So looking at your proposal, I've a couple of questions. Firstly, do you have any official backing from DfT, TfGM, NR or other bodies & if so are you able to cite them? Secondly a slightly more technical question, your project has drawn an aspirational line from Salford, towards Piccadilly. But do you have any more detailed plans on the exact route, taking into account geology, utilities & infrastructure underneath Manchester City Centre as yet, and if not what plans do you have to survey potential routes?
Thanks for the response, I’ll try and take the points in order:
Politically you can imagine how difficult it is to secure backing on something like CNP, which if backed by an official body (particularly in the north) could potentially be viewed as a potential threat to existing NPR plans or a possible “Scaling Back” as it doesn’t serve Manchester Airport directly (which there is a lot of political weight behind) Individuals I have spoken to from such bodies have given their support personally, but not that of the organisations/departments which is important to stress. It has proved very useful to get the “mood music” of what thoughts in those circles are, which has in turn helped us develop and adapt our proposals, something I personally am very grateful for. There’s still meetings yet to come, but as you’d expect, they’re more from a “is there something we could do with this?” angle if things change, rather than a “Should we take on this proposal?” perspective. No governmental/transport body will take it on without conducting their own unbiased study first with a question of what is the problem? What are the conditional outputs? How do we best meet them? It might well come out with something like CNP, however it can’t start with “Does CrossNorth Programme solve the problem?” That would of course be the wrong way to go about it.
We are getting an increasing level of support by transport/rail non-profit organisations which should go live on the new website once complete, with endorsement statements etc. That’s the best we can hope for as things stand.
Routing/Alignment is an interesting one. Everyone knows the complexities of proposing tunnelled routes. Even with the best of surveys things always crop up (forgotten culverted rivers, fragmented rock, communication systems, deep basements etc.) We’re doing the best we can to get an accurate picture of underground Manchester marking out deep basements, rivers and the Guardian Telephone Exchange and their respective depths. So far we’ve found only a small number of sites that are “in the way” of the path of least resistance, those mostly being basements and foundations. It seems most foundations in Manchester are very shallow thanks to the support the sandstone rock provides. Even skyscrapers such as Beetham tower have very shallow foundations and basements.
We can’t realistically propose an exact route without an extensive, funded survey which engineers would then have to base the route off. What we can say, is a maximum design speed of 75mph is optimal for the distance between the two stations, and so there is a reasonable amount of flexibility for routing options.
We are surveying vertical alignments from station to station that are well within engineering limits. An example would be by putting Salford Interchange in a shallow box, this has necessitated moving the site further west go create a more appropriate vertical alignment under the River Irwell. It is of course handy to have the line descend then rise again into the next station, allowing a train to naturally reduce its speed upon entry as is used in many underground systems.
There are ongoing studies looking at how to best utilise the tunnel in phase one (connecting only to existing lines each side) this is looking at:
-4-tracking using unused track beds such as toward Guide Bridge.
-Sidings near Ashburys so select services (most likely Cumbria/Scotland) could originate/terminate at Piccadilly due to capacity limitations of TRU.
-Ensuring a minimum of 8 CrossNorth trains per hour through the tunnel.
George.