Leeds has an amazing frequency to some places.
(using timetables prior to Covid) there are seven an hour on the direct York line (i.e. ignoring the services the long way round via Knaresborough), three per hour to Newcastle, up to two per hour to Edinburgh, four per hour to Harrogate, six per hour to Bradford, five per hour to Manchester (i.e. ignoring the long way round via the Calder Valley), around eight an hour to Wakefield and generally three per hour to the ECML at Doncaster. That's a pretty good "reach" IMHO.
The services to Hull/ Preston/ Lancaster/ Liverpool/ London all seem pretty reasonable IMHO. The London service is scheduled to be increased, the Hull service was recently doubled.
The main problem is the XC service to Sheffield/ Birmingham. I'm not fussed about services to places south of Birmingham - IMHO the demand for direct journeys is going to be so small that it doesn't matter too much whether it's towards Bristol or Reading (but, at least Bristol is fastest via XC, whereas a direct Reading service may still be slower than changing at London).
HS2 was intended to solve the Leeds - Birmingham issue (long trains with a journey time of one hour, rather than cramming onto a Voyager for two hours that's already full of people from Glasgow/ Edinburgh/ Newcastle heading to Sheffield/ Birmingham etc) - however in the "short" term the solution was meant to be a two coach 195 on ah hourly (Manchester Airport) Bradford - Leeds - Westgate - Sheffield - Nottingham service. Not great, but a small step in the right direction.
For me, the options are:
- Divert the "via Doncaster" XC services via Leeds instead. Would mean a twenty minute penalty for longer distance passengers, would remove much of the Doncaster - York services on the ECML (since a lot of the LNER Scottish services don't stop at Donny), would struggle to find a path on top of the existing seven trains per hour through Garforth, would leave Doncaster without a service south of Sheffield (and whilst Doncaster isn't enormous, it is a railhead for Humberside).
- Chop the daytime service at Leeds (so that it becomes a Leeds - Birmingham - Bristol - Beyond service). Use the units spared to double up the Leeds - Bristol section, maybe still run some token services to Edinburgh like in BR days? There are two TPE services per hour from Leeds to Newcastle (some of which serve Edinburgh), but this would push the longer distance XC passengers onto the "via Doncaster" service to ensure that Leeds passengers board an empty train. There's an argument that the ECML north of York is too busy, so taking a short Voyager off the tracks would still leave plenty of seats on the many 800/801/802s on that stretch of line
- Extend the half hourly EMR St Pancras services beyond Sheffield to Leeds, maybe replacing the Northern "semi fasts"? That would improve capacity from Leeds to the East Midlands and improve capacity on the busy Sheffield section but I don't think the platforms at Meadowhall could accommodate a single 810 yet alone a doubled one (and the Meadowhall stop is very important one on the current Barnsley services).
- Getting into the world of fantasy, extend the half hourly Leeds - Vic - Pic - Manchester Airport service to Crewe (in lieu of the Liverpool - Manchester - Crewe service), which would provide Leeds with better links to the WCML. I'd suggest bi-modes for XC to permit them to extend their half hourly Manchester - Birmingham services to start at Leeds via Huddersfield, but I'm waiting on Santa to delivery me that box of Crayola that I put on the list that went up the chimney and I'm saving the meagre allocation of crayons that I currently have, so I'm not willing to waste them on such a proposal!
^^ none of these are really ideal - Maybe as a modest proposal you could extend one of the EMR services per hour to Leeds in the path that the Northern Connect service was going to take (i.e. Westgate rather than Kirkgate)? So Leeds would have a half hourly Derby service (when combined with existing XC), as well as hourly to Leicester?
Or wire up the twenty something miles from Moorthorpe and Doncaster to Sheffield, allowing the Dearne Valley stopper to be sped up and run by longer trains (as well as freeing up a few DMUs on the Conisborough corridor) - if a 100mph EMU saved just a few minutes on the Dearne Valley service then it might soak up sufficient passengers to free up some more seats on the XC service for longer distance passengers.
The other place that I think gets a raw deal from Leeds is the "lower" Aire Valley towards Castleford/ Pontefract. Whilst the "upper" Aire Valley has had nice modern EMUs towards Shipley/ Keighley/ Skipton for around twenty years, the Leeds - Castleford - Pontefract service is only an hourly 150 (admittedly this is a step up from an hourly Pacer, but it feels like a route ripe for some kind of transformational investment - prime commuter distance from the regional capital, a lot of new housing down that way. Not as sexy as fast trains to places hundreds of miles away, but I think that you could easily fill a couple of four coach EMUs each hour on that corridor after a year or two of operation.
As for Glasgow... if there really is such significant demand from Leeds to Glasgow then presumably we wouldn't need to have such cheap "via Appleby" fares to keep passenger numbers on the S&C higher than they'd otherwise be. You could have an hourly Leeds - Glasgow train at just the cost of one additional unit, but extending the current XC services that terminate at Waverley through to Clydeside (i.e. making the XC service through Motherwell hourly). The problem with Leeds to Glasgow is that (a) the direct route has nowhere large as an intermediate station and that (b) it's a scenic line through the middle of nowhere so will always feature highly in a list of routes that enthusiasts want to throw resources at.
