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The politics behind it envisage a line busy with commuters and a hoped-for increase in business traffic, not relying on tourists.

Terminating the TPE trains at Piccadilly requires a fundamental rethink of what TPE should be. Splitting the fast trains across two stations means the end of the frequent almost turn up and go service that has existed for years and is the basis of all proposals for improvement of the route. It...

That's not on HS2 though, and it will probably still be easiest to make that journey on the WCML in the future. What I'm saying is HS2 doesn't create many new places where your situation exists. Sure it makes it quicker than it is now, but still less convenient than the existing London airports...

We're going off topic a bit here, but the fact you have to get to Euston or Old Oak to get on HS2 is not going to encourage travel via Birmingham - wherever in the London area you start, Heathrow must be quicker, and unless, as you say, the starting point is Euston or a Crossrail station, at...

According to Google, despite all that driving is still faster than the train (at 8pm on a Sunday anyway).

Experience in multinational business or the legal profession should not be a requirement to have an opinion on passengers and taxpayers being swindled for an unacceptable standard of service. Or do you actually think Northern, or any part of our system, is a model for the rest of the world to...

It certainly will (or should) have penalties for late delivery. Clearly either they weren't enough to get CAF to work to time, or CAF are not a competent manufacturer of trains, in which case Arriva shouldn't have chosen them, however cheaply they were offering the trains - remember CAF were an...

CAF should have been better incentivised for prompt delivery, and the trains should have arrived ready to use, not with design errors preventing them entering service. I don't know any obviously available alternatives - Arriva are the ones taking hundreds of millions of pounds for presiding over...

Stagecoach might run into competition concerns? Arriva or Go Ahead are unknown in the area, buying a small depot far from any other operation would leave them in a very weak position to compete with Lothian.

The new trains are late and contributing to the problems. That is Arriva's fault - they should have managed the contract better and had an alternative ready to go if they knew there was a risk of late delivery.

This sort of thing comes up very often, but what does simplification, fewer services to Manchester airport, fewer services via Castlefield, etc actually mean? Which stations should be cut to 1tph or 1tp2h? Where should lose direct service to the nearest major city - Buxton?Northwich? Blackburn...

There's a possibility they'll have to repaint them all into Andy Burnham's choice of colours fairly soon, so it might not be worth the effort. It's bad enough in Bury and Rochdale with Transdev painting buses every colour of the rainbow without Go Ahead getting in on the act too.

It will rarely make sense to travel from London to Birmingham or Manchester airports though, even when HS2 is built (is it even certain whether phase 2, if built, will include the Manchester airport station?). Businesses and long haul travellers will always have vastly better options in London...

Duplicate post

I see Go North West and First are going to accept each other's tickets until further notice. Any idea when that will end? It would make sense to sort out the future of the other depots first, and then there's the question of possible future re-regulation in some form. A lot of passengers will be...

Reducing from 5 to 4tph wouldn't help, and they can't be at even intervals anyway because of all the branches and stopping patterns. 5tph to 2tph with the same number of carriages in total would instantly solve overcrowding because demand would collapse. You can't just add extra trains to the...

Double post

It's in Solihull, but yes they do have plans for it. I'd be very surprised if it gets anywhere near the claimed 20,000 jobs though. It will still be in the middle of nowhere in the sense that 95% of passengers using the station won't care what's there other than the car park.

No PM since Callaghan has stood in another election afterwards. Only Blair resigned immediately though. Either way, it would be foolish for the new PM to attempt to switch seats - what message does it send about the party's chances of winning the election if the PM doesn't think he can hold his...

If it's to please the West Midlands Mayor he's only definitely supporting it as far as Birmingham. (Yes Birmingham benefits from phase 2 but 99% of the capacity and hoped for economic benefits are at the London end).