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Wisbech-March line reopening cost increase to £200m

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yoyothehobo

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Leigh doesnt need a heavy rail link, and if it did, it may as well be on the outskirts or Glazebury Parkway style as if the majority of people using it, would be doing so to get to Manchester it would be much more sensible not to be in the town centre. All the suburbs of Leigh such as Astley, Tyldsley, Atherton, Hindley Green, Lowton are all already closer to existing stations than they are to the centre of Leigh.
 
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yorksrob

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Same argument goes for Ipswich, Northampton, Yeovil, Stafford etc etc etc - so why is Leigh any different to those? The stations in those towns aren't in the town centre - they are on the edge of at best.

Not at all.

I've walked from Ipswich and Stafford stations to their town centres. They are both within walking distance. Leigh is not.
 

yorksrob

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Leigh doesnt need a heavy rail link, and if it did, it may as well be on the outskirts or Glazebury Parkway style as if the majority of people using it, would be doing so to get to Manchester it would be much more sensible not to be in the town centre. All the suburbs of Leigh such as Astley, Tyldsley, Atherton, Hindley Green, Lowton are all already closer to existing stations than they are to the centre of Leigh.

Unlike all the other towns with a railway station in or near the centre ?
 

A0wen

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Not at all.

I've walked from Ipswich and Stafford stations to their town centres. They are both within walking distance. Leigh is not.

Wrong - because you're looking at it the wrong way round.

Most people don't live in the town centre - they live in the outlying areas so won't necessarily want or need to go to the town centre to catch a train. And in the case of Wisbech and Leigh for that matter the benefit of a train connection is for residents to travel to a nearer major centre - in Wisbech's case Cambridge and possibly London, in Leigh's case it would be Manchester.

Whereas I'm not sure that many people will travel from the rest of Manchester to head to the centre of Leigh.
 
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Wrong - because you're looking at it the wrong way round.

Most people don't live in the town centre - they live in the outlying areas so won't necessarily want or need to go to the town centre to catch a train. And in the case of Wisbech and Leigh for that matter the benefit of a train connection is for residents to travel to a nearer major centre - in Wisbech's case Cambridge and possibly London, in Leigh's case it would be Manchester.

Whereas I'm not sure that many people will travel from the rest of Manchester to head to the centre of Leigh.

So what houses are near to proposed Wisbech Station ??
 

Chris125

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Is portion working entirely out of the question, with Wisbech trains tagged on to existing services between March and Cambridge (if only during the peaks)?
 

Maltazer

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Is portion working entirely out of the question, with Wisbech trains tagged on to existing services between March and Cambridge (if only during the peaks)?
There must be some staff / signal issues because Lynn trains that should probably split at Ely divide at Cambridge instead, and follow each other up the line. The same happens in reverse, joining at Cambridge instead of Ely.
 

A0wen

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There must be some staff / signal issues because Lynn trains that should probably split at Ely divide at Cambridge instead, and follow each other up the line. The same happens in reverse, joining at Cambridge instead of Ely.

It's probably more to do with rostering and where "leaving" a unit behind makes more sense. The Kings Lynn services were in effect an extension of Kings Cross to Cambridge services. I guess the unit left behind could be used for a southbound service which would start at Cambridge ?

LNW splits always used to happen at Northampton because the London - Birmingham services were in effect two self-contained services of London - Northampton and Northampton - Birmingham.
 

yorksrob

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Wrong - because you're looking at it the wrong way round.

Most people don't live in the town centre - they live in the outlying areas so won't necessarily want or need to go to the town centre to catch a train. And in the case of Wisbech and Leigh for that matter the benefit of a train connection is for residents to travel to a nearer major centre - in Wisbech's case Cambridge and possibly London, in Leigh's case it would be Manchester.

Whereas I'm not sure that many people will travel from the rest of Manchester to head to the centre of Leigh.

That's funny because I could have sworn that there are literally hundreds of railway stations in or near town centres that are pretty popular in terms of passenger numbers.
 

tbtc

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But why should Wisbech not have similar rail-based access to that enjoyed by, say, Sheringham or Cromer?

