Transport for Leigh campaign

[WatcherZero]

Ive thought that a Preston-Wigan-Manchester Airport-Manchester high speed shuttle via the Airport along HS2 would have a good business case, it would arrive at Manchester Piccadilly in exactly the same time as the service via Chatmoss or Bolton despite the longer route while journey time to the Airport from north of Manchester would be cut by three quarters. Makes use of a asset already intending to be built and adds capacity to existing lines.

While not currently in the London focused provisional timetable the line is envisaged to be carrying Manchester-Scotland traffic, the question however is what form would the final high speed route to Scotland take? Part of the issue of bypassing Wigan and Preston is that the loss of passengers from those two places reduces the business case significantly. Would they take the provisionally rejected bypass route or upgrade the existing WCML through Wigan-Preston centres before creating new route further north? In fact the best case north of Preston may be creating a new higher speed alignment to Carstairs carrying all passenger traffic then reducing the existing WCML to purely freight.

Either way the same problem as Chat Moss comes back to Leigh, the reduction in line capacity from overtaking and slowing for junctions and inconveniance to other passengers outweighing the benefits for locals of forcing the occasional stopper. Fundamentally while it could support services if built most of the passengers would be abstracted from existing services, there arent enough new potential passengers created building a new station 2km south of Leigh that arent already using the Atherton station 3km north of Leigh for their rail journeys.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The misguided busway is not popular with most residents I've spoken to over here, for a start the busway will be taking services away from our local routes and putting them on the busway (which is running along the old rail line) so means a longer trek just to reach a bus stop... Then there is the East Lancashire Road, it doesn't have the capacity to lose a lane in each direction for the sake of a bus lane nor does it have the potential to be widened to allow new lanes to be built.

Could I direct you to posting # 23 by WatcherZero which addresses some of your worries with regard to the East Lancashire Road.

 

[yorksrob]

I think it's nigh on time Leigh was reunited with the classic network, though I feel a station on HS2 seems a little far fetched as an aspiration. Plus, wouldn't the majority of Leigh passengers need to go East and West rather than North or South?

Of course, if TFGM actually did something worthwhile about a rail link rather than wasting money on pointless guided busways, the local population wouldn't have to clutch at straws in this way.

 

[HSTEd]

Well if HS2 was modified to have a triangle instead of a delta south of Manchester (I believe there will be a triangle south of Leeds?) then the fastest route to Wigan could potentially be via the High speed line.

 

[Bevan Price]

Its not just the guided section, the A580 is widened to add more bus lanes through most of the Leigh/Salford border area then in central Salford new bus lanes are created through reserving road space.

http://www.tfgm.com/buspriority/routes/Documents/A580-detailed-drawings.pdf

Unless they increase the speed limit back to 60 mph, and remove most of the traffic lights, the bus journey will still be painfully slow. My X34 bus journey earlier this week was outside the peak hours, and the main reasons for the slow journey were low speed limits and getting stopped at almost every set of traffic lights.


As an aside - are there any Leigh residents on the forum who wish that Leigh was "an independent borough" rather than a comparatively "smallish" part of Wigan Borough ? Elsewhere, I know that residents of some towns (e.g. Southport, Newton Le Willows, Prescot) think they are put at a disadvantage by being part of a borough dominated by a larger main centre.