re Keighley to Manchester...
Even if there is a Crossrail, the fastest service from Bradford Interchange to Manchester Victoria is 55 minutes (and that's only one train per hour - anything else takes over an hour)
Given that Keighley to Leeds only takes five minutes longer than Keighley to Bradford Forster Square, and that you can do Leeds to Manchester Victoria in 55 minutes or less four times per hour, the only way that I'd travel from Keighley to Manchester via Bradford would be if:
- The Keighley service runs through to Manchester as a direct train, replacing the current "fast" service from Leeds through the Calder Valley to Manchester Victoria (i.e. Leeds loses a through service to Halifax/ Hebden Bridge/ Rochdale)
and/or
- We spend another billion pounds on improving/ electrifying the Calder Valley route to try to shave another few minutes off that 55 minute time from Bradford to Manchester Victoria, on top of the money spent knocking down swathes of central Bradford
Both of those seem pretty unrealistic IMHO (would places in the Calder Valley be happy losing their fast Leeds train so that they can have a direct Keighley service instead?), so I'd stick to travelling via Leeds if I were ever to do the Keighley - Manchester journey (frequent service from Keighley to Leeds, frequent service from Leeds to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester journey times will get even faster in future once electricity reaches Marsden)
And even if there were a line from Skipton to Colne, it'd still be faster to do Keighley - Leeds - Manchester, before anyone gets their crayons out!
Something else which doesn’t add up. If this is about Bradford passengers with the turnaround at BDI what does it matter? It’s the same time between Bradford and all destinations regardless (well it will actually take a minute or 2 longer as this fantasy super station will be further back).
Nobody seems to be able to answer this simple question, do they?
Some bluster about "regional connections" but what new links will Bradford gain that it can't currently have (e.g. you could already run direct trains from Bradford to various places but we choose not to - Sheffield/ Carlisle etc)
I am surprised that none of the Leeds to doncaster electric locals don't go through to Forster sq and once line is electrified to York). Surely such a service could use a local Bradford to leeds path. This would improve direct journey opportunities for Bradfordians and reduce need for a train berthing at Leeds.
I suppose that the two issues there are that the EMUs through Kirkstall are fairly intensively diagrammed as they are (with lots of interworking), so the layovers aren't that significant (I'm not commenting on how long the Doncaster trains lay over at Leeds though) and that the Kirkstall services are pretty much operationally independent of other trains at Leeds - they are able to come into and out of the low numbered platforms at the northern side of the station - it's almost a separate station - the only time that services need to cross onto the "main" station is the occasional LNER service or Northern ECS to Neville Hill - running onto the Doncaster route would risk operational performance on the tightly pathed Kirkstall corridor rather than keeping things seperate
What would be a lot better (in my biased opinion!) would be if we had something like 769s that could work both of the stoppers on the Fitzwilliam corridor, so that a Dearne Valley stopper into Leeds could form the next Doncaster stopper out of Leeds (as well as allowing the Dearne Valley service to be sped up a little, a 100mph EMU vs a 75mph DMU)
Interchange-Doncaster would be easier and might be worth considering once electrified.
That's worth considering - since the Westgate and Interchange routes share a line into Leeds, you could look at interworking (just as long as you don't go crazy, like Arriva's planned Nottingham - Sheffield - Leeds - Bradford - Rochdale - Manchester Airport diagrams were going to be!)
), and (d) a completely arbitrary statistic.
