tbtc
Veteran Member
- Simpler, more reliable, service patterns, with good connections at interchanges, instead of low frequency through services from everywhere to everywhere
Been saying this for a long time - we could use the current infrastructure much more efficiently if we has simpler services.
Look at a regular journey around Manchester (the kind of journey that large numbers of people will want to do on a daily basis, rather than some esoteric link or "nice to have for one journey a year" Airport links), you'll often find at least one of...
services badly bunched so that you get a long gap then three departures in ten minutes, meaning that the first service will get disproportionately overloaded
a messy combination of Pic/Vic departures, so that passengers don't know where to go (made worse in the case of Wigan where generally you have two trains per hour from North Western to Piccadilly, one per hour from North Western to Victoria and three per hour from Wallgate to Victoria... ) - if I were in central Manchester (say the Arndale, for arguments) then I'd rather know that all of my departures were leaving from the one central Manchester station, instead of walking over to Piccadilly, narrowly missing my train and finding that the next one left in fifteen minutes from Victoria... Manchester isn't as big as London, it doesn't need the "some services to the City, some services to the West End" approach that the capital has. This looks like a step in the right direction (although there are bound to be people upset at the lack of through trains)
For example, if all "Chorley/Preston" services ran from Piccadilly and all "Wigan" services ran from Victoria (with the Preston via Wigan services treated like the Preston via Chorley services) then you could create a much simpler network of services, much better spacing between departures, much more reliable when disruption happens and much more attractive to potential passengers.
- Standardised GM rolling stock
- Castlefield corridor capacity improvement (Piccadilly P15/16, Oxford Road remodelling)
- Longer term, a metro tunnel or tunnels under the city centre
- Tram-train pathfinder projects: Oldham to Heywood via Rochdale, Manchester to Hale via Sale, Airport to Wilmslow
- If pathfinders successful, possible further tram-train routes include Wigan via Atherton, Glossop, Marple via Bredbury and via Hyde, Warrington via the CLC, Airport to Stockport and to Timperley via Baguley
(But if the plan is to run tram trains serving the existing heavy rail termini then that's a whole other kettle of fish)
Hale Via Sale Rail sounds nice though.