Diverting an existing Manchester-bound service over such a slow route to Victoria would be very unpopular (especially when some people from west of Manchester get so precious about retaining a castlefield/ Piccadilly link for their station but are happy for places like Buxton to have a time penalty and downgrade to Victoria…)
Running a longer distance route via Denton runs into the problem of how frequently to do it to make it worthwhile. A couple of services a day isn’t much use when there are such frequent services from West Yorkshire to central Manchester and central Manchester to the Midlands/ South.
I do think as many places as possible should have direct services to both to maximise connectivity, nowhere should lose service to Piccadilly that already have it and nothing should be allowed to terminate at Oxford Road. To take the example of Buxton, it was promised 2tph but has not received it. I’m sure they would be happier with 1tph to Piccadilly via Heaton Chapel and Levenshulme and 1tph to Victoria via Reddish South and Denton. I wouldn’t think of Victoria as a downgrade, just a different destination, which is not necessarily desirable for the same purposes.
And with the trundle through Denton, there’s not going to be much of a time saving for direct trains. But then running it more frequently would probably come at the cost of some existing services from West Yorkshire to central Manchester and central Manchester to the Midlands/ South (given the finite number of paths).
Who’d want their long established service into central Manchester to be replaced by this? (Since, although there’s a frequent route through Huddersfield/ Stockport, to divert an hourly service, running a long distance route that way might mean Middlesbrough or Oxford losing their train to central Manchester)
Part of the argument is that the inadequacies of the infrastructure mean there are not enough paths to run these services, which is what forces people to change at Piccadilly in the first place. Obviously cutting services to Manchester is unacceptable. You could of course run Saltburn - Reading, but it would be a bit ridiculous.
This only helps people originating from Hudds. People from Bradford still have to drive, and people from Leeds or Sheffield have the XC or M1/M42 routes. I struggle to believe that Huddersfield is contributing so much traffic to the M60 on it's own that the West Mids portion of it would make such a substantial shift to rail that it would save even 1 second of congestion.
Or do you just run a shuttle from Stalybridge to Stockport and see if people doing something like Leeds to Stoke would prefer to change twice to avoid Piccadilly or just change once at busy Piccadilly?
The only (existing) service I could see the merits of extending to Stockport would be the Bradford - Huddersfield… But there’s nothing south of Stockport for it to run on to (without depriving somewhere of a long established link into central Manchester)
Given that this proposal mainly benefits Bradford and Huddersfield, with Leeds itself having the Midland route, couldn’t you just run Bradford Interchange - Stockport, terminating there and giving Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield the connectivity at Stockport with only 1 change and not depriving somewhere further south of a Manchester service? That sounds like a good compromise to me.
The question then becomes how often do you serve Reddish South and Denton because the purpose of this service has become something different.
It’s a bit like the idea for a “Glasgow Crossrail”, easy to suggest that someone loses a direct train into the city centre to provide an “orbital” Link just as long as it’s not my own local line, eh?
Ultimately, if you want to improve the service from West Yorkshire to the West Midlands then resource the existing XC route better (or build HS2 through Yorkshire properly). Coming up with half baked alternatives is a bit like the suggestions that we need Leeds-Settle-Glasgow to relive pressure on XC (or more routes via the Marches etc)… run full length trains on XC and we wouldn’t need to come up with convoluted alternatives
My understanding of the Glasgow Crossrail proposal is that it is to free up capacity at Glasgow Central High Level by diverting services via Queen Street Low Level, which is equally in the city centre. St Enoch would be useful though. The annoyance would be if you were trying to change for London or the south, but connections with Edinburgh and highlands services at Queen Street would be improved.
Of course the proper HS2 route from Leeds to Birmingham Curzon Street would trump going via Reddish South and Denton, but Leeds - Skipton - Kilmarnock - Glasgow serves a purpose in that reaching Glasgow from the ECML requires a circuitous diversion via Berwick-upon-Tweed and Edinburgh and doubling back via Leeds from the Skipton direction is just a waste of time when Skipton is closer to Glasgow in the same way Huddersfield is closer to Birmingham.
Denton station is poorly placed but reddish south is well placed, and there could be more stations built on the line.
Given the line isn't a direct line, its success is dependent off other lines, improve those lines and it will improve.
It is a direct line though, direct from Stockport to Stalybridge avoiding Manchester. There needs to be more lines like this if only there was a consensus that they should be served at all.