Because some places have a heavy rail service in 2020 and some don't. It's not a logical process - it's a combination of luck/ which routes Victorian speculators thought would be profitable and which routes British Rail didn't close down. Same with some places that happen to have a direct London service whilst others don't.

If you were starting from scratch then you'd have a network that focussed a lot more on some places and didn't go near others - e.g. we have passenger services to Kyle of Lochalsh but not to Leith - applying the argument that some places have a station whilst others don't might sound rational on paper but we're not going to spend hundreds of millions of pounds to accommodate every anomaly like this.

Is the current rail network magically the right size? What we have now seems often to be the result of somewhat arbitrary decisions made two generations ago, and rationalisations forced during BR years

Certainly not the right size - there are lots of rural lines that should probably be closed down (because the passenger numbers would be more suited to minibuses) and lots of "new towns" where we'd be better focussing our resources (look at the growth of places like Milton Keynes, whilst we waste time worrying about rural villages/towns).

If Levenmouth is acceptable, why not Wisbech?

Levenmouth can sustain a eight buses per hour to Kirkcaldy (ten miles away) and half hourly coaches to Edinburgh (fifty miles away) - Wisbech struggles to justify many buses to March (only ten miles away) - completely different kettle of fish

Business cases can't just be skewed on what's cheapest/easiest to reinstate. They need to start by looking at where needs a rail link then work back from there.

I do admire your honesty in these arguments - basically, they should just decide to build a heavy rail link to somewhere new, and then work backwards to try to cobble up some justification for why this is the biggest priority for our public transport budget (rather than, say, compare lots of different public transport schemes and then decide to go for the one with the best business case).

The lack of spending, or the poor quality of the current bus services, is no reason to reach for the inappropriate railway solution. Fix the problem - the bus services.

Exactly - rather than reaching for the expensive "heavy rail" option
 

A0wen

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That's funny because I could have sworn that there are literally hundreds of railway stations in or near town centres that are pretty popular in terms of passenger numbers.

But where's your evidence that they are more popular because they are in the town centre than if they are on the outskirts ?

Let me give you an example - Hertford has two stations - far more than a small town would usually have. The station nearer the town centre is Hertford East, yet the station with higher usage is Hertford North.

Both have a similar frequency of service to London, if anything East is more attractive as it also links to Stratford.

Luton's another - Luton Airport Parkway has higher usage than Luton. Yes, the airport has an impact, but so does the availability of better parking and the fact it avoids the need to go into the centre of Luton to get on the rail network.

Most other places that have multiple stations are serving different destinations - hence the higher usage of one against the other e.g. Warrington where Central is used more than Bank Quay.
 

yoyothehobo

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Well considering there is pretty much no town in england where you could put a new railway station in the centre without some very major land clearance, it is a moot point. In the case of Leigh, the majority of commuters who are using the train in the morning are going to Manchester. There is very little travel demand from outside Leigh, to get to Leigh apart from in the evening when the flow is the opposite of the morning peak.

The majority of people north of Leigh town centre will still go to the Wigan-Manchester via Daisy hill line stations, and the best option south of Leigh at the moment is Newton-le-Willows. If you put a parkway station at Glazebury, you serve the south area of Leigh and enable access from the A580 to make it much more appealing to people trying to get into Manchester. I know the capacity issues of Manchester termini and crayonista needs of a scheme like this and am not suggesting that it will or should be built, however it would be considerable cheaper than building anything to the centre of Leigh, which already has a link to Manchester via the busway.
 

Nagora

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I’m not sure how many level crossings you have worked, maintained or commissioned, but there is an awful lot more to a ‘new’ MCB-OD level crossing than what you describe. Signals protecting them for one, and a safety critical interlocking for another. Then power supplies, sometimes to places where there isn’t any. Telecoms. Redundancy and back up systems to make it all bulletproof.
Power supply, I'll grant you, will be a major issue in some areas. The rest is commodity stuff by now. No one's handcrafting each signal or writing computer code from scratch for each crossing. Telecoms, even with redundancy, is a solved problem in the real world.

Compared to a Tesla car, for example, a level crossing is Toy Town stuff in terms of complexity and safety issues that have to be handled and they are not £4m each or anything like it. That's one-off-prototype money.

