Manchester Recovery Taskforce (timetable) consultation

[js1000]

Great stuff. Will have a look at this over the coming days. As someone adversely affected by the May 2018 timetable and poor performance since I will be submitting my consultation response.

I will be mostly advocating rollback to how the timetable was pre-May 2018 with the Crewe to Manchester route and abolishing the Liverpool link through Castlefield. Operationally more expensive for Northern but will make a massive difference for punctuality through Manchester.

 

[Ianno87]

Great stuff. Will have a look at this over the coming days. As someone adversely affected by the May 2018 timetable and poor performance since I will be submitting my consultation response.

I will be mostly advocating rollback to how the timetable was pre-May 2018 with potential for new services to be introduced over numerous timetable changes to ensure reliability is not detrimentally impacted.

Actually replicating May 2018 like for like won't work anyway. Trains have got longer and faster, planning rules have changed as a result, etc etc.

 

[js1000]

Actually replicating May 2018 like for like won't work anyway. Trains have got longer and faster, planning rules have changed as a result, etc etc.

Option C is effectively pre-May 2018 from what I can tell.

Option A is quite attractive however. Curtail the 2no. Crewe/Alderley Edge services at Piccadilly rather than continuing through Manchester to Liverpool and Southport while retaining a high level of connectivity to and from Manchester Airport.

I'm tempted by Option A as a starting point. I don't see why we should rollback entirely to Option C first without trying Option A first and seeing if that delivers punctuality improvements.

 

[Jack Hay]

On its own, this wouldn't be a major issue, but it may have a knock on effect on the problematic Altrincham-Stockport section. Despite the potential local benefit, I would prefer that the North Wales service should continue to run to Victoria, alternating with a 1 tph Northern service from Leeds to Chester and with the same calling pattern, to give a 30 minute interval service on the route via Warrington BQ.

The proposed Option C does give a 30 minute service on the Warrington BQ route, provided by Northern at 2tph.

I think this is very much a case of swings and roundabouts, and people misunderstand the Mid Cheshire line, especially the Altrincham to Stockport section. Granted, single line sections are a nuisance, because they introduce timetabling conflicts between trains in different directions. But so do junctions, and by diverting the N.Wales trains onto the Mid Cheshire, they will avoid the busy junctions and potential conflicts at all of Acton Grange, Winwick, Earlestown, Ordsall Lane and Castlefield, plus several other less-busy junctions. Indeed if anyone suggested diverting a train onto that route, people would complain about how difficult it would be to timetable a path through that junction sequence! A timetabling acquaintance (who used to work for Northern) told me a few years ago that the principal timetabling challenge affecting capacity within the Mid Cheshire line was not Altrincham-Stockport, but the 8-mile block section between Plumley West and Mobberley (also including 2/3 stations). Fortunately, that is more easily fixed, if it needs to be, than junctions or single line sections.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Option A is quite attractive however. Curtail the 2no. Crewe/Alderley Edge services at Piccadilly rather than continuing through Manchester to Liverpool and Southport while retaining a high level of connectivity to and from Manchester Airport.

I know I'm going on about Southport again, but reducing to 1tph to Vic only would be VERY unpopular.

 

[daodao]

The proposed Option C does give a 30 minute service on the Warrington BQ route, provided by Northern at 2tph.

I was aware of this, and was merely suggesting that the 1 tph TfW service from North Wales uses one of these paths, with Northern operating the other 1 tph. It is a quicker route to Manchester and more resilient than the CLC line and would provide more useful connectivity for passengers from North Wales.

 

[The Planner]

A timetabling acquaintance (who used to work for Northern) told me a few years ago that the principal timetabling challenge affecting capacity within the Mid Cheshire line was not Altrincham-Stockport, but the 8-mile block section between Plumley West and Mobberley (also including 2/3 stations). Fortunately, that is more easily fixed, if it needs to be, than junctions or single line sections.

Would argue that a resignalling of Plumley and Mobberley is more expensive than sorting out some of the single line bits. You would also likely end up doing the lot rather than piecemeal absolute block posts.

 

[peters]

Option C is effectively pre-May 2018 from what I can tell.

Definitely not. Option C includes a whole load of improvements and changes to services going towards Cheshire and Merseyside which haven't existed before or haven't existed for a very long time. (Some of them are listed in the text, not shown on the graphics.) I think Liverpool to Oxford Road existed as a through service in the early 00s and option C breaks it up, while option A keeps it as a through service.

 

[peters]

Would argue that a resignalling of Plumley and Mobberley is more expensive than sorting out some of the single line bits. You would also likely end up doing the lot rather than piecemeal absolute block posts.

I thought Network Rail had included renewing the signalling between Mobberley and Greenbank in their plans, along with platform lengthening on the line. I've no idea of the target date for those though, probably 2016!

