlefield as a whole which has been there since the Windsor Link. The service pre-1998 was to Chester via Altrincham.
So was the service the inauguration of the Windsor link in 1988 until 1998 from Southport to Chester via Piccadilly, Stockport and Altrincham, i.e. the Mid Cheshire Line service that today runs into the main shed at Piccadilly. Did it go via Bolton or via Atherton? The Airport service from 1998 then lasted until 2018. 20 years is long established enough isn’t it? At one point was there not only 1tph from Southport to Manchester?
Of course in 1988, there were still Altrincham electrics running via Castlefield the other way to Altrincham…
I wouldn’t be closing the M62, only the very first few feet of it at the Liverpool end, where it fouls the trackbed of the disused 4 tracks of Broad Green. The rest of the M62 would remain open, but require a new approach road.
Are you living in fantasyland? This proposal is unaffordable. The solution to Manchester's rail problems is to remove long-distance services running along the Castlefield corridor to the Airport, facilitated by investing in a couple of turnback sidings east of Victoria.
A proposal cannot be unaffordable when there there is no alternative. Is it affordable to permanently cut services to all destinations because Castlefield is unable to accommodate them? The alternative would be total demolition of the Manchester Arena and for it to be rebuilt in a more suitable location in order to build more through platforms at Victoria, which could then be in a light, airy and well ventilated environment.
Turnback sidings east of Victoria do the opposite of what is required, allowing local services from west of Manchester to turn back without taking up platform capacity at Victoria, when they still need a connection to Piccadilly from the west to access the airport.
Perhaps a new station could be built at Miles Platting with several western bays and connections to Rochdale and Stalybridge, but this still doesn’t address Castlefield or services to the Airport.
Though that would also need some considerable improvement works at Victoria to make it deal with those extra passengers and give it the sort of facilities one expects from a long distance InterCity type station rather than just a diesel, above ground equivalent of Liverpool Central.
This is of course the problem. Victoria is akin to a Liverpool Central. Piccadilly however is the main station serving all but the most local of destinations akin to Liverpool Lime Street. Lime Street needs no access to the west (other than the Wirral) as it is at the western extent of the land mass before the Mersey, but there are many more destinations west of Manchester, most notably Liverpool Lime Street, so Piccadilly, not Victoria, needs at least 4 through tracks from Liverpool Lime Street, with them continuing onto the West Coast Main Line at Manchester and Stockport.
Note that the originally 2 track viaduct at Stockport was later widened to accommodate 4 tracks.
So was the service the inauguration of the Windsor link in 1988 until 1998 from Southport to Chester via Piccadilly, Stockport and Altrincham, i.e. the Mid Cheshire Line service that today runs into the main shed at Piccadilly. Did it go via Bolton or via Atherton?
The last bus service that use to operate to Manchester from these locations was the 44 service (it was previously run by Stagecoach which went to the Airport, then became independent (Bluebird, then transferred to/became MCT) which then terminated the services at Gatley and became a 1-bus-per-hour service, now no longer exists.
The bus would usually take at least 45 minutes - 1 hour to get to Manchester (depending on traffic).
I'm not surprised bus services from these locations to Manchester no longer exist, as train services are vastly superior/quicker to get to Manchester.
A proposal cannot be unaffordable when there there is no alternative. Is it affordable to permanently cut services to all destinations because Castlefield is unable to accommodate them? The alternative would be total demolition of the Manchester Arena and for it to be rebuilt in a more suitable location in order to build more through platforms at Victoria, which could then be in a light, airy and well ventilated environment.
Turnback sidings east of Victoria do the opposite of what is required, allowing local services from west of Manchester to turn back without taking up platform capacity at Victoria, when they still need a connection to Piccadilly from the west to access the airport.
Why this obsession with long distance services to Manchester Airport? It is the tail wagging the dog. I would provide local electric services from within NW England to the Airport, from Blackpool via Bolton and Liverpool via Chat Moss. The poor time-keeping long-distance services from North Wales and Scotland need to be kept out of the Castlefield corridor, and turnback sidings east of Victoria are the simplest and cheapest way of dealing with their layovers.
The last bus service that use to operate to Manchester from these locations was the 44 service (it was previously run by Stagecoach which went to the Airport, then became independent (Bluebird, then transferred to/became MCT) which then terminated the services at Gatley and became a 1-bus-per-hour service, now no longer exists.
The bus would usually take at least 45 minutes - 1 hour to get to Manchester (depending on traffic).
I'm not surprised bus services from these locations to Manchester no longer exist, as train services are vastly superior/quicker to get to Manchester.