On top of which, the guys and girls designing, installing and commissioning these are earning a LOT more than £30k.
I'm sure if I went down to watch a crossing being assembled I'd struggle to park for all the Bentleys.
 

yoyothehobo

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Power supply, I'll grant you, will be a major issue in some areas. The rest is commodity stuff by now. No one's handcrafting each signal or writing computer code from scratch for each crossing. Telecoms, even with redundancy, is a solved problem in the real world.

Compared to a Tesla car, for example, a level crossing is Toy Town stuff in terms of complexity and safety issues that have to be handled and they are not £4m each or anything like it. That's one-off-prototype money.

I'm sure if I went down to watch a crossing being assembled I'd struggle to park for all the Bentleys.

I cant wait for Bald Ricks reply to this, I am sure it will be polite.

However considering it WILL be a bespoke design for the situation, which all has its costs from the people designing it, to people doing the CAD drawings, then there is the actual parts manufacture, rebuild of road, design of power supply, ground investigation into putting signals and infrastructure in. All very real things in an area of the world where the ground is made of (in geology terms) mush. These things all add up very quickly before you have even got close to construction on site. Most of the access tracks would be ok to do without much hassle, but i can imagine the difficulties in constructing a new level crossing in an existing carriageway of a busy major road, the costs add up there.

Then you get year on year maintenance checks and upkeep. Most structures these days are built with a 60 year minimum design life (such as bridges) whereas level crossings would be much more difficult to design to a 60 year time span.
 
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yorksrob

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Well considering there is pretty much no town in england where you could put a new railway station in the centre without some very major land clearance, it is a moot point. In the case of Leigh, the majority of commuters who are using the train in the morning are going to Manchester. There is very little travel demand from outside Leigh, to get to Leigh apart from in the evening when the flow is the opposite of the morning peak.

The majority of people north of Leigh town centre will still go to the Wigan-Manchester via Daisy hill line stations, and the best option south of Leigh at the moment is Newton-le-Willows. If you put a parkway station at Glazebury, you serve the south area of Leigh and enable access from the A580 to make it much more appealing to people trying to get into Manchester. I know the capacity issues of Manchester termini and crayonista needs of a scheme like this and am not suggesting that it will or should be built, however it would be considerable cheaper than building anything to the centre of Leigh, which already has a link to Manchester via the busway.

Ah yes.

People don't need to travel to and from the centre of Leigh.

Except the ones who do, hence why someone built a busway, which they can use, except it takes twice as long to get to the centre of Manchester than a train doing the same distance.
 

yorksrob

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I do admire your honesty in these arguments - basically, they should just decide to build a heavy rail link to somewhere new, and then work backwards to try to cobble up some justification for why this is the biggest priority for our public transport budget (rather than, say, compare lots of different public transport schemes and then decide to go for the one with the best business case).

If by "cobble together", you mean "select a reasonable sized settlement, full of people such as workers who want to go to work, students who want to go to study and all sorts of people who want to go somewhere by public transport who could benefit from a fast link to the rest of the country, via the primary public transport network, particularly if it suffers from road congestion and/or is in need of economic regeneration, then work out how to achieve that" - you know, like Wisbech, then yes, that is a methodology I agree with.

That's opposed to finding two already well connected settlements, speeding up the journeys that are already being made between the two by five minutes, then cobbling together a business case by pretending that all those five minutes have a cumulative monetary value (which is the treasury's and presumably your preferred methodology), which is a method of prioritising that I don't agree with.
 

Bald Rick

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Power supply, I'll grant you, will be a major issue in some areas. The rest is commodity stuff by now. No one's handcrafting each signal or writing computer code from scratch for each crossing. Telecoms, even with redundancy, is a solved problem in the real world.

Compared to a Tesla car, for example, a level crossing is Toy Town stuff in terms of complexity and safety issues that have to be handled and they are not £4m each or anything like it. That's one-off-prototype money.

I'm sure if I went down to watch a crossing being assembled I'd struggle to park for all the Bentleys.

