Given that both routes between Manchester and Wigan/Southport are commuter lines where the local stations are relatively busy (and therefore need a frequent service), I'm a fan of the planned timetable from 2027.
If you start off with a minimum requirement of 2tph at the intermediate stops on both the Atherton and Bolton/Westhoughton line, fitting in faster services to Southport isn't easy as the lines are max 2 tracks. The current timetable however is a lose-lose case, with both slow journey times to Southport and low frequencies at the local stops.
Now that Wigan-Bolton is wired, also considering that 769s are woefully unreliable, it's a good idea to concentrate the services past Wigan to the unelectrified Atherton line, with the locals covered by more reliable S-Bahn style trains.
The one outlier is the Southport - Manchester via Bolton train. Maintaining a link to Bolton makes sense, however won't the poor reliability and faster stopping pattern not synergise particularly well with the EMU locals?
The main loser is probably the Atherton line - the line passes through some fairly busy areas yet it serves them rather poorly. 2tph (main stations) is usable, 1tph (Moorside) isn't great, and there are a couple of places that are yet to receive a station (e.g. Pendlebury). There isn't really a feasible way of improving this for the forseeable future (even with electrification), as the line can't become the self-contained busy commuter route that it should be while Kirkby and Southport trains still need to get to Manchester somehow.
