Bantamzen
Established Member
Limited use? My understanding is that the majority of Airport passengers are travelling to/from Manchester (and certainly Greater Manchester). And there are under thirty five passengers on board the average service at the Airport, in the first place.
Whilst you might inconvenience/lose passengers travelling from Middlesbrough/ Barrow/ Cleethorpes (by reducing/removing direct services), the number of such passengers is pretty insignificant compared to the millions using the Airport station each year.
Maybe there's an argument for some early morning arrivals at the Airport from such places (targeted to be attractive for holiday flights), the obsession with retaining all of these direct links means that the tail is wagging the dog - the Airport has nine Piccadilly services per hour but the need to accommodate all of these long distance services means that there are some huge gaps (since the timetable has to be partly written around the ECML and WCML) - for example whilst nine trains per hour might suggest a service every seven minutes, you've got an EIGHTEEN minute gap at Piccadilly (from the xx:33 ex-Liverpool service to the xx:51 ex-Newcastle).
The intermediate stations on the Airport branch therefore end up with a terrible service (compared to other suburban stations in Greater Manchester) because our focus is on long distance Airport passengers.
Then you've got to consider a future where long distance services will require significantly longer turnaround times at the Airport (e..g. the half hourly services from the York direction getting extended from a ten minute layover to a forty minute layover) AND the fact that these services are going to be a lot longer (5x26m rather than 3x23m) which means the platforms capacity at the Airport is going to be sorely tested.
Whilst I want to get cars off the road and want to encourage people to use trains, in the grand scheme of things I'm not losing much sleep over how someone from Middlesbrough gets to Manchester Airport for their summer holiday in the Med - we could make much bigger improvements by improving the reliability of shorter/medium distance services around Greater Manchester, rather than the vanity of direct Airport trains (whilst I appreciate that changing trains puts people off, it's a luxury to be worrying about all of these direct links whilst reliability around Castlefield is so dire).
<bangs head on desk, repeatedly>
This argument has been going around in circles for goodness knows how long. What you continue to ignore that Manchester Airport is not just some bucket and spade destination serving airport, but is a rapidly growing international airport serving a widening market. This is why the owners are investigating over a billion on adding considerable capacity, and when available will need effective ways of getting that additional flow to the airport. Part of that strategy, and increasingly so due to very limited road capacity potential, is the rail network, particularly that delivered by TPE who have been trying to build that market.
That one line suffers slightly compared to others in Greater Manchester in terms of not having the much desired S-Bahn style, clockface service is easily offset by the financial benefits having an expanding, international airport within it's boundaries and drawing much of the employment from it. Cut the long distance offerings and you will increase the footfall at the main stations, helping to increase the overcrowding and dwell times for all travelling through Manchester. Or worse still the demand falls off, moves to the road network and companies like TPE dial back their Manchester serving services in the long run.
I do get the impression that you would like Manchester airport be for Manchester people only, so maybe you need to take that issue up with their owners, which include the boroughs of Greater Manchester. In the meantime having direct services from those little hamlets like West Yorkshire & the
North East to the airport are actually quite useful, and despite the wishes of a handful on here seem set to continue. It is clearly a key part of TPE's strategy, and a key driver in their rolling stock decisions moving the franchise from a regional commuter to more full inter city one.