Greater Manchester Combined Authority: Latest transport strategy draft publication

[Andrew Nelson]

Whenever they say that cough and mention they spent £20m just on an entrance to Leeds Station and theres as £500m refurbishment planned for the station, twice what they spent on the Chord and the same budget as if they had delivered the entire Northern Hub project including Piccadilly platforms, Oxford Road refurbishment and Salford Central platform reinstatement.

You mean 20 Million on an entrance hardly anybody uses?

 

[PR1Berske]

Looking through this thread for the first time, I am most surprised at the number of times that GMPTE rather than the correct title of TfGM has been mentioned in postings.

Old habits die hard Paul

 

[yorksrob]

You mean 20 Million on an entrance hardly anybody uses?

To be fair, it does seem to get a lot of passengers in the peaks (although it should certainly be open all the time).

I agree though that they should have spent less money on a less flashy entrance and spent the remainder on new/reopened stations.

 

[Greybeard33]

The map is too small scale to show the route of the MediaCity - Salford Crescent line in detail, but it suggests that it would leave the existing Metrolink line between Harbour City and Anchorage, continuing north-east on The Quays and maybe Broadway, then pass to the east of the M602 J3 roundabout, curving north to approach Salford Crescent on the east side of Albion Way, just west of Windsor Bridge South Junction.

Thanks. That's surprising though, I'd have thought they'd have wanted the trams to avoid the M602 roundabout - I ever drive there, but it seems like the kind of place that might well already have enough traffic struggling to get through it in rush hour.

Salford Council has now published its Revised Draft Local Plan. Fig.3 is a larger scale map showing the route of the proposed Media City - Salford Crescent Metrolink line. This suggests it would run along Broadway and Albion Way, going right across the middle of the M602 roundabout!

 

[158756]

Salford Council has now published its Revised Draft Local Plan. Fig.3 is a larger scale map showing the route of the proposed Media City - Salford Crescent Metrolink line. This suggests it would run along Broadway and Albion Way, going right across the middle of the M602 roundabout!

That'll be fun.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That'll be fun.

Presumably traffic lights will be used. It is not exactly the first time something like that has been done.

 

[Eccles1983]

Presumably traffic lights will be used. It is not exactly the first time something like that has been done.

Do you know where it is?

It will be a major mess made, it's a massive roundabout with a motorway on one end and 3 of the busiest roads in Manchester attached.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

On the Manchester Metrolink line to Ashton-under-Lyne, in the Ashton area, the line there goes through a large grassed-area roundabout surrounded by roads.

 

[dewsnapsliding]

On the Manchester Metrolink line to Ashton-under-Lyne, in the Ashton area, the line there goes through a large grassed-area roundabout surrounded by roads.

In fairness though nowhere nearly as busy as the roundabout at the end of the M602!

 

[NorthernSpirit]

I agree though that they should have spent less money on a less flashy entrance and spent the remainder on new/reopened stations.

People wonder why I want to see WYCA scrapped and its exactly this, Metro seems to enjoy wasting taxpayers cash on projects which cost an excessive amount. I'll add that the southern entrance should've been built during the Leeds 2000 work 20 years ago and not years later on.

 

[yorksrob]

People wonder why I want to see WYCA scrapped and its exactly this, Metro seems to enjoy wasting taxpayers cash on projects which cost an excessive amount. I'll add that the southern entrance should've been built during the Leeds 2000 work 20 years ago and not years later on.

Whilst there are things I would have done differently, I tend to view WYCA as part of the long view from the start of the PTE, and I think that Metro has overall been a wonderful thing for West Yorkshire train travel.

My hope is that it one day encompasses York, and spends less on the big stations, as opposed to getting the little ones reopened (and hopefully even routes )

 

[Clip]

To be fair, it does seem to get a lot of passengers in the peaks (although it should certainly be open all the time).

I agree though that they should have spent less money on a less flashy entrance and spent the remainder on new/reopened stations.

How much would £20 million get you on a newly reopened station ?

 

[Bantamzen]

People wonder why I want to see WYCA scrapped and its exactly this, Metro seems to enjoy wasting taxpayers cash on projects which cost an excessive amount. I'll add that the southern entrance should've been built during the Leeds 2000 work 20 years ago and not years later on.