So you haven’t worked, maintained or commissioned any level crossings. If you had, you’d know that signalling principles testers don’t drive Bentleys, as they are too showy. Mercs and BMWs are more their style. You’d also know that you wouldn’t see many of them at the level crossing, as much of the commissioning is in the controlling signalbox.

Meanwhile, the industry is short of such people, which is why some of them get paid enough over Christmas to last them a couple of months. So go and do an electrical engineering degree, then a few years post graduate training in signal engineering to gain competence in all aspects of principles testing, and then come back and tell us all how you would do it cheaper.
 

Bald Rick

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I cant wait for Bald Ricks reply to this, I am sure it will be polite.

However considering it WILL be a bespoke design for the situation, which all has its costs from the people designing it, to people doing the CAD drawings, then there is the actual parts manufacture, rebuild of road, design of power supply, ground investigation into putting signals and infrastructure in. All very real things in an area of the world where the ground is made of (in geology terms) mush. These things all add up very quickly before you have even got close to construction on site. Most of the access tracks would be ok to do without much hassle, but i can imagine the difficulties in constructing a new level crossing in an existing carriageway of a busy major road, the costs add up there.

Then you get year on year maintenance checks and upkeep. Most structures these days are built with a 60 year minimum design life (such as bridges) whereas level crossings would be much more difficult to design to a 60 year time span.

Nothing much to add, except that typically bridges are constructed with a 100 year+ design life, and level crossings typically 25 years. The latter is so short because the electrical control kit becomes obsolescent and or wears out. The stuff you see by the road side (barriers, lights etc) is a tiny fraction of the level crossing cost.
 

yorksrob

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Out of interest, what is the capital cost of installing a level crossing on a new route, as opposed to an overbridge ?
 

Bald Rick

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Out of interest, what is the capital cost of installing a level crossing on a new route, as opposed to an overbridge ?

Well, a new level crossing on a new line hasn’t been done for a long time, so what follows is ‘educated speculation’.

On a new route (which, as we know, includes lines that have been closed or mothballed), you will need some form of primary consent to get it reopened, ie an Order made under the Transport and Works Act, or a Development Consent Order (or, rarely, a Hybrid Bill). The cost of this process will be the same regardless of whether it is a bridge or level crossing.

Design will be significantly more for a level crossing, as there are 5 disciplines involved (signalling, telecoms, power, track, civils for the Highway) compared to one for a bridge (civils), and there will be more bespoke design and the need for several interdisciplinary checks. A bridge is much more likely to be of standard design and construction. Within ‘design’ there’s are also some considerable legal hurdles to cross for a level crossing, e.g. Level Crossing Orders, which can take up a large amount of m’learned friends time. This isn’t required for bridges as it is all wrapped up in the primary consent.

Construction cost would be less for the level crossing. The cost can be quite variable depending where it is in relation to other signalling assets, how far from a power supply, the nature of the road, and many other factors. Similarly a bridge cost can vary significantly depending on local topography, geology, the cost of land, and whether you are going ove for under (over is usually much cheaper).

Having said all that I’ll stick my neck out, and say that a new public highway LX on a new line, which would have to be full barriers wit signal protection, would cost between £3m - £5m all in. A new bridge for a public highway would be in the range £8m - £20m, although the top end could be a lot more if you were in a densely built up area and had to, say, buy 30 homes to get the bridge in.

Then there’s the running cost. LXs and their associated signalling assets draw a fair bit of power even when they are doing nothing. Their maintenance bill can be astronomical - one bridleway crossing of my acquaintance costs well into 6 figures to maintain each year because of the amount of control equipment it has on a busy bi directional main line. Detection treadles for example cost a couple of thousand pounds each to replace, and they need replacing every 2 years. Some crossings have dozens of them. Then there is the regular inspection (every few weeks or so), the risk assessment every year or so, the cleaning of signage, lights, barriers, CCTV or OD equipment etc. Etc. Crossings also fail - it’s not unusual for a crossing failure to rack up several hundred minutes delay, sometimes ten times that. On busy routes any failure is quickly into 6 figures of train delay compensation. There’s a Masters dissertation in there for someone to identify the annual running cost for different types of highway level crossing, but I expect the range to be again quite variable, perhaps £20k - £150k.