More likely because people from Gatley and Cheadle would prefer to use one of the Range Rovers, or perhaps the Jag today. Heald Green is also hardly a dump, and the Wythenshawe side of the tracks has the tram.
Most Southport trains that run onto Castlefield are now 769s, which are electric at the point of reaching Castlefield. Whilst for historical reasons it should not be possible to reach Castlefield or Piccadilly from Southport, most passengers from Southport to Wigan now want Deansgate, Oxford Road or Piccadilly.
Whilst Southport is certainly not the most important place in the universe, it is a town of virtually 100000 people, making it the 13th largest in the North West. Some larger ones are not permitted to have a direct service to Manchester Airport by the track layout including Stockport, St Helens, Sale and Wythenshawe, the latter being served by the Metrolink. Neither are Northwich, Bury, Runcorn, Altrincham, Macclesfield, Leigh, Skelmersdale, Glossop, Marple, Fleetwood, Rawtenstall or Ormskirk, to name a few.
However, this leaves Liverpool, Warrington, Rochdale, Blackpool, Blackburn, Chester, Wigan, Bolton, Preston, Carlisle, Southport, Burnley, Barrow-in-Furness, Crewe and Widnes as the largest population centres in the North West that warrant a direct service to the Airport, but we will find that while a few logical routes could easily serve all of these destinations, some of them have never had a direct service to the Airport and Southport has had its removed! Clearly the service from Blackburn to Manchester Victoria via the Todmorden Curve and Rochdale should around the Ordsall Chord to Piccadilly and Manchester Airport.
We then find that the likes of Leyland, Lancaster, Chorley, Huyton, Kendal, Newton-le-Willows, Wilmslow, Penrith, Windermere and Carnforth are deemed worthy of a direct service to the Airport, which of course they are, as they are all either centres of tourism or intermediate stations on logical routes to larger centres, but despite them being smaller than some of the places which do not have a direct service to the Airport.
Why has no one on this thread brought up the fact that quadrupling of the Castlefield corridor throughout, with 4 through platforms at Deansgate and Piccadilly and 5 at Oxford Road is required urgently within the next decade as the only workable solution to Manchester’s capacity problems, not only for destinations in the North West, but further afield. There are very few places where there is not space on one side of the viaduct or the other to widen it enough to fit 2 additional tracks. It’s just unfortunate that unlike many other lines, it has never previously had 4 tracks.
The whole of the Chat Moss route from Liverpool to Manchester could do with its original 4 tracks reinstating at the same time, to provide a 125mph fast route with a 20 minute journey time as well as excellent local stopping services and freight paths. The fact that the first part of the M62 would need demolishing is effectively irrelevant, as it would no longer be needed with the massively improved rail connectivity and there is no reason why it can’t start south of the railway anyway, without crossing it at Broad Green.
1. The Chat Moss route has never been 4 tracks throughout. The only 4 track sections were Liverpool to Huyton Junction, and Barton Moss Junction to Manchester Exchange. Westbound fast trains can overtake slow trains just west of Earlestown, but there is no equivalent facility for eastbound services. The same situation applies at Glazebrook Junction on the CLC route.
2. Towns like Reading, Oxford, Guildford, Southend, etc. do not have direct rail services to Heathow or Stansted Airports; many have no rail services to Gatwick. Why do similar size towns in the North need direct services to Manchester Airport ?
3. Apart from being prohibitively expensive, 4-tracking from Manchester Piccadilly to Deansgate would just move the bottleneck further west to the area between Castlefield & Ordsall Lane junctions.
We are saddled to live with past mistakes, the worst of which was the wrecking of Manchester Victoria by building the Arena.
Assuming the Recovery Task Force proposals progress, skip stopping on the Styal line will soon be history. The published documents do not spell out stopping patterns, but reading between the lines it can be deduced that the December 2022 timetable will be:
1tph freight
2tph all shacks stoppers at even 30 minute intervals, comprising:
- 1tph Liverpool - Airport via Chat Moss
- 1tph Piccadilly - Crewe via Airport
6tph fasts, comprising:
- 1tph Chester/N Wales - Airport via Warrington BQ
- 1tph Glasgow/Edinburgh - Airport via Bolton
- 1tph Barrow/Windermere - Airport via Bolton
- 2tph Blackpool - Airport via Bolton
- 1tph Saltburn - Airport via Ordsall Chord
This totals 9tph, 1tph less than in the 2019 timetable. Two TPE services (Cleethorpes and Newcastle) replaced by one additional Northern stopper.