Keeping in mind of course that the DfT contributed to over £12 million on that, and it was a joint project between WYCA, Leeds City Council and Network Rail. So it was far from just some vanity project for Metro, indeed it was in part a key facet for Leeds Council's plans to redevelop the South Bank.

 

[Chris125]

Seems increasingly clear that Network Rail's report into the 'Castlefield Corridor' will recommend tram-trains as part of the solution:

Guardian: Manchester promised funding for UK’s first tram-train network

Grayling said he and Network Rail saw tram-trains as part of the solution to chronic capacity problems in central Manchester.

During a meeting with Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, on Friday, the transport secretary said: “There is several hundred million pounds set aside for the centre of Manchester in the next few years to ease capacity problems and I want to make sure we spend that in the best possible way."

...Burnham said Network Rail was working on a report on how best to solve capacity issues in Manchester. “ If that says tram-train is the best option to progress quickly, I would hope it could be a matter of a few years to see the first tram-train vehicles in Greater Manchester. Three to five years possibly, as soon as that."​

 

[Greybeard33]

Seems increasingly clear that Network Rail's report into the 'Castlefield Corridor' will recommend tram-trains as part of the solution:

Guardian: Manchester promised funding for UK’s first tram-train network

Grayling said he and Network Rail saw tram-trains as part of the solution to chronic capacity problems in central Manchester.

During a meeting with Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, on Friday, the transport secretary said: “There is several hundred million pounds set aside for the centre of Manchester in the next few years to ease capacity problems and I want to make sure we spend that in the best possible way."

...Burnham said Network Rail was working on a report on how best to solve capacity issues in Manchester. “ If that says tram-train is the best option to progress quickly, I would hope it could be a matter of a few years to see the first tram-train vehicles in Greater Manchester. Three to five years possibly, as soon as that."​

Well, none of the train services along the Castlefield corridor are from lines that the TfGM Delivery Plan proposes to convert to tram-train. Except for the CLC line, but the tram-train proposal for that line is linked to a metro tunnel from Cornbrook to Piccadilly, which will be at least 20 years in the future!

 

[yorksrob]

It's hard to see how tram trains are going to be a magical solution to the castlefield corridor, given that most of the ones proposed are either based on Victoria, or the terminal platforms at Piccadilly and therefore don't go anywhere near the corridor.

The only ones which do at present are the Warrington stoppers which currently use the bay platform at Oxford Road, and I've already said why this route needs to retain heavy rail.

I'm afraid the only ways to sort out the Castlefield corridor issue are either:

1) don't try and send so many expresses that way or;
2) knuckle down and build the extra platforms and loops.

 

[scrapy]

Surely the problem around Manchester is that too shorter trains are running more frequently than needed on some routes. Tram trains will have less capacity and run more frequently. What Manchester needs is existing trains being longer and better quality not adding more frequency unless lines are grade separated at pinch points and I can't see that happening.

 

[Mogster]

Easy to say but hard to achieve. Many services are at the maximum for platform length. It’s unfortunate but there seems to be a lot of places where a 4 car 156 is the maximum. West of Manchester It’s a big problem, even at Salford Crescent and Oxford Road the platforms are quite short. There are discussions about this in the 319/769 thread

 

[Francis]

I notice that among the various projects listed there is absolutely no mention of the largest town in Greater Manchester unconnected to either rail or Metrolink:
Leigh pop 43,000.
They spent £15 m on a busway following part of the old rail track from the A580 at Ellenbrook through Tyldesley and into Leigh. But despite all the segregated bus lanes and the new V1 route, it still takes 60 mins to do 12 miles into Manchester.

The train from Leigh to Manchester Exchange used to take 32 mins, and 45 mins to Liverpool Lime St., joining the Chat Moss line at Kenyon Jc, the first railway junction in the world (1832 I think). Closed in 1969 in order to avoid spending £500,000 on a bridge at Monton for the new M602.
Yet they propose duplicating the train service from Stalybridge with a Metrotram as well. I'm not against it, but it seems that "To those who have shall be given more, from those who have not, even what little they have shall be taken away from them."

