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Using which platforms at York? I don't think there's much scope for terminating additonal services without additonal platforms. There's also potential capacity issues at Colton Junction.
Because Cross Gates and Thorpe Park serve the Leeds urban area and therefore serve large populations and have better onward transport connections. East Garforth and Micklefield serve populations of a couple of thousand, East Garforth because most of Garforth's population will use Garforth and...
Thanks for posting, definitely interesting that the thinking is a temporary platform that can be removed to allow for four tracking. It seems to suggest that Network rail is fairly confident four tracking will happen and I'd guess that's what funding announced for NPR, between Leeds and York...
If there wasn't a line there already I'd agree but there so it'd be a relatively cheap. I don't see it being massively different to Portishead in terms of suffering slow bus services. Stocksbridge is smaller but would be an easier line to reopen than Portishead.
My personal opinion on Sheffield...
I completely agree that Stocksbridge to Chesterfield should be heavy rail and extended through to Nottingham allowing the current Sheffield to Nottingham service to drop calls at Ilkeston and Langley Mill. That would massively boost connectivity between the South Yorkshire and East Midlands main...
I imagine this is why TfGM seem to see Glossop and Marple as pretty low down the Metrolink priority list. There's too much interaction with potential additional Manchester to Leeds/Sheffield services. I don't think there'll be any Metrolink development on those lines until NPR is more developed...
So from my point of view I'm assuming that a new Liverpool to Manchester route is provided for fast trains because I don't see either a particularly high frequency heavy rail service or tram conversion being possible without either Sheffield-Liverpool trains being directly moved on to a new line...
My thoughts on the routes suggested:
Mid-Cheshire - Mostly no. The population density is too low, Knutsford is probably just about close enough to be viable for trams but has high car usage and isn't going to generate enough traffic for a regular tram service. Perhaps if peak extensions could...
Diverting the Peterborough to Lincoln service via Boston isn't going to happen. It'd add far too much time on journeys like Peterborough/Spalding to Lincoln.
I dont think trying to improve Boston to Spalding rail journeys is a sensible use of tax payer money. The loss of the East Lincs mainline...
I don't think its even fair to criticise Brown over the deficit. It was a pretty a small percentage (~3%) of GDP and was largely covered by the economy growing at a similar rate during that period. Public sector debt was lower in 2007 than it was in 1997.
I think plenty problems we face now can...
Its definitely nowhere near communism but there's clearly been a leftward shift in policy compared to the Tories. The shift has been larger in some areas than others but I can't think of a policy area where there hasn't been a shift to the left.
Yet there's plenty of people calling Labour communists and criticising their tax policies and regulatory policies for being too left wing and too anti-business.
Labour have made plenty of mistakes and some of the immigration rhetoric is a bit strong for my liking, but at the same time...
I can't see it happening. I had some small involvement into work looking into the Parkway and it doesn't really achieve much.
If you don't have access to a car it improves journey times quite a bit if you're travelling to London or Plymouth (and stations in between), assuming a shuttle bus...
My point was more around the whole Shugborough/Colwich bottlenecks which justify a bypass. A 75mph speed restriction is annoying but wouldn't justify a new line on its own if there was capacity for more trains on the existing line. The speed of an bypass is definitely a nice additional benefit...
It doesn't matter about the number of lines from a capacity perspective. If anything the number of lines creates the capacity problems because there's a need for more services to serve the local stations on their lines.
What matters is how many tracks each individual line has, the mix of...
CLC's problem is that it's not a freight or fast intercity line which are far less likely to be suitable for battery power. It also suffers from the fact the inter-regional/inter-city services that do operate over the CLC couldn't be made fully electric without significant additional...
That might be difficult to accommodate though given the XC and Avanti services run pretty close to each other. It'll be end of the 20 minute interval London service which isn't the end of the world but certainly isn't ideal. It'd also mean no Manchester to WCML service.
If its going to require...
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