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Will that knock 10 minutes off the Huddersfield-Manchester journey time compared to the present route? I'd suggest 'unlikely'.
Because:
1) From the IRP, the Underground station takes about 7 years longer to bring into operation, so *no* benefits *at all* for best part of 2 decades from now...
I'm going to politely suggest that there are more nuances to Operations and Timetabling than can be experienced/understood in OpenTTD.
Remember, this isn't a game of "chuck as many trains through Manchester as you can" - the objective is about 8 through trains per direction per hour and having...
Berlin isn't below sea level. And it also had a huge brownfield site to work with (effectively undeveloped land due to where the Berlin Wall used to be)
There's cost cutting and keeping the outputs as high as possible, and then there's cost cutting and obliterating most of the outputs/benefits you're trying to achieve.
An Ashton station very much falls into the latter category.
Why is a turnback station 'ludicrous' out of interest? Trains...
Why would Option 1 be chosen? It doesn't make sense.
Once you work everything out, no doubt it won't be much cheaper than Option 2, and only offer tiny journey time savings in comparison as you'll just be bypassing a sinuous surface route with another sinuous surface route.
Option 1 would also...
My hunch would be some local trips to Ely etc, perhaps with some "railheading" as a connection for Peterborough, like you suggest.
Gut feel is that the Cambridge/London market won't grow, as passengers will be reluctant to rely on miss-it-and-wait 2 hours connections at Ely.
Because Piccadilly is actually on the edge of the core of the city. The area just to the east of the present station / approach tracks is very much not "city centre" - which is why the HS2 station is planned to go there as developable space.
Not sure about that - the proposed HS2 site is pretty much outside the core of the built up city centre. Like I say, mainly light industrial type stuff that easy to move, plus some semi-derelict land.
Suggest the bigger challenge will be the interaction with some of the main roads in the area...
Residents? Do you even know the area? It's basically all low-rise light industrial type-properties at the moment.
And anyone moving there to new developments after the railway has been built will know full well there's a railway there.
The fact your Saturday mid-morning train to your nearest big city centre is full and standing (with photo to prove it) does not completely demonstrate that "passengers are coming back to the railway". There is still alot of mid-week and late evening fresh air to fill.
Anything that seeks to enforce and enable higher standards of driving than the currently (frankly) pathetic/ careless/ negligent/ dangerous attitude that many drivers today can only be a good thing.
Always makes me laugh when people say "they tunnelled under the Chilterns to please a few Nimbys, what does Manchester get?".... uh, a long tunnel from Manchester Airport to Piccadilly! (being no other practical alternatives).