If GMCA would just think outside the box a little, they could reopen a station at Glazebury & Bury Lane where the Chat Moss line crosses the A574, as Leigh and Culcheth Parkway. It would take a considerable amount of commuter car traffic off the A580 and M602 western approaches to Manchester city centre. Glazebury into Victoria or Deansgate would probably be about 15 mins.

In fact, with more reopenings, you could run an hourly service from Preston calling Leyland, Euxton, Coppull (reopened, pop 8.000)), Standish (reopened, pop 13,000), Wigan NW, Golborne (reopened pop 24,000), Leigh and Culcheth Parkway (43,000 + 11,500), Patricroft, Eccles and Manchester. Total population given a decent new service into Manchester, 99,500.

Would need the slow line re-instating from Euxton Balshaw Lane Jc down to Standish Jc. And the problem that the old Glazebury station site is now just within the Cheshire boundary.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Easy to say but hard to achieve. Many services are at the maximum for platform length. It’s unfortunate but there seems to be a lot of places where a 4 car 156 is the maximum. West of Manchester It’s a big problem, even at Salford Crescent and Oxford Road the platforms are quite short. There are discussions about this in the 319/769 thread

Doesn't work everywhere, but SDO can be used surprisingly widely. Even 8-car Electrostar formations use it at several stations on the GWML. You can also be more inventive like what Merseyrail have done - order slightly longer trains but with a door layout whereby all of the additional length is behind the last passenger door which still fits on the platform.

 

[yorksrob]

I notice that among the various projects listed there is absolutely no mention of the largest town in Greater Manchester unconnected to either rail or Metrolink:
Leigh pop 43,000.
They spent £15 m on a busway following part of the old rail track from the A580 at Ellenbrook through Tyldesley and into Leigh. But despite all the segregated bus lanes and the new V1 route, it still takes 60 mins to do 12 miles into Manchester.

The train from Leigh to Manchester Exchange used to take 32 mins, and 45 mins to Liverpool Lime St., joining the Chat Moss line at Kenyon Jc, the first railway junction in the world (1832 I think). Closed in 1969 in order to avoid spending £500,000 on a bridge at Monton for the new M602.
Yet they propose duplicating the train service from Stalybridge with a Metrotram as well. I'm not against it, but it seems that "To those who have shall be given more, from those who have not, even what little they have shall be taken away from them."

If GMCA would just think outside the box a little, they could reopen a station at Glazebury & Bury Lane where the Chat Moss line crosses the A574, as Leigh and Culcheth Parkway. It would take a considerable amount of commuter car traffic off the A580 and M602 western approaches to Manchester city centre. Glazebury into Victoria or Deansgate would probably be about 15 mins.

In fact, with more reopenings, you could run an hourly service from Preston calling Leyland, Euxton, Coppull (reopened, pop 8.000)), Standish (reopened, pop 13,000), Wigan NW, Golborne (reopened pop 24,000), Leigh and Culcheth Parkway (43,000 + 11,500), Patricroft, Eccles and Manchester. Total population given a decent new service into Manchester, 99,500.

Would need the slow line re-instating from Euxton Balshaw Lane Jc down to Standish Jc. And the problem that the old Glazebury station site is now just within the Cheshire boundary.

Unfortunately Manchester seem to be more interested in turning everything into a slow tram.

They even want to ruin the Atherton line, given half the chance.

The guided busway was a joke. "We're going to spend millions of pounds on infrastructure, so lets choose the option that takes twice as long and adds to traffic congestion in Manchester"

I should be shocked, but I'm not.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I notice that among the various projects listed there is absolutely no mention of the largest town in Greater Manchester unconnected to either rail or Metrolink:
Leigh pop 43,000.
They spent £15 m on a busway following part of the old rail track from the A580 at Ellenbrook through Tyldesley and into Leigh. But despite all the segregated bus lanes and the new V1 route, it still takes 60 mins to do 12 miles into Manchester.

