Whatever Northern/DfT try and do to improve things, they still can't win with some people!
I agree. Some people think that pointless links between stations relatively few people will ever use, or serving small villages is important. Unfortunately sometimes the DfT listens to those people.
I think that by far the most important thing is to ensure that densely populated urban areas are served. Such as Mauldeth Road and the other intermediate stations between Manchester and Manchester Airport. What is the most important thing? Services to city centres and major hubs, such as Manchester Piccadilly.
Is a direct service between small towns and villages in Yorkshire and Cumbria and Manchester Airport more important than these things? No...
If those links can be provided, great. But not at the cost of ruining local services between densely populated urban areas and nearby centres of employment or major hubs for interchange.
Be thankful you still have two trains per hour
Why? East Didsbury will have 4 services per hour despite far slower growth and lower overall figures than Mauldeth Road. There clearly was capacity for extra services but Mauldeth Road has worse services as a result.
The plans for this timetable will have been researched and drawn up over a lengthy period with much thought and hard work
I don't dispute it. But they clearly didn't work as hard on this as GTR, SWR and SE are as they have run major public consultations. Northern and TransPennine haven't.
pathing constraints; interval frequency; popular journeys between stations; footfall figures at different times of the day and week for each station all having to be balanced as well as possible.
As for pathing constraints we are only asking for 2 out of 10 services to be at half-hourly intervals. This ought not be so difficult. If it is then some trains could skip-stop but in clustered fasion i.e. one train calls at Mauldeth Road, Burnage and East Didsbury, then 10 minutes later a train calls at Gatley and Heald Green. This is more use than the proposal, which involves things like a train calling at just one intermediate station and nowhere else, or calling at 3 but not sequential ones. Footfall figures would support Mauldeth Road having additional trains calling which would help to negate the downside of unbalanced service, but instead additional trains are calling at the less well used stations on the route.
as there's no corresponding improvement that's absolutely awful. I also frequently travel Mauldeth Road to East Didsbury and that's cut from half hourly to hourly. I'm exceptionally disappointed and I'm pretty shocked that randomly cutting our service with no quid pro quo and no consultation is considered acceptable.