Why this obsession with long distance services to Manchester Airport? It is the tail wagging the dog. I would provide local electric services from within NW England to the Airport, from Blackpool via Bolton and Liverpool via Chat Moss. The poor time-keeping long-distance services from North Wales and Scotland need to be kept out of the Castlefield corridor, and turnback sidings east of Victoria are the simplest and cheapest way of dealing with their layovers.
So then, if services from Scotland and North Wales are running into Victoria, how do you get from Scotland and North Wales to Manchester Airport? They don’t only serve Scotland and North Wales either, they also serve places such as Lancaster, Preston, Chester, Newton-le-Willows etc which are in the North West and do warrant a service to the Airport.
From North Wales and Chester it’s possible to access Manchester Airport from the south by reversing at Crewe and from South Wales, Shrewsbury, Birmingham and the Trent Valley, by passing through Crewe without reversing, so perhaps that should the the case.
Would you have any objection to services running through Castlefield to Manchester Airport from Southport via Bolton, Blackpool North via Bolton, Liverpool via Newton-le-Willows, Liverpool via Warrington Central (or perhaps terminating at Warrington Central if there are no through CLC services), Windermere, Barrow-in-Furness and Morecambe via the WCML and Blackburn and Leeds via Todmorden and Rochdale? Other services could also approach Manchester Airport via Crewe, without having to go via Castlefield.
If services from Scotland and other long distance destinations are to run into Victoria, they will need the Ordsall Chord services from the Calder Valley to access Manchester Airport. Perhaps an interchange station at Miles Platting is better than just a turnback siding in the middle of live tracks in the throat of Victoria. What happens if the train in the siding is non-gangway and the driver and guard need to change ends?
What exactly do you do with the Redcar service? It hasn’t even been mentioned.
1. The Chat Moss route has never been 4 tracks throughout. The only 4 track sections were Liverpool to Huyton Junction, and Barton Moss Junction to Manchester Exchange. Westbound fast trains can overtake slow trains just west of Earlestown, but there is no equivalent facility for eastbound services. The same situation applies at Glazebrook Junction on the CLC route.
2. Towns like Reading, Oxford, Guildford, Southend, etc. do not have direct rail services to Heathow or Stansted Airports; many have no rail services to Gatwick. Why do similar size towns in the North need direct services to Manchester Airport ?
3. Apart from being prohibitively expensive, 4-tracking from Manchester Piccadilly to Deansgate would just move the bottleneck further west to the area between Castlefield & Ordsall Lane junctions.
We are saddled to live with past mistakes, the worst of which was the wrecking of Manchester Victoria by building the Arena.
1. It would not be impossible or undesirable for the line to be 4 tracked throughout however. The sections that were originally 4 tracks could be restored to such a layout and 4 tracking of sections that were never 4 tracks will be new construction.
2. This is a very good question. I have never been to Heathrow or any London airports for obvious reasons. How do people from large towns in the south of England travel to the respective airports where their flights are booked differently to people in the north of England travelling to Manchester? It should be noted that when driving by road to Manchester Airport from any town in the north of England, no one chooses to go straight through the centre of Manchester.
3. I do not believe it can constitute being prohibitively expensive due to the resolutions/benefits it will bring. Of course in conjunction with the 4 tracking, all of the junctions west of Manchester where no less than 12 different lines converge, should be grade separated. There’s no point 4 tracking everything and still having it leading into a bottleneck flat junction.
I am greatly saddened by all measures taken in the 1960s to both reduce capacity and the range of destinations it is possible to travel to directly from any given origin station, no more so than by the closure of the Southport to Preston line with its electric section to Crossens or of the Burscough Curves.
Please enjoy a timeline of some unfortunate events of the last century:
1988 - Windsor Link opens and services from destinations on the former Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway including Southport are diverted from their historic route to Victoria and instead run via Castlefield to Piccadilly P13/14.
1992 - Metrolink opens and now Altrincham electrics are kicked off their historic home of the Manchester South Junction & Altrincham Railway and onto the streets of Manchester. (The other reasons for this being to eliminate the non-standard 1200V DC electrification system on the Bury line and to link Victoria and Piccadilly)
1993 - Manchester Airport line opens from Heald Green North Junction on the Styal line and longer distance services than had previously run on the Styal line begin running there. Construction begins of the NYNEX arena at Manchester Victoria, where capacity is definitely no longer needed thanks to the Windsor Link and will obviously never be needed again.
1995 - NYNEX Arena opens. Rail passenger numbers begin rising exponentially, necessitating the capacity which has just been lost to the arena be brought back within 20 years to avoid a catastrophic breakdown of the timetable.
