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Some sensible points there but the big problem I'm seeing is that there's a lot of questions there and not a lot of answers. The government shouldn't be essentially cancelling resourced and designed projects based on analysis they haven't done yet which might come back with the answer that...

Agreed that there isn't a huge rush but in terms of maintaining skills and supply chain, the country needs a rolling programme of electrification. The MML seemed like the perfect programme to maintain those skills. Maybe there's enough work from HS2, TRU etc. but I'm skeptical. I agree to a...

The big worry for me is that this will lead to lost skills. I remember the winding down of the North West electrification schemes and remember staff being made redundant leading to some moving permanently to Australia. I really hope the government has considered the impact on skill retention...

Additionally, it makes sense to concentrate those services at Victoria and concentrate the Hull services at Piccadilly. If Hull had one fast Liverpool service and one semi fast service to Piccadilly it would create a more confusing timetable that's unlikely to be clockface. Newcastle is...

They are getting an extra train per hour to Manchester out of it though. I'd much rather have a half hourly semi-fast service to Manchester than an hourly slightly faster service to Manchester/Liverpool. Manchester and Leeds are always going to be far bigger draws and changing at...

The problem is that the tunnel itself doesn't deliver a whole lot without the new line along the M62. It'll improve reliability a lot and maybe provide a small number of additonal paths e.g. more stopping services to Warrington Central but not much else. A tunnel is going to be slow and...

At the same time you can spend decades discussing ideas and never actually do anything. At some point we need to build a scheme even if it's not everybody's perfect solution. Modelling for NPR has been going for years and there's been constant scope changes. At some point something has to be...

5 years ago I'd have said it was a no brainer but the lack of progress on electrification and the advances in battery technology certainly make it an edge case now. It's got less services than Rochdale - Victoria currently and the gap in electrification on the Calder Valley line is not far off...

I think its questionable whether there are many benefits of electrifying the CLC given northern are ordering battery trains. Its probably the perfect route for battery trains and they'll have far better acceleration than a class 150. Unless it can be done in a couple of years and use cascaded...

The tram is pretty useless for travelling to central Manchester though. 7 minutes on the train vs 29 minutes on the tram. If anything, Eccles would likely out perform Bootle due to people using it as an interchange to access Salford Quays. I'm confident that usage ay Eccles would top 1 million...

And then wait 15 years for a line to be planned and built? No country is waiting for every train to be 100% full before starting to plan capacity enhancements, the UK shouldn't be either. Some people in thus thread don't seem to understand the timescales involved here. The new line is a decade...

It definitely isn't a four track alignment to east of Patricroft. It's clearly been built over. It'd be very disruptive to four track too. Look at TRU to the east of Huddersfield. Deighton is going to be closed for over a year to be rebuilt and tracks added. Is closing Eccles for that long...

It could approach Manchester from the west but you're then disrupting a whole new group of people. Ripping up and starting again seems fairly pointless for fairly marginal benefits to journey times from Liverpool to Manchester. I'm pretty ambivalent to the route but I can understand the...

Agreed. I'm not going to stop advocating for improvements and hoping for better. The argument that the infrastructure is good enough doesn't stand up anyway. A comparison that is often given when arguing for NPR is the Rhine-Ruhr region. How many lines are there between Colonge and Dussledorf...

Still it's pretty demoralising to younger people like myself that there are so many people saying all we can hope for is very small incremental improvements. Unfortunately, I think its an attitude that's permeated society, yet every other modern developed country seems to be building far more...

Is there not effort being made to make the most of GMs railways already? Planned or recently completed projects include: 3rd Platform at Salford Crescent Upgrades at Salford Central New station at Golborne Platform extensions on the airport line and Chat Moss Remodeling of Oxford Road Turn...

If there was capacity on the WCML for more services, HS2 wouldn't have been built. It'd likely cost billions, if not tens of billions to upgrade the WCML for an additional hourly path or two. HS2 construction has been an absolute mess but phase 1 is still going to create allow for somewhere...

This is the big problem with Metrolink. In the short term this can be mitigated with more double trams but long term there is going to be capacity issues on the trams and at city centre stops. There's very little that can be done to the existing system given space constraints, particularly when...

It would make sense to have the slows in the centre as it would allow services to turn back without interacting with the fast lines. Thorpe Park could be used to revive the East Leeds Parkway concept if a turn back siding was provided. That'd allow for a better service from both Thorpe Park and...

SDO isn't going to happen on trams. You'll be extending dwell times too much. At peak times it's difficult enough to get off trams as it is without not opening some doors. Chester is far too far from Manchester for Metrolink. Currently, no line is more than 10 miles straight line distance from...