Platform 15 and 16 project at Manchester Piccadilly.

[Senex]

Quite. And we continue to build on every available inch of land right up to our railways. Had railway development proceeded in line with slum clearance and war damage repair in Manchester, one option would have been my personal obsession of filtering all long distance services into a gigantic central through station based on an expanded Victoria-Exchange, with above-ground approach lines through Ardwick to the Stockport and Guide Bridge lines, and the eastern fringes of Salford to the CLC lines.

Wasn't that essentially the suggested Manchester Trinity scheme?
(And the attached extract from the Manchester Courier of 18 February 1860 shewing a gentleman by the name of Fairbairn speaking on much the same issue at a public meeting about the inadequate railway facilities in Manchester (the comparison with London being made).)

 

[Senex]

The only way we are getting anything like that is underground Stuttgart 21 esque works.

Which might have been worth it but there was never any money for it.

Better would have been something like the Leipzig tunnel. Leipzig is in many ways a city comparable to Manchester, but the differences in the approaches to upgrading outdated infrastructure are extreme. Manchester gets a £85 million low-speed curve, with no money spent on bringing other parts of the cross-city link up to the standards needed. Leipzig gets a cross-city tunnel capable of taking proper IC traffic. We could also compare Stuttgart as mentioned, or, if people dislike German comparisons because that country is so rich, the astonishing job done by the Belgians in Antwerp. And let no-one say we're incapable of planning it and doing it here, because we've got the evidence of Crossrail, Thameslink 2000's works south of the river, and the superb job NR did at Reading. Can it really just be that countries like Germany and Belgium believe that provincial cities are important and need proper investment, whilst our beloved Whitehall thinks it's only the City of London that matters and the rest of the country can get stuffed?

 

[HSTEd]

The ideal solution would be to dig up Picadilly Gardens and build a huge underground station beneath it, connecting to multiple cross-city bus corridors, the tram and other facilities.
Such a station would have as many platforms as could be packed in, and all services from Manchester, Oxford Road, Deansgate and Victoria would have been diverted into it.

It would be the public transport hub for the entire city.

Travellator feeder tunnels could be provided to the sites of many of the retired stations, but all traffic would run through the new station.

 

[chorleyjeff]

Better would have been something like the Leipzig tunnel. Leipzig is in many ways a city comparable to Manchester, but the differences in the approaches to upgrading outdated infrastructure are extreme. Manchester gets a £85 million low-speed curve, with no money spent on bringing other parts of the cross-city link up to the standards needed. Leipzig gets a cross-city tunnel capable of taking proper IC traffic. We could also compare Stuttgart as mentioned, or, if people dislike German comparisons because that country is so rich, the astonishing job done by the Belgians in Antwerp. And let no-one say we're incapable of planning it and doing it here, because we've got the evidence of Crossrail, Thameslink 2000's works south of the river, and the superb job NR did at Reading. Can it really just be that countries like Germany and Belgium believe that provincial cities are important and need proper investment, whilst our beloved Whitehall thinks it's only the City of London that matters and the rest of the country can get stuffed?

Not just the City. Westminster, Camden, Islington etc.

 

[transmanche]

Can it really just be that countries like Germany and Belgium believe that provincial cities are important and need proper investment, whilst our beloved Whitehall thinks it's only the City of London that matters and the rest of the country can get stuffed?

Germany and Belgium are both federal countries, with regional governments which have a) power and b) money in order to get things done.

 

[Ianno87]

The ideal solution would be to dig up Picadilly Gardens and build a huge underground station beneath it, connecting to multiple cross-city bus corridors, the tram and other facilities.
Such a station would have as many platforms as could be packed in, and all services from Manchester, Oxford Road, Deansgate and Victoria would have been diverted into it.

It would be the public transport hub for the entire city.

Travellator feeder tunnels could be provided to the sites of many of the retired stations, but all traffic would run through the new station.

I christen it Châtalet-Les-Arndale.

 

[Senex]

Germany and Belgium are both federal countries, with regional governments which have a) power and b) money in order to get things done.

Yes, and doesn’t it make a difference? Even France, once famous for total centralisation, now has very substantial devolution to the regions, and the results for transport have been significant. In fact, the United Kingdom seems to be almost alone as a state in Which the central government seems to want to hang on to every scrap of power it can and to ignore the English regions as far as possible. And regional railway transport seems to be one of the areas that suffers most from this sort of central control.