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

It's wrong and a corrected version of the pdf will be loaded, presumably on Monday. Correct version showing TPE as operator attached.

Thank you for that post. So glad it is an error

 

[scrapy]

That is the section from Mickle Trafford to Mouldsworth Junction, west of Mouldsworth station, which is just over 4 miles long. Fortunately, it has no freight traffic at all, so is only used by 1tph in each direction today, increasing to 2tph if 'Option C' is adopted. That would not be a high level of line occupancy.

There was apparently an issue with a level crossing being closed for too long each hour on that section that prevented Northern running an Altrincham to Chester service (when the planned Piccadilly to Greenbank) got binned. I don't see how that issue would be any different if TFW went hourly over the route.

 

[Fokx]

I know I'm going on about Southport again, but reducing to 1tph to Vic only would be VERY unpopular.

Chopping and changing nearly all the stopping Liverpool services is also going to be VERY unpopular but that’s life

 

[craigybagel]

I suspect the idea to have the 2tph from Alderley Edge is to do with pathing on the two track section from Crewe.

In the Manchester direction both the TfW and Avanti service are within about 15 minutes of one another leaving Crewe, so it would allow a semi-fast from Crewe (say fast between Holmes Chapel and Alderley Edge as now) to be caught up in the Wilmslow area then go via Styal, and also allows a train starting forward from Alderley Edge to run between the two fasts, therefore reducing the extent to which bunching of trains is needed to make everything fit, in turn allowing a more even interval service for every station on the route.

Indeed, that is part of the difficulty with the Crewe - Manchester line. If the Avanti and TfW services were 30 minutes apart it would be easy to flight a stopping service every 30 minutes behind them. Instead it's a 25/35 minute gap southbound, and even worse a 20/40 minute gap northbound.

I'm assuming they've tried to get around this as you say by sending the Crewe stoppers via Styal so they don't need to be as far in front of an express. Sending them both that way means they keep the simple 30 minute frequency on this route.

Would argue that a resignalling of Plumley and Mobberley is more expensive than sorting out some of the single line bits. You would also likely end up doing the lot rather than piecemeal absolute block posts.

How hard/expensive is it to put an IB in?


I must say, overall I do like the look of Option C. I'm a big fan of Takt timetables, and if the figures are to be believed it would see some impressive results both in terms of improved performance and increased passengers. But I'd be amazed if it ever happened.

As my colleagues have alluded to, the Welsh government will protest very loudly about both the longer journey time for North Wales - Manchester services and the fact they won't serve the Airport any more. But they won't be the only ones. We've seen how vocal the Southport lot are about losing Piccadilly services, and I bet there will be a lot of people in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire upset about losing their airport link as well. I'm not saying I agree with them (I Don't!) but I worry that the uproar would be enough to derail the plans.

I fear as well that there might be some upset TOCs out there as well. It's hard to see how big changes like this aren't going to result in them having to change their plans for rolling stock and traincrew deployment, and with their finances and training already disrupted with Covid big changes aren't likely to go down well.

We know that changes are needed and that the pre Covid timetable through Castlefield is unsustainable. I just doubt that an agreeable compromise can be found without many years of arguing and delay.

 

[Jack Hay]

Would argue that a resignalling of Plumley and Mobberley is more expensive than sorting out some of the single line bits. You would also likely end up doing the lot rather than piecemeal absolute block posts.

Would love to hear your ideas for sorting out the single line sections at modest expense!

 

[tbtc]

I suspect the idea to have the 2tph from Alderley Edge is to do with pathing on the two track section from Crewe.

In the Manchester direction both the TfW and Avanti service are within about 15 minutes of one another leaving Crewe, so it would allow a semi-fast from Crewe (say fast between Holmes Chapel and Alderley Edge as now) to be caught up in the Wilmslow area then go via Styal, and also allows a train starting forward from Alderley Edge to run between the two fasts, therefore reducing the extent to which bunching of trains is needed to make everything fit, in turn allowing a more even interval service for every station on the route.

Ah, thanks for explaining - I'd not appreciated that the two long distance services were so close to each other in time, so the proposals do make (more) sense

On its own, this wouldn't be a major issue, but it may have a knock on effect on the problematic Altrincham-Stockport section. Despite the potential local benefit, I would prefer that the North Wales service should continue to run to Victoria, alternating with a 1 tph Northern service from Leeds to Chester and with the same calling pattern, to give a 30 minute interval service on the route via Warrington BQ.

The proposed Option C does give a 30 minute service on the Warrington BQ route, provided by Northern at 2tph

I was aware of this, and was merely suggesting that the 1 tph TfW service from North Wales uses one of these paths, with Northern operating the other 1 tph. It is a quicker route to Manchester and more resilient than the CLC line and would provide more useful connectivity for passengers from North Wales.