1997 - Train services in the North of England are privatised and sold to Northern Spirit and Northern Star. Northern Star operates a service from Manchester Airport to Euston while Northern Spirit operates TransPennine Express services.
Most mass transit systems that have used skip stopping have been abandoning it in recent years.
I really don't see the point in the environment of high performance DMUs.
The reason very people use the train for short journeys currently is because the service is so bad as to be worthless for this purpose.
8 trains per hour each direction would change that dramatically - with a proper unified GM ticket system we would see mass transfers to and from buses on the corridor.
4 trains per hour stopping at a random grab bag of stations is not going to have the same impact - nevermind the signalling implications of mass skip stopping.
EDIT:
The time penalty from non-stop (~14 minutes) to every stop (~21 minutes) between the Airport and Manchester Piccadily doesn't really seem worth the trouble.
Even skip stopping will lose you most of those gains -
Take a random intermediate station between Piccadilly and the Airport. Most passengers will be interested in travelling to Manchester or the Airport, relatively few will be wanting local trips.
So if you're a Gatley resident, trains that skip-stop and get to Piccadilly quicker are of more use than trains that stop at every station.
1997 - Train services in the North of England are privatised and sold to Northern Spirit and Northern Star. Northern Star operates a service from Manchester Airport to Euston while Northern Spirit operates TransPennine Express services.
I don’t know how many people had a clue who ran their trains at that time, with everyone being used to 50 years of British Rail, or how many people at that time remembered the Big 4.
There is still signage at Upholland station that says First North Western.
Denton station is next to a motorway sliproad in a location which is difficult to access either by car or on foot, and remote from both the town centre and residential areas. From much of Denton, Guide Bridge station is easier to get to than Denton station, and has 3 or 4 trains an hour taking 11 to 14 minutes. One train an hour from Denton station taking twice as long is hardly going to be an attractive alternative.
Reddish South is within 1½ miles of two other stations which already have a frequent service into Piccadilly.
I'm really not sure how a new service via Reddish South and Denton to Victoria, with journey times and frequencies which are uncompetitive with existing services from nearby stations, solves a problem or improves the public transport provision for Denton or Reddish.
It would, however, add more trains to already congested locations such as Heaton Norris Junction and the route between Ashton Moss and Victoria.
East Midlands/TPE South services running this way into Victoria wouldn't call at Reddish South or Denton, they'd run non-stop on an upgraded line. The journey time into the Manchester station will increase by about 10 mins, but the arrival time into Liverpool would be nearly the same as now, but with the bonus of a couple of trains taken off the Castlefield route.
I don't know how much it would cost to upgrade the line to 90mph running, but can't see it being huge since it is only about 10 miles or so long.
East Midlands/TPE South services running this way into Victoria wouldn't call at Reddish South or Denton, they'd run non-stop on an upgraded line. The journey time into the Manchester station will increase by about 10 mins, but the arrival time into Liverpool would be nearly the same as now, but with the bonus of a couple of trains taken off the Castlefield route.
I don't know how much it would cost to upgrade the line to 90mph running, but can't see it being huge since it is only about 10 miles or so long.
Which way would they be going to get from the Hope Valley to Victoria? The Stockport - Stalybridge line faces east with no connection to Victoria, so would they be expected to reverse at Stalybridge? Could they not run via Ashburys West Junction and past the Etihad Campus?
Which way would they be going to get from the Hope Valley to Victoria? The Stockport - Stalybridge line faces east with no connection to Victoria, so would they be expected to reverse at Stalybridge? Could they not run via Ashburys West Junction and past the Etihad Campus?
I didn’t realise how good this was as a solution. I remember Denton Junction from when I went on the line for the Stockport - Stalybridge shuttle one Saturday morning, but that isn’t the Huddersfield - Manchester line as far as I know. Is the line from Huddersfield to Manchester not the one through Guide Bridge and Stalybridge, which this shortcut avoids when it diverges at Denton Junction?
I didn’t realise how good this was as a solution. I remember Denton Junction from when I went on the line for the Stockport - Stalybridge shuttle one Saturday morning, but that isn’t the Huddersfield - Manchester line as far as I know. Is the line from Huddersfield to Manchester not the one through Guide Bridge and Stalybridge, which this shortcut avoids when it diverges at Denton Junction?
Manchester Victoria to Huddersfield goes through Ashton-under-Lyne. The relevant chord that the OP wishes to utilise is shown here. [Picture shows diagram from Traksy of the link route from Denton Junction to Ashton Moss Junction, avoiding Guide Bridge]
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