 

[Chester1]

Better would have been something like the Leipzig tunnel. Leipzig is in many ways a city comparable to Manchester, but the differences in the approaches to upgrading outdated infrastructure are extreme. Manchester gets a £85 million low-speed curve, with no money spent on bringing other parts of the cross-city link up to the standards needed. Leipzig gets a cross-city tunnel capable of taking proper IC traffic. We could also compare Stuttgart as mentioned, or, if people dislike German comparisons because that country is so rich, the astonishing job done by the Belgians in Antwerp. And let no-one say we're incapable of planning it and doing it here, because we've got the evidence of Crossrail, Thameslink 2000's works south of the river, and the superb job NR did at Reading. Can it really just be that countries like Germany and Belgium believe that provincial cities are important and need proper investment, whilst our beloved Whitehall thinks it's only the City of London that matters and the rest of the country can get stuffed?

If you think Germany is much richer than the UK I would highly recommend you visit the former east. It is very visably poorer than the former West Germany. As a resident of Greater Manchester and someone who visited Leipzig a few months ago, I would strongly argue they are not comparable. Also the European Central Banks target2 debt to the German Central Bank is approaching €1 trillion. The majority of Germany's much vaunted trade surpless over the last 20 years is basically held as debt that will never be repaid to Germany, it might as well not exist. If you factor target2 then Germany has not done much better than the UK since the late 90s. As another member has pointed out Germany and Belgium are federal countries and that makes a huge difference. Local petty rivalries in England hinder attempts to devolve power.

I think there is a huge risk that if Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16 are built next it would actually make things worse. Rebuilding junctions to increase linespeeds and where possible build flying junctions might be the better option do next. Rebuilding Oxford Road to extend platforms 1-4 and remove platform 5, combined with lengthening platforms in the region to support 6 x 23m and 8 x 20m trains would provide an enormous amounr of extra capacity.

 

[B&I]

Wasn't that essentially the suggested Manchester Trinity scheme?
(And the attached extract from the Manchester Courier of 18 February 1860 shewing a gentleman by the name of Fairbairn speaking on much the same issue at a public meeting about the inadequate railway facilities in Manchester (the comparison with London being made).)

This Manchester Trinity scheme sounds interesting. Tell me more

 

[geoffk]

I think there is a huge risk that if Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16 are built next it would actually make things worse. Rebuilding junctions to increase linespeeds and where possible build flying junctions might be the better option do next. Rebuilding Oxford Road to extend platforms 1-4 and remove platform 5, combined with lengthening platforms in the region to support 6 x 23m and 8 x 20m trains would provide an enormous amounr of extra capacity.

Not sure you can manage without platform 5. I read elsewhere that 13 trains per hour is the limit between Piccadilly and Oxford Road and 15 tph between Oxford Road and Deansgate so two of those have to terminate at Oxford Road. Platform 1 needs to be used more but it has no lift. How difficult is it in engineering terms to provide one?

 

[B&I]

The ideal solution would be to dig up Picadilly Gardens and build a huge underground station beneath it, connecting to multiple cross-city bus corridors, the tram and other facilities.
Such a station would have as many platforms as could be packed in, and all services from Manchester, Oxford Road, Deansgate and Victoria would have been diverted into it.

It would be the public transport hub for the entire city.

Travellator feeder tunnels could be provided to the sites of many of the retired stations, but all traffic would run through the new station.

If the Picc-Vic Link had not been bent into such an odd shape to provide far more local stations than central Manchester really needed, Piccadilly Gardens would have been a good position for an intermediate station, with Piccadilly and Victoria serving their respective sides of the city centre.

 

[Altfish]

Depends where you're going. Victoria and Piccadilly (and Oxford Road, and Salford Central) are all on the fringes of a rather big city centre. Each has its own set of different onward local rail connections, and each is Metrolinked with fairly easy access to all other Metrolink services even if they don't go to the station in question.

Well I'd argue that Oxford Rd and Salford Central don't have have Metrolink connections.
Oxford Road is probably Manchester's most central station - since Cental closed.

 

[NotATrainspott]

A factor in favour of big new connecting tunnel projects in European cities is that they're very rarely dead ends. The Stuttgart 21 tunnels might end up used for trains from Amsterdam to Vienna, for instance. The range of possible routings is much higher, so there's more of a need to have the track support those options. GB doesn't really work that way - there's not really any great need to run an InterCity train through Manchester. Birmingham already has through routes in the most necessary directions, so there's no need for another grand infrastructure project to enable them.