In an ideal world, you could have a half hourly West Yorkshire - Rochdale - Victoria - Warrington - Chester service, with an hourly extension along the Welsh coast (Bangor, Llandudno, it doesn't really matter too much) - BR used to run regular services from Yorkshire to Wales.

Same stock would suit both sides, say three/four coach 158s, could be inter=operated, so that diagrams went Llandudno - Chester - Manchester - Leeds - Manchester - Chester - Manchester - Leeds - Manchester - Chester - Llandudno if that made more sense at the Leeds end.

However, with the current political situation, the Welsh Assembly wouldn't want an "English" operator taking over the service west of Chester but it'd be silly to set up a base in Yorkshire for one TfW service per hour (given how far it is from Chester, a lot of dead mileage).

The alternative would be terminating the Welsh service at Victoria and then having a separate Victoria - Calder Valley - Leeds service, but that would mean terminating more services in central Manchester, which is the whole thing that this seems to be intended to reduce, so seems to go against the "simple half hourly frequencies, fewer conflicts in Manchester" kind of ethos

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Welsh complain and we end up with something like @daodao is suggesting (which would be regrettable and messier than the proposed set of services, but, hey, politics...)

Great stuff. Will have a look at this over the coming days. As someone adversely affected by the May 2018 timetable and poor performance since I will be submitting my consultation response.

I will be mostly advocating rollback to how the timetable was pre-May 2018 with the Crewe to Manchester route and abolishing the Liverpool link through Castlefield. Operationally more expensive for Northern but will make a massive difference for punctuality through Manchester.

It's worth repeating how bad the punctuality was (and may well be again once we go back to a full set of services and full passenger numbers) - even with the reduced number of trains/passengers, services aren't fully reliable.

We can pontificate about which town is more deserving of one of the finite numbers of paths through Castlefield or down the Airport branch, but there's no point in having all of these complicated links if the infrastructure isn't going to guarantee a pretty high set of reliability statistics (and, no, this isn't an opportunity for someone to suggest hat "all we need would be two additional platforms at Piccadilly, lots more electrification, redoubling a couple of bottlenecks etc" because none of that is going to happen by 2022)

 

[Dspatula]

If I have to pick then option C wins lots of nice simple half hourly pairs and the routes seem to most closely match train crew knowledge reducing crew changeovers. Always been a fan of sending the Cleethorpes to Liverpool if it ends up with the same company as the Nottingham it would do a lot for reliability to have them interwork at Liverpool. However if there’s problem on the Hope Valley line Manchester to Warrington ends up being reduced to one train an hour. If B or C are picked I don’t think the route can stay with EMR unless they open a crew depot in Manchester.

I worry about how well the Cumbria train will cope going via Bolton the peak time one pre-covid was always packed. The other side of that is that the fast Wigan train was also very popular and there’s not even a peak time service in option A. I prefer option Bs fifteen minute interval via Bolton rather than the extra peak Preston from Vic. Also I will see if we were getting rid of trains based on their reliability the Scotland would be the first to go.

Biggest issue with C is number of trains terminating at Oxford Road in the Peaks the place doesn’t cope well with terminators at the best of times also it limits those trains to no more than 4x 24 meters.

I do think they’ve been clever separating out the interest groups into each option South Yorkshire to Manchester Airport, North Wales to Manchester Airport and to a lesser extent Southport, are each in different options. It’ll be interesting to see who wins out this time.

 

[Fokx]

if B or C are picked I don’t think the route can stay with EMR unless they open a crew depot in Manchester.

The route isn’t staying with EMR, it’s been awarded to TPE but the transfer is basically on hiatus, the consultation even makes reference to this. It’s likely the route would transfer before changes to said route would take place.

In reality both Liverpool to Cleethorpes and Liverpool Nottingham would be TPE with Northern on the hourly Pic to Sheffield stopper

 

[LowLevel]

The route isn’t staying with EMR, it’s been awarded to TPE but the transfer is basically on hiatus, the consultation even makes reference to this. It’s likely the route would transfer before changes to said route would take place.

In reality both Liverpool to Cleethorpes and Liverpool Nottingham would be TPE with Northern on the hourly Pic to Sheffield stopper

EMR are currently working through fairly significant changes to their operation to allow it to operate (including potentially a North West train crew depot, I believe). I think there is little to no chance of it transferring by May 2022. At the moment the transfer is on hold but the DfT reserve the right to move forward with it at some stage at their discretion.
There is no timescale on when or even if it will actually happen and with structural changes to the industry who knows whether remapping in the traditional sense will even be relevant. You could end up with it being operated by both TOCs to service either end of the route, if that was shown to offer an advantage.

