Naturally, I believe that if the Halton Curve should be reinstated, the services should continue to be run by Northern. Remember that the Halton Curve is actually active and Northern is the incumbent TOC that operates it.
If ATW is to improve its links into Merseyside, I believe that the Wrexham-Bidston service should be extended to Birkenhead North, and perhaps sporadic "express" services (by extending the HoWL services) from Shrewsbury. Connecting North and South Wrexham would be very useful to a lot of people.
I disbelieve in a partial electrification of the Borderlands Line - I think if a section (say to Heswall) gets electrified, the truncated section could succomb to Ellesmere Port-Helsby level of service. It either remains diesel to Bidston or it is electrified all the way. Electrification would improve the line's patronage a lot, but since that's not happening, I think ATW's priorities should be sorting out their absolutely abysmally-incorrect statistics on that line and getting an extention to Birkenhead North. Idealistically, this line (along with the other truncated DMU services around Merseyside) should be run by Merseyrail rather than ATW, but its just unviable for Merseyrail to do so.