 

[CdBrux]

not to mention the Stuttgart project is, I believe, going quite some way over budget, is some way behind plan and is not really very popular with the locals

 

[snowball]

Not sure you can manage without platform 5.

The scheme that Grayling has refrained from authorising would have included abolishing platform 5 at Oxford Road as a side effect of the alterations to platforms 1-4, in addition to creating two new through platforms at Picc. Presumably its designers did their calculations.

 

[CdBrux]

there's not really any great need to run an InterCity train through Manchester..

Liverpool to east and north of Leeds?
Manchester airport to Scotland?

I do agree though to your point that UK, in general, is not like Germany though, IIRC, northern powerhouse has looked for inspiration to the Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen region of Germany as well as Randstad in NL

 

[HSTEd]

If the Picc-Vic Link had not been bent into such an odd shape to provide far more local stations than central Manchester really needed, Piccadilly Gardens would have been a good position for an intermediate station, with Piccadilly and Victoria serving their respective sides of the city centre.

Well Picc-Vicc was concieved, fundamentally, as a tube line. Many of the artists impressions even use deep tube stock.

The point is, Picadilly Gardens is by far the largest largely "open" space in central Manchester, and is thus the best place to begin the excavations.
Althouh the platforms are too long to fit entirely in the gardens it would certainly reduce the amount of conventional tunnelling work.
I think you would probably end up with two "layers" of platforms orientated at right angles to one another. An alignment from the vicinity of Salford Central to the lines going south out of Picadilly, and one going to the lines from Leeds through to Warrington (and the other lines would be sorted into one of the two categories as appropriate)

 

[Chester1]

Not sure you can manage without platform 5. I read elsewhere that 13 trains per hour is the limit between Piccadilly and Oxford Road and 15 tph between Oxford Road and Deansgate so two of those have to terminate at Oxford Road. Platform 1 needs to be used more but it has no lift. How difficult is it in engineering terms to provide one?

The scheme that Grayling has refrained from authorising would have included abolishing platform 5 at Oxford Road as a side effect of the alterations to platforms 1-4, in addition to creating two new through platforms at Picc. Presumably its designers did their calculations.

I am suggesting that the capacity of the corridor should be reduced to 12tph - instead of 11tph to Piccadilly with 3tph terminating at Oxford Road. Piccadilly platforms 13 and 14 can handle 12tph and Oxford Road could certainly handle 12tph with 4 platforms. The plans for Oxford Road are very big and include a new entrance. I presume lifts to all platforms wouldn't be too difficult as part of major rebuild. The plan is / was to extend 1-4 westwards to Gloucester Street which would mean platform 4 completely blocking access to platform 5, which would become part of a new concourse area. 12tph is adequate if more stations in the area can support 6 x 23m or 8 x 20m trains. Oxford Road can only support 160m trains one platform and it blocks access to others do so.

Well I'd argue that Oxford Rd and Salford Central don't have have Metrolink connections.
Oxford Road is probably Manchester's most central station - since Cental closed.

Reopening platforms 3 and 4 at Salford Cental is very cheap, I think about £20m. If the haggling over funding can be resolved it would be a quick win for city centre capacity due to its relative proximity to Spinningfields. I would build a station at Cornbrook too and stop CLC services there for interchange with Metrolink instead of Deansgate to allow other trains to stop there instead. If the Ordsall Chord has shown anything its that there needs to be multiple upgrades rather than one. I still support building platforms 15 and 16 but I am sceptical that the surrounding infrastructure can currently support more services through Piccadilly reliably.

 

[snowball]

Reopening platforms 3 and 4 at Salford Cental is very cheap, I think about £20m.

Indeed TfGM got money from the DfT to increase the number of platforms to 5, but Network Rail went and spent it without achieving the objective.

 

[edwin_m]

Well Picc-Vicc was concieved, fundamentally, as a tube line. Many of the artists impressions even use deep tube stock.

The link from Wikipedia that has that impression also states:

underground station at Piccadilly, where there is already a bus interchange. From this point it will be possible to board trains for Bury, Altrincham, and Wilmslow.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguar...ster-underground-piccadilly-victoria-picc-vic
Possible that Bury and Altrincham could be taken out of the national network, as later happened under Metrolink, but I can't see this ever happening for Wilmslow. I've never seen any suggestion that it was anything other than a connection of suburban lines remaining part of the BR network. So I suggest the artist's impression was borrowed from some project in London, or just plain wrong.

