I can't comment on California as I have never been there so I'm taking your comments on face value. As far as Liverpool and Manchester is concerned my view is that both Cities need each other in order for the Northern Powerhouse to spring into life. Logically, any location that is in the centre of a urban sprawl is usually bound to be more prosperous and have better connections to the surrounding areas, like the spokes on a bicycle wheel.
I don't disagree with the sentiment. The California example was a hypothetical one about how the north of the state and San Francisco would cope if California was as centralised as England and took the same approach to government. We should be asking why Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds/Sheffield isn't like the San Francisco Bay Area, or the Randstad or Rhine-Rhur in terms of economic success. Unfortunately, the Northern Powerhouse has no intention of seriously answering the question. Just giving Manchester a few trinkets and saying it's London of the North is little more than rhetoric. That said, people fall for it, as we've seen on this thread. It's now so like London, you have to commute in from 35 miles away apparently. It's the home of international headquarters (none of which spring to mind) and has Media City (wow!). The reality is that it's still poor and underperforming compared to similar cities in Europe and North America. There's no genuine desire to change that, either. Sir Humphrey believes UKplc works perfectly fine as it is and the intention is very much business as usual.
As a footnote, I'd like to point out that many of the great world cities are on the coast - New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Barcelona and even London to an extent. It's clearly not that big a barrier to being a viable city. A lot of people on here just want Liverpool to die because it's Liverpool, I'm afraid. It's an uncomfortable truth but an apparent one.
My gripe with Merseytram to Kirkby was primarily the choice of destination and the route, which was far from direct to the city centre which meant that it probably was neither one thing or another and as you comment was in places designed like a dog dinner. I'd probably agree Croxteth and Norris Green could both benefit from better public transport but to effectively cover these large areas my feeling would be that buses would be more economical and flexible. The problem in Liverpool is that many bus services duplicate large parts of the same route, the 79 near me is probably the best example, especially if you also include the Halton services. It's not unusual to see four or five buses all turn up at the same stop all heading for the same destination. Whether it would be economically viable to re-route some of the services is another matter.
Liverpool had until 1957 a tram system that extended to all the outskirts of the city and generally speaking east of Queens Drive ran on it own tracks as the wide roads of today show. The real problem today would have been incorporating a tram network within the much narrower streets to the west of Queens Drive as there are very few places where an alternative route either for the traffic or tram would be available without a huge amount of demolition. The other issue of course in my mind was that because Merseytram only really comprised one route, with little chance of it being extended to neighbouring areas the "connectivity" would be lost whilst rebuilding a complete network today would be totally out of the question.
I'd broadly agree your comments on the tram system to the airport, my initial point was a tram scheme from the city centre to the airport would I suspect have been a better business case than the route to Kirkby, but I'd agree it would be relatively slow, because the social route the line would have to follow.
I'm not sure the buses duplicating routes is that big an issue. Busses are privatised, so no subsidy whatsoever and if the route wasn't economically viable, the operator would not run it. The 79 is my local bus these days and it's a very good service - frequent with modern double-decker buses and much better than the 12/13/15 with its small single-decker cattle trucks. Buses would be more flexible than Merseytram in terms of being able to alter routes without any infrastructural alterations and less risk of being blockaded due to an obstruction of the right of way, but these are universal advantages buses have over trams that equally apply to every tram system in the world. Trams do have some key advantages over buses, however. Generally, modern trams have more capacity. They're a much smoother ride, feeling more like a train than a motor vehicle and quieter. The electric traction doesn't pollute at the point of use either. The catenary on modern systems is also less obtrusive than the spider webs that made up traditional systems, like the one Liverpool had. Most modern tram systems have significant amounts of dedicated right of way too. Of course, you could achieve that with a guided busway but a tramway takes up less carriageway width.
I think we agree on some of Merseytram's shortcomings and yes, there seemed to be little intention to branch out the line outside of it's rather weird Kirkby-bound route. Like I said, I wouldn't go to Kirkby at all. I'd have simply replaced the 18 bus in a Phase 1. The bottom end of West Derby Road would be dualled and the tram would run along the central reservation all the way to the roundabout. At the split level around Rocky lane, I'd remove the little side road on the upper side, so that there's space for both the trams and the city centre-bound road traffic. It would then go onto the central reservation of Muirhead Avenue until it becomes Oak Lane. Here, it's only single carriageway but there is space for expansion. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it'd take a dual carriageway with a tram line in the middle, so here it'd probably be a single carriageway road with the tram line running to one side. There is space beyond the Croxteth Hall Lane junction, however, it may still make sense to keep the tram at the side rather than crossing over to the middle at this point. At the roundabout with Fir Tree Drive, the tram would become a one way terminal loop, similar to what the 18 already does. Interestingly, the 18 goes anti-clockwise around the Croxteth Park estate. I'm not sure if there's any particular reason for this as it would be far better for the tram if it went clockwise, otherwise, it'd have to cross over the oncoming track. Not a show-stopper but not ideal. Obviously, after going around the loop, the tram would head back out on Oak Lane towards the city centre.
Phase 2 would go to Stockbridge and replace the 12/13. It would follow the 18 route up to the roundabout in Tuebrook and then go onto the central reservation of Mill Bank. At Queens Drive, the tram would need to cross onto Mill Lane. What alignment it would take at this intersection, I'm not sure. An idea maybe to remove the unsignalised left turn from Queens Drive into Mill Lane and allow the tram to run on that (motor traffic would do a 90 degree left turn at the lights). Mill Lane is, unfortunately, single carriageway with little scope for expansion, so the tram would share right of way with motor traffic. West Derby Village is a bit of an awkward detour, now made worse by speed bumps and other traffic calming measures, so I envisage the tram would continue onto Barnfield Drive instead and then Melwood Drive and Deysbrook Lane. You could, perhaps, create a separate right of way here by widening the road and removing the trees and wide verges, though I think this would be controversial. At the junction with Princess Drive, they'd do the same as the 12/13 and split to may a two-way circle. Princess Drive is dual carriageway bar a small section around Finch Road. Why that small section isn't dualled is a mystery as there's plenty of space to widen it. So, I envision the tram would run along the middle for the entire length. The roads in Stockbridge Village are all single carriageway, which is strange for a mid-20th Century estate, so the tram would share right of way with motor traffic. Whilst this route would have proportionally less dedicated right of way than the 18 route, I think just being able to bypass the traffic jams on West Derby Road alone would yield significant rush hour journey time reductions from West Derby and Stockbridge.
There's a lot that can be said for tram systems. They're not the answer to every situation but I do think they make sense for the West Derby Road corridor. A lot of the local opposition seemed to consist of people who didn't live near the proposed line and so didn't see any direct benefit to them personally (including Sefton & Wirral councils who were rather lukewarm because it didn't go into their patches). Unhelpful comparisons with Merseyrail and Merseyrail extensions was another one, with arguments that expanding Merseyrail would be better, despite these proposals usually involving totally different areas of the city and of little value to Tue Brook or Croxteth Park. Also, I found all hardened 'anti's had never been on a modern tram system, so couldn't appreciate things like the smoother ride. They saw it as regressive; a rebuilding of a redundant technology that we did away with 60 years ago, with rickety wooden cars under ugly spider webs, in black & white photos, passing a soot-covered Liver Building. Of course, Merseytravel handled the whole thing atrociously and we might have had something to show for it if they'd A/ designed the route properly in the first place and B/ properly advertised what the system actually offered that buses didn't. Too late now though.