The train from Leigh to Manchester Exchange used to take 32 mins, and 45 mins to Liverpool Lime St., joining the Chat Moss line at Kenyon Jc, the first railway junction in the world (1832 I think). Closed in 1969 in order to avoid spending £500,000 on a bridge at Monton for the new M602.
Yet they propose duplicating the train service from Stalybridge with a Metrotram as well. I'm not against it, but it seems that "To those who have shall be given more, from those who have not, even what little they have shall be taken away from them."

If the Leigh Guided Busway had never been constructed, is it your considered opinion that the former Tyldesley loop line would have featured as a project for reopening in the document in the title of this thread?

You give a time of 60 minutes for the V1 journey from Leigh bus station to the existing terminus at Manchester Royal Infirmary, but what is the time for the journey from Leigh to Salford Crescent railway station, where rail services to and from both Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly arrive and depart?

 

[LM93]

If the Leigh Guided Busway had never been constructed, is it your considered opinion that the former Tyldesley loop line would have featured as a project for reopening in the document in the title of this thread?

You give a time of 60 minutes for the X1 journey from Leigh bus station to the existing terminus at Manchester Royal Infirmary, but what is the time for the journey from Leigh to Salford Crescent railway station, where rail services to and from both Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly arrive and depart?

35 minutes from Leigh to Salford Crescent, 53 minutes to the Town Hall

 

[NorthernSpirit]

If GMCA would just think outside the box a little, they could reopen a station at Glazebury & Bury Lane where the Chat Moss line crosses the A574, as Leigh and Culcheth Parkway. It would take a considerable amount of commuter car traffic off the A580 and M602 western approaches to Manchester city centre. Glazebury into Victoria or Deansgate would probably be about 15 mins.

In fact, with more reopenings, you could run an hourly service from Preston calling Leyland, Euxton, Coppull (reopened, pop 8.000)), Standish (reopened, pop 13,000), Wigan NW, Golborne (reopened pop 24,000), Leigh and Culcheth Parkway (43,000 + 11,500), Patricroft, Eccles and Manchester. Total population given a decent new service into Manchester, 99,500.

Would need the slow line re-instating from Euxton Balshaw Lane Jc down to Standish Jc. And the problem that the old Glazebury station site is now just within the Cheshire boundary.

Sadly GMCA / TfGM / GMPTE / whatever name takes your fancy seems to want to Metrolink everything apart from a handful of lines. Should ever Glazebrook reopen, it could be reopened as a joint venture between Cheshire East Council and GMCA (similar to Hooton which is only just over the Merseyside county boundary but is plastered in the Merseytravel livery).

 

[Jozhua]

Sadly GMCA / TfGM / GMPTE / whatever name takes your fancy seems to want to Metrolink everything apart from a handful of lines. Should ever Glazebrook reopen, it could be reopened as a joint venture between Cheshire East Council and GMCA (similar to Hooton which is only just over the Merseyside county boundary but is plastered in the Merseytravel livery).

In some respects you can see their logic, Metrolink seems to be considerably more reliable than Northern rail and allows them to have a larger, integrated Manchester system under local control. Tram-train would likely leave the opportunity for both to run, especially due to the metrolink using standard platform height.

 

[tbtc]

It's hard to see how tram trains are going to be a magical solution to the castlefield corridor, given that most of the ones proposed are either based on Victoria, or the terminal platforms at Piccadilly and therefore don't go anywhere near the corridor.

The only ones which do at present are the Warrington stoppers which currently use the bay platform at Oxford Road, and I've already said why this route needs to retain heavy rail.

I'm afraid the only ways to sort out the Castlefield corridor issue are either:

1) don't try and send so many expresses that way or;
2) knuckle down and build the extra platforms and loops.

Genuine question, but which trains do you divert away (assuming no magic bullet, no platforms 15/16, no "smarter timetabling" etc etc)?

That's why I started a thread about it (https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-branch-castlefield-corridor-problems.173536/) because everyone wants a Piccadilly service (e.g. the moans when Southport lost its daytime Piccadilly trains), everywhere wants a direct Airport service, people want lots of longer distance links to be kept (e.g. keeping Liverpool connected with places hundreds of miles away)... I don't think that there are solutions without a lot of pain/argument.