 

[snowball]

I concur with edwin on that.

I've never seen a version of the Picc-Vic proposals which included a link from the tunnels towards Altrincham, so I imagine any reference to reaching Altrincham from Picc is to connections from platforms 13-14?

 

[The Planner]

Not sure you can manage without platform 5. I read elsewhere that 13 trains per hour is the limit between Piccadilly and Oxford Road and 15 tph between Oxford Road and Deansgate so two of those have to terminate at Oxford Road. Platform 1 needs to be used more but it has no lift. How difficult is it in engineering terms to provide one?

That was me, it is the agreed capacity constraint on the corridor, and was actually increased for this as it used to be 12tph. Not sure if older versions of the Timetable Planning Rules are downloadable to see when it was altered.

Edit, it was in one of the versions of the 2018 TPR. It was 12 tph in the 2017 versions.

 

[HSTEd]

Possible that Bury and Altrincham could be taken out of the national network, as later happened under Metrolink, but I can't see this ever happening for Wilmslow. I've never seen any suggestion that it was anything other than a connection of suburban lines remaining part of the BR network. So I suggest the artist's impression was borrowed from some project in London, or just plain wrong.

Well they don't look too ridiculous when you consider that Merseyrail stock at the time is a Class 503.
But the planned station density makes it look like a Merseyrail/Tube esque system more than anything.

 

[Chester1]

That was me, it is the agreed capacity constraint on the corridor, and was actually increased for this as it used to be 12tph. Not sure if older versions of the Timetable Planning Rules are downloadable to see when it was altered.

Edit, it was in one of the versions of the 2018 TPR. It was 12 tph in the 2017 versions.

Do we actually need more than 12tph running through Piccadilly and Oxford Road (with no terminating services)? Correct me if I am wrong but that is better than the 8+2 we had a month ago but worse than the 11+3 we have now (if nothing is cancelled).

 

[snowball]

The schematic map towards the bottom of this Wikipedia page on Picc-Vic confirms my recollection of what the leaflets showed at the time: trains from the tunnels running through to Wilmslow via Styal, Alderley Edge via Handforth, Macclesfiled and Hazel Grove. Obviously it was never the intention to remove all those from the national rail network. There would have been nowhere left for intercity or freight trains to get anywhere near Manchester from the south.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picc-Vic_tunnel

 

[Intercity 225]

The ideal solution would be to dig up Picadilly Gardens and build a huge underground station beneath it, connecting to multiple cross-city bus corridors, the tram and other facilities.
Such a station would have as many platforms as could be packed in, and all services from Manchester, Oxford Road, Deansgate and Victoria would have been diverted into it.

It would be the public transport hub for the entire city.

Travellator feeder tunnels could be provided to the sites of many of the retired stations, but all traffic would run through the new station.

This sounds fantastic, if only money were no object haha. I’d also support the abolition of Piccadilly Gardens, a stain on an otherwise brilliant city!

 

[HSTEd]

This sounds fantastic, if only money were no object haha. I’d also support the abolition of Piccadilly Gardens, a stain on an otherwise brilliant city!

Well I would prefer that, on top of the at least two platform decks, a concourse deck and a bus station deck, there would a proper garden at or one story above the current ground level.

 

[mr_jrt]

I appreciate it's obviously not that likely, but I was having a think about the situation at Piccadilly and looking at the view from above the thing that stood out at me the most was the curvature on all the platforms, and the effect that has. So, the questions I have are thus: Would it be beneficial to pull the railway southwards into the the Mayfield site to ease the curvature in the Piccadilly throat, so whilst you would still end up with only 4 through platforms, they would be further south, and because of that, you could lengthen and straighten the main terminal platforms? Forgive the crayoning, but it's easier with an illustration (just remember it's an illustration, not an engineering diagram!):

I'm more than willing to be the first to admit I don't know anything about the services serving Manchester, but having those short terminal platforms can't be a good use of throat capacity, even if there are short trains in operation. I get the impression that 2-3 car services are still common up north so I presume those are what uses the existing short platforms, but even if you ended up stacking them on longer platforms that would seem like a better use of things to me as you would get more throughput and more flexibility if you were able to have incoming trains able to berth whilst another was still sitting there...

 

[Bletchleyite]

What short terminal platforms? They're near enough all 11 x 24m (though 11 and 12 are an oddity).

 

[Altfish]

I trust all these trains per hour calculations have factored in the freight trains heading to Trafford Park that use p13/14 at Piccadilly.