In a nutshell all bets are off and no one really knows what is going to happen in the medium to long term with a lot of routes and operations.

 

[daodao]

The alternative would be terminating the Welsh service at Victoria and then having a separate Victoria - Calder Valley - Leeds service, but that would mean terminating more services in central Manchester, which is the whole thing that this seems to be intended to reduce, so seems to go against the "simple half hourly frequencies, fewer conflicts in Manchester" kind of ethos

There would be capacity to terminate a service from Leeds in one of the existing eastern-facing bays at Victoria, but I accept there would be a problem with where a TfW service could layover. As you have stated, I don't expect that TfW/WAG will be happy with any proposal to divert the current North Wales service off the current route, least of all running it via Altrincham. My concerns with the proposed CLC routing for this service in option C relate to resilience and speed. Most of the other proposals in option C are good.

 

[Fokx]

EMR are currently working through fairly significant changes to their operation to allow it to operate (including potentially a North West train crew depot, I believe). I think there is little to no chance of it transferring by May 2022. At the moment the transfer is on hold but the DfT reserve the right to move forward with it at some stage at their discretion.
There is no timescale on when or even if it will actually happen and with structural changes to the industry who knows whether remapping in the traditional sense will even be relevant. You could end up with it being operated by both TOCs to service either end of the route, if that was shown to offer an advantage.

In a nutshell all bets are off and no one really knows what is going to happen in the medium to long term with a lot of routes and operations.

Indeed, hopefully a decision will be made soon and EMR will attempt to improve the rolling stock, even if it is just a quick exterior revinyl as the class 158’s are looking more and more tired as the years go on. There are passengers who don’t even know the operator has changed.

Thw best option as you say in the interim would be some form of joint operation, which would hopefully make the west side of the route more reliable

 

[peters]

There was apparently an issue with a level crossing being closed for too long each hour on that section that prevented Northern running an Altrincham to Chester service (when the planned Piccadilly to Greenbank) got binned. I don't see how that issue would be any different if TFW went hourly over the route.

What's special about that level crossing? The one at Navigation Road is down more than it's up with 20 trams passing through each hour, as well as passenger and freight trains.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Indeed, hopefully a decision will be made soon and EMR will attempt to improve the rolling stock, even if it is just a quick exterior revinyl as the class 158’s are looking more and more tired as the years go on. There are passengers who don’t even know the operator has changed.

Given that they're fitted out with Grammer's finest, you don't get much better!

 

[Fokx]

Given that they're fitted out with Grammer's finest, you don't get much better!

Not a patch on 158889!

 

[The Planner]

Would love to hear your ideas for sorting out the single line sections at modest expense!

You think a resignalling would cost less than shortening the single track towards Mickle Trafford?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not a patch on 158889!

Original interior? Nah, you can keep that. Though I guess the former 1st is popular. Actually, I've sat in it myself once!

 

[yorksrob]

Very pleased with the EMR 158 interiors. Still very fit for purpose.

 

[YorksLad12]

Having finally read the document I can see why DfT, the operators and Transport for the North of Greater Manchester* would be happy with Option C.

When DfT and Rail North consulted on the Northern & TPE franchises all those years ago, it was on the basis of growth; new rolling stock taking advantage of new electrification and infrastructure at Bolton, Ordsall and Piccadilly. One of those was late, one very late and one isn't happening - yet we still expect to fit a quart into a pint pot.

Rather than over-promise and under-deliver, Option C fits the railway we have. It won't please everyone, but the proof of the pudding will be in the detailed timetables. Then again, they managed to sign off on a report with a map that indicated Northern running Liverpool-Cleethorpes instead of TPE so I won't hold my breath here...

* They are really, aren't they?

 

[Philip]

What power would the relevant English rail parties have if option C was prevented because of the Welsh Government refusing to compromise/have any route changes made to the North Wales service? Could TfW potentially lose track access rights into Manchester from the Chester routes if the WAG don't cooperate?

I do think this could be the major stumbling block for options B or C, unless the WAG can be overruled. The Crewe-Manchester passenger group may be vociferous about the loss of Stockport services on the southern half of the line.

 

[Greybeard33]

I know I'm going on about Southport again, but reducing to 1tph to Vic only would be VERY unpopular.

But all three options have 2tph between Southport and Victoria. Option C additionally gives Southport a third hourly service in the peaks, to Oxford Road.

 

[Class 170101]

EMR are currently working through fairly significant changes to their operation to allow it to operate (including potentially a North West train crew depot, I believe). .

Most interesting

You think a resignalling would cost less than shortening the single track towards Mickle Trafford?

I'm surprised in some respects that single line sections like this one aren't capable of following moves and that we don't plan generally to make more of signalling like this.