Surely the problem around Manchester is that too shorter trains are running more frequently than needed on some routes. Tram trains will have less capacity and run more frequently. What Manchester needs is existing trains being longer and better quality not adding more frequency unless lines are grade separated at pinch points and I can't see that happening.

Also the mixture of service patterns - you could run more trains on the existing infrastructure (or, more importantly, make the existing frequencies more reliable) if you chopped the various through services because of the apparent need to link various places on different sides of Manchester.

e.g. if all Huddersfield services ran to Liverpool, all Airport services ran through Castlefield, all Calder Valley services ran through to unelectrified places beyond Salford (Blackburn, Southport)... you'd have a much more reliable timetable.

Instead, the timetables are set up with a messy set of through routes, for the sake of providing direct links like Stockport to Bolton, meaning some big gaps in timetables (due to services joining from various different lines) and meaning that services go belly-up when there's a problem on any one route (other than the Glossop and Marple services, there are very few self contained routes that are resilient to disruption).

I notice that among the various projects listed there is absolutely no mention of the largest town in Greater Manchester unconnected to either rail or Metrolink:
Leigh pop 43,000.
They spent £15 m on a busway following part of the old rail track from the A580 at Ellenbrook through Tyldesley and into Leigh. But despite all the segregated bus lanes and the new V1 route, it still takes 60 mins to do 12 miles into Manchester.

The train from Leigh to Manchester Exchange used to take 32 mins, and 45 mins to Liverpool Lime St., joining the Chat Moss line at Kenyon Jc, the first railway junction in the world (1832 I think). Closed in 1969 in order to avoid spending £500,000 on a bridge at Monton for the new M602.
Yet they propose duplicating the train service from Stalybridge with a Metrotram as well. I'm not against it, but it seems that "To those who have shall be given more, from those who have not, even what little they have shall be taken away from them."

If GMCA would just think outside the box a little, they could reopen a station at Glazebury & Bury Lane where the Chat Moss line crosses the A574, as Leigh and Culcheth Parkway. It would take a considerable amount of commuter car traffic off the A580 and M602 western approaches to Manchester city centre. Glazebury into Victoria or Deansgate would probably be about 15 mins.

In fact, with more reopenings, you could run an hourly service from Preston calling Leyland, Euxton, Coppull (reopened, pop 8.000)), Standish (reopened, pop 13,000), Wigan NW, Golborne (reopened pop 24,000), Leigh and Culcheth Parkway (43,000 + 11,500), Patricroft, Eccles and Manchester. Total population given a decent new service into Manchester, 99,500.

Would need the slow line re-instating from Euxton Balshaw Lane Jc down to Standish Jc. And the problem that the old Glazebury station site is now just within the Cheshire boundary.

a. you're being a bit unfair on the buses (Leigh to Albert Square is forty five minutes - the additional time for the cross-city extension to the Royal Infirmary is neither here nor there for the purpose of this argument since the train never ran all the way out to the Hospital - the fact that the bus route provides this cross-city link is a positive rathe than something to bash the total journey time with

b. There are no spare heavy rail paths into Manchester (if anything, we are already cramming too many services onto existing lines through central Manchester), so any Leigh train line would have to come at the expense of another route. Do you reduce the frequency from Bolton? Fewer Liverpool trains? Because if there aren't spare paths through Manchester then there's no point in pretending that Leigh trains would zip into central Manchester

In some respects you can see their logic, Metrolink seems to be considerably more reliable than Northern rail and allows them to have a larger, integrated Manchester system under local control. Tram-train would likely leave the opportunity for both to run, especially due to the metrolink using standard platform height.

Agreed.

If I were Mancunian then I'd be wanting more Metrolink, more local control over infrastructure, more local control over service frequencies, more local control over the type of rolling stock (whilst running more services that require no operational subsidy).

If they are reluctant to fund more heavy rail services (where Manchester has no control over frequencies, where any new rolling stock purchased will spend large chunks of its life beyond the city boundaries in Cheshire/ Merseyside/ Lancashire, where there's a good chance of strikes, where you are dependent upon inflexible national government to fund infrastructure improvements, where the expensive operation means significant operational subsidies required).

