After watching the Transport For North board meeting certain things are clear:
-A short term reduction in services is required for reliable running through Castlefield.
-Central Manchester is an important interchange point in the North.
-Delays through Castlefield ripple across a considerable amount of the country, other regional leaders admit it is noticeably one of the most congested areas.
-Three areas on the UK rail network are designated as 'congested', Castlefield being one of them. The other two are on the Brighton Mainline and works to resolve these issues are currently underway.
In regards to solving the issues:
-It is as yet undecided which services will be reduced, TFN board members are keen to establish a methodology to working out which services will be most fair to cut short. Approximately two trains an hour will be removed from the corridor. This will be very much a temporary solution, and leaders will not accept service reductions permanently.
-There is shorter and longer term solutions, as well as ones with smaller and larger costs. Bottlenecks and junctions around the whole of Manchester are also an issue too, especially when it comes to presenting trains to the oh so fragile corridor on time.
-Shorter term and cheaper solutions involve improvements to Victoria and some junctions.
-In the medium term, package C works which include 15/16 will be the most robust solution.
-These issues will likely continue for a while, there is no easy short term fix, unfortunately.
Some other points:
-The Sheffield Mayor correctly identified that Hope Valley line improvements will require extra capacity at Piccadilly to handle the extra trains.
-Passenger numbers have massively increased, however this increased fare income has been used to offset subsidy decreases. Trains are carrying a lot more people with the same operational budgets they had when passenger numbers were much lower. On top of this, they need to cater for future growth.
-Whilst projects like HS2 and NPR may offer a longer term solution, there are many issues on the 'classic' network that need resolving imminently.