Had one of my trips to the North West yesterday, and both ways the TPE service to and from Liverpool sits in Manchester Victoria for around 15 minutes, and generally the schedule seems very relaxed, we arrived 3 mins early into Leeds and sat 6 mins there.
Why the long wait at Man Vic, which also blocks a platform?
The cynic in me would say its just a way to appear to be 'on time' even with disruption.
Not at all. If that were the aim, they would simply advertise the arrival times as later (using what's called a PB adjustment). TfW do this quite a lot - for example on their South Wales-Manchester services the advertised arrival time can be as much as 5 minutes after than the scheduled arrival time. Their Bidston-Wrexham service used to have trains advertised as departing Wrexham before the inbound train was supposed to have arrived!
TPE generally have a 2 minute PB, typically at the destination station. PB is going out of fashion though, with destination-based measures such as PPM going out of favour and being replaced by station-by-station measures such as "time to 15".
Actually it's down to delivering the 'least bad' outcome given the reduced timetable.
TPE could obviously run a quicker service, just dont choose to do so
In theory, yes. But then the departures from Manchester Victoria would be xx15, xx30, followed by nothing for 45 minutes. By having that dwell it evens out the departures to xx15 and xx45, thus delivering a more attractive service for the larger market of Huddersfield/Leeds/York-Manchester. Unfortunately those who use the service across Manchester suffer as a result, but you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs...
The fundamental issue is that the pre-Covid pattern was alternating trains to Manchester Airport and Liverpool every 15 minutes. To keep running direct services to both Liverpool and the Airport whilst running only 2tph, something has to give. Otherwise you end up with that 15/45 split of services.
When the Scarborough services are reintroduced (albeit it's now looking like they will
never come back in their pre-Covid form, instead becoming Hull-Liverpool) the problem will be less acute, as you will then have xx00, xx15 and xx30 off Victoria. So at that point you could drop the ~15 minute dwell at Victoria.
I believe its to help provide a more even service from Manchester to York, otherwise there would be a 45 minute gap if the LIV to NCL departed straight away as I assume the Manchester Airport to Redcar times are constrained by Oxford Road?
Exactly. The path of the Airport service is pretty much set in stone given the number of interactions it has in the Castlefield and Airport corridor. So if you want to maintain that direct link, everything else has to work around that.
Through covid, TPE has only one Liverpool-Manchester service, and it stops at both Lea Green and Newton le Willows on a slower schedule.
It therefore misses its path eastwards from Victoria
Not quite - there is enough 'slack' in the schedule to accommodate an extra call whilst broadly keeping to pre-Covid timings east of Victoria.