Then there’s the safety angle. I won’t need to explain this. Allied to the safety angle is that a LX is a place where ‘undeirables’ can access the railway unintentionally or otherwise. So whilst incidents caused by this are not accounted for as level crossing failures, they wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t there. Similarly telecoms failures which mean that trains have to be cautioned across LX don’t count as LX filaures, but the delays wouldn’t happen if they weren’t there.

And so on.

None of this happens with bridges. Annual maintenance cost is typically £1k.

And, finally, it doesn’t have to be a bridge. It is quite feasible to replace level crossings with a fence, and ‘invite’ road users to use an alternative route, sometimes one that has been constructed (much more cheaply than a bridge) specifically for the purpose. This is much, much more cost effective.
 

Class 170101

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Which of course happened at Ely Station with the blocking off of the level crossing after its replacement with Ely Southern bypass.
 

yorksrob

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Well, a new level crossing on a new line hasn’t been done for a long time, so what follows is ‘educated speculation’.

On a new route (which, as we know, includes lines that have been closed or mothballed), you will need some form of primary consent to get it reopened, ie an Order made under the Transport and Works Act, or a Development Consent Order (or, rarely, a Hybrid Bill). The cost of this process will be the same regardless of whether it is a bridge or level crossing.

Design will be significantly more for a level crossing, as there are 5 disciplines involved (signalling, telecoms, power, track, civils for the Highway) compared to one for a bridge (civils), and there will be more bespoke design and the need for several interdisciplinary checks. A bridge is much more likely to be of standard design and construction. Within ‘design’ there’s are also some considerable legal hurdles to cross for a level crossing, e.g. Level Crossing Orders, which can take up a large amount of m’learned friends time. This isn’t required for bridges as it is all wrapped up in the primary consent.

Construction cost would be less for the level crossing. The cost can be quite variable depending where it is in relation to other signalling assets, how far from a power supply, the nature of the road, and many other factors. Similarly a bridge cost can vary significantly depending on local topography, geology, the cost of land, and whether you are going ove for under (over is usually much cheaper).

Having said all that I’ll stick my neck out, and say that a new public highway LX on a new line, which would have to be full barriers wit signal protection, would cost between £3m - £5m all in. A new bridge for a public highway would be in the range £8m - £20m, although the top end could be a lot more if you were in a densely built up area and had to, say, buy 30 homes to get the bridge in.

Then there’s the running cost. LXs and their associated signalling assets draw a fair bit of power even when they are doing nothing. Their maintenance bill can be astronomical - one bridleway crossing of my acquaintance costs well into 6 figures to maintain each year because of the amount of control equipment it has on a busy bi directional main line. Detection treadles for example cost a couple of thousand pounds each to replace, and they need replacing every 2 years. Some crossings have dozens of them. Then there is the regular inspection (every few weeks or so), the risk assessment every year or so, the cleaning of signage, lights, barriers, CCTV or OD equipment etc. Etc. Crossings also fail - it’s not unusual for a crossing failure to rack up several hundred minutes delay, sometimes ten times that. On busy routes any failure is quickly into 6 figures of train delay compensation. There’s a Masters dissertation in there for someone to identify the annual running cost for different types of highway level crossing, but I expect the range to be again quite variable, perhaps £20k - £150k.

Then there’s the safety angle. I won’t need to explain this. Allied to the safety angle is that a LX is a place where ‘undeirables’ can access the railway unintentionally or otherwise. So whilst incidents caused by this are not accounted for as level crossing failures, they wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t there. Similarly telecoms failures which mean that trains have to be cautioned across LX don’t count as LX filaures, but the delays wouldn’t happen if they weren’t there.

And so on.

None of this happens with bridges. Annual maintenance cost is typically £1k.

And, finally, it doesn’t have to be a bridge. It is quite feasible to replace level crossings with a fence, and ‘invite’ road users to use an alternative route, sometimes one that has been constructed (much more cheaply than a bridge) specifically for the purpose. This is much, much more cost effective.

Thanks very much for the detailed response.