Manchester suffers from its railway lines being used to benefit other places and their long distance links - it doesn't have the kind of local control that Liverpool has (since Liverpool is effectively a dead-end, so not at the mercy of through services). I can see why Manchester wants to focus attentions on things that benefit Manchester - I'd feel the same if I were them.

As an example, look at how Metrolink can guarantee five or ten trams an hour (with a certain standard of operation, a certain quality of vehicle etc), whereas stations on the heavy rail line to the Airport get a terrible frequency of service because the line is chock-full of long distance Airport services for the benefit of Cumbria/ Cleethorpes/ Cleveland (i.e. no scope for five/ten services per hour at Burnage).

 

[yorksrob]

Genuine question, but which trains do you divert away (assuming no magic bullet, no platforms 15/16, no "smarter timetabling" etc etc)?

That's why I started a thread about it (https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-branch-castlefield-corridor-problems.173536/) because everyone wants a Piccadilly service (e.g. the moans when Southport lost its daytime Piccadilly trains), everywhere wants a direct Airport service, people want lots of longer distance links to be kept (e.g. keeping Liverpool connected with places hundreds of miles away)... I don't think that there are solutions without a lot of pain/argument.

Then we need option 2 - build the new platforms.

 

[Greybeard33]

Sadly GMCA / TfGM / GMPTE / whatever name takes your fancy seems to want to Metrolink everything apart from a handful of lines. Should ever Glazebrook reopen, it could be reopened as a joint venture between Cheshire East Council and GMCA (similar to Hooton which is only just over the Merseyside county boundary but is plastered in the Merseytravel livery).

But Glazebrook is open, and is in Warrington not Cheshire East. Anyway it is within the TfGM rail boundary, even though just over the border.

Did you mean Glazebury and Bury Lane, closed in 1958? That site is also in Warrington, and is on the Chat Moss line. Which is one of the "handful" of lines which TfGM is not proposing to convert to tram-train. Along with the lines from Manchester to Bolton, Rochdale, Stalybridge, Stockport, Manchester Airport... quite a large handful!

 

[Francis]

If the Leigh Guided Busway had never been constructed, is it your considered opinion that the former Tyldesley loop line would have featured as a project for reopening in the document in the title of this thread?

You give a time of 60 minutes for the X1 journey from Leigh bus station to the existing terminus at Manchester Royal Infirmary, but what is the time for the journey from Leigh to Salford Crescent railway station, where rail services to and from both Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly arrive and depart?

The V1 times from Leigh bus station to Manchester Albert Square vary considerably. In the morning peak it is 55 mins or 60 mins according to the timetable. The maximum is 62 mins for the 08.20. However if you go at 04.00 you'll be there in 35 mins. These are the timetable figures if it runs to time.
Leigh was my home town until 1972, and from 65 to 72 I travelled to school in Salford every day.
When I tried out the V1 recently at 15.00 one afternoon from John Dalton St it took 60 mins to Leigh bus station. It was also very bumpy on the busway but I was on the upper deck.

I wonder how much a new rail link from the Atherton line west of Walkden, cutting across to the old Tyldesley and Leigh trackbed would have cost in comparison to the £15 m busway. Even a single station seems to cost Network Rail £20 million these days.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I wonder how much a new rail link from the Atherton line west of Walkden, cutting across to the old Tyldesley and Leigh trackbed would have cost in comparison to the £15 m busway. Even a single station seems to cost Network Rail £20 million these days.

We have to accept the fact whether we like it or not that it was the Busway rather than the rail link that was chosen as the preferred option by those charged with TfGM transport solutions at the time which now sees the Busway functioning in terms of actual reality. The Park and Ride car park at the Tyldesley park and ride Busway stop (where the V2 service bifurcates en route to its Atherton terminal point) has always been full every time that we have used the service.

I have no particular personal axe to grind over the matter, living as I do exterior to "The land of the TfGM Empire", some two miles away from the nearest bus stop and a railway station and have local area transport issues dealt with by those transport mandarins of Cheshire East council, who are noted for their aversion to matters of public transport and the creators of the "Now you see it, now you don't" scenario that deals with tendered bus services.