Alas, whilst I appreciate the long term costs of maintaining a level crossing, I suspect it's the greater up-front capital cost of a bridge that acts as the barrier to route construction.
 

Bald Rick

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Which of course happened at Ely Station with the blocking off of the level crossing after its replacement with Ely Southern bypass.

And plenty of other places. Canley, Soham, Northumberland Park, Feltham, Essex Road (Broxbourne) and Beddingham are just a handful that immediately spring to mind. I’m sure there’s many others.
 

A0wen

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Ah yes.

People don't need to travel to and from the centre of Leigh.

Except the ones who do, hence why someone built a busway, which they can use, except it takes twice as long to get to the centre of Manchester than a train doing the same distance.

There will always be some people who want or need to travel to the centre of a place - but that's not a justification for a rail provision. The chances are there are far more people from Leigh looking to travel to other places than people looking to travel to the centre of Leigh.

So the question should be what is the best way to provide a rail link to the people of Leigh to support their journeys ? And since Atherton station is less than 3 miles away for the areas to the north of Leigh's town centre, the question is what do you do for those to the south which is where a station at Glazebury would probably offer the best option.

Yes, for you personally as one of the very few people who want / need to travel to the centre of Leigh it's not the answer. But given there are a good many places where the station isn't near the town centre as already pointed out - and those seem to work for the residents of those towns.

Perhaps you could shed some light on what the meccas at the centre of Leigh is that makes it such an attractive destination? Because looking on Google Maps it seems to be nothing more than the bog standard mix of Tesco, Asda, Wilko, Poundland, B&M, Aldi, McDonalds etc etc. It's not like there is a major football or rugby stadium nearby? Or a major employer has their headquarters there which means you have a few hundred people heading there on a daily basis.
 

yorksrob

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There will always be some people who want or need to travel to the centre of a place - but that's not a justification for a rail provision. The chances are there are far more people from Leigh looking to travel to other places than people looking to travel to the centre of Leigh.

So the question should be what is the best way to provide a rail link to the people of Leigh to support their journeys ? And since Atherton station is less than 3 miles away for the areas to the north of Leigh's town centre, the question is what do you do for those to the south which is where a station at Glazebury would probably offer the best option.

Yes, for you personally as one of the very few people who want / need to travel to the centre of Leigh it's not the answer. But given there are a good many places where the station isn't near the town centre as already pointed out - and those seem to work for the residents of those towns.

Perhaps you could shed some light on what the meccas at the centre of Leigh is that makes it such an attractive destination? Because looking on Google Maps it seems to be nothing more than the bog standard mix of Tesco, Asda, Wilko, Poundland, B&M, Aldi, McDonalds etc etc. It's not like there is a major football or rugby stadium nearby? Or a major employer has their headquarters there which means you have a few hundred people heading there on a daily basis.

The individual attractions of Leigh are not the issue. I have friends who live there, just as people do in every town across the country.

You can post what you like, but the fact is that the public transport need for people to travel to and from the centre of Leigh has been identified, hence why the busway was built. That should have been the railway, and would have been, but for the "anything but rail" leanings of the Establishment over the last twenty years.
 

duffield

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Well, a new level crossing on a new line hasn’t been done for a long time, so what follows is ‘educated speculation’.

On a new route (which, as we know, includes lines that have been closed or mothballed), you will need some form of primary consent to get it reopened, ie an Order made under the Transport and Works Act, or a Development Consent Order (or, rarely, a Hybrid Bill). The cost of this process will be the same regardless of whether it is a bridge or level crossing.

Design will be significantly more for a level crossing, as there are 5 disciplines involved (signalling, telecoms, power, track, civils for the Highway) compared to one for a bridge (civils), and there will be more bespoke design and the need for several interdisciplinary checks. A bridge is much more likely to be of standard design and construction. Within ‘design’ there’s are also some considerable legal hurdles to cross for a level crossing, e.g. Level Crossing Orders, which can take up a large amount of m’learned friends time. This isn’t required for bridges as it is all wrapped up in the primary consent.

Construction cost would be less for the level crossing. The cost can be quite variable depending where it is in relation to other signalling assets, how far from a power supply, the nature of the road, and many other factors. Similarly a bridge cost can vary significantly depending on local topography, geology, the cost of land, and whether you are going ove for under (over is usually much cheaper).

Having said all that I’ll stick my neck out, and say that a new public highway LX on a new line, which would have to be full barriers wit signal protection, would cost between £3m - £5m all in. A new bridge for a public highway would be in the range £8m - £20m, although the top end could be a lot more if you were in a densely built up area and had to, say, buy 30 homes to get the bridge in.

Then there’s the running cost. LXs and their associated signalling assets draw a fair bit of power even when they are doing nothing. Their maintenance bill can be astronomical - one bridleway crossing of my acquaintance costs well into 6 figures to maintain each year because of the amount of control equipment it has on a busy bi directional main line. Detection treadles for example cost a couple of thousand pounds each to replace, and they need replacing every 2 years. Some crossings have dozens of them. Then there is the regular inspection (every few weeks or so), the risk assessment every year or so, the cleaning of signage, lights, barriers, CCTV or OD equipment etc. Etc. Crossings also fail - it’s not unusual for a crossing failure to rack up several hundred minutes delay, sometimes ten times that. On busy routes any failure is quickly into 6 figures of train delay compensation. There’s a Masters dissertation in there for someone to identify the annual running cost for different types of highway level crossing, but I expect the range to be again quite variable, perhaps £20k - £150k.

Then there’s the safety angle. I won’t need to explain this. Allied to the safety angle is that a LX is a place where ‘undeirables’ can access the railway unintentionally or otherwise. So whilst incidents caused by this are not accounted for as level crossing failures, they wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t there. Similarly telecoms failures which mean that trains have to be cautioned across LX don’t count as LX filaures, but the delays wouldn’t happen if they weren’t there.

And so on.

None of this happens with bridges. Annual maintenance cost is typically £1k.

And, finally, it doesn’t have to be a bridge. It is quite feasible to replace level crossings with a fence, and ‘invite’ road users to use an alternative route, sometimes one that has been constructed (much more cheaply than a bridge) specifically for the purpose. This is much, much more cost effective.

Any thoughts on what the costs would be for a tram style crossing for a tram-train operating in tram mode?
 

yoyothehobo

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The individual attractions of Leigh are not the issue. I have friends who live there, just as people do in every town across the country.

You can post what you like, but the fact is that the public transport need for people to travel to and from the centre of Leigh has been identified, hence why the busway was built. That should have been the railway, and would have been, but for the "anything but rail" leanings of the Establishment over the last twenty years.

Why should it have been a railway? Other than that there was once a railway line there? Its not like any extra trains can fit into Manchester termini
 

A0wen

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You can post what you like, but the fact is that the public transport need for people to travel to and from the centre of Leigh has been identified, hence why the busway was built.

Not going to deny that for a moment.

That should have been the railway, and would have been, but for the "anything but rail" leanings of the Establishment over the last twenty years.

And this I disagree with - presumably the CBA did not stack up for a rail reinstatement and considered the fact there was other provision close at hand. Whereas the busway allowed for new connectivity a rail link couldn't.

In many ways it's alot like Dunstable. The rail link would have been inferior in terms of frequency, choice of destinations and it was recognised that there was a heavy rail connection close by. I happen to believe it perhaps would have been more desirable for Leigh to there have been an extension to Metrolink, but I guess for practical reasons that couldn't happen.
 

A0wen

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Why should it have been a railway? Other than that there was once a railway line there? Its not like any extra trains can fit into Manchester termini

Simple one that - because Yorksrob says so. Because it fits his worldview that every town over 30,000 people must have a train station and that train station must be in the centre of town. And specifically in Leigh's case because he wants to travel there.

I'm sure he thinks himself as quite the egalitarian, but in reality he's every bit as elitist as the Victorian landowners who demanded their own personal station and to hell with the impact on the wider community.
 

Bald Rick

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Any thoughts on what the costs would be for a tram style crossing for a tram-train operating in tram mode?

No idea, sorry. Unquestionably less though: as mentioned upthread trams drive on sight at junctions, therefore the safety requirements in terms of signals, interlocking, etc are lower.
 
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