Greater Manchester has "ambitions" for devolution of some local rail services from 2025

[Greybeard33]

This was buried in a TfGM press release about bus franchising today.

Greater Manchester’s vision for a truly integrated public transport network includes all modes of transport, with ambitions for [rail] services on six key routes to be integrated into the Bee Network once buses are brought under local control from 2025:

• Wigan – Victoria, which includes the development of a new station at Golborne anticipated to open late 2025 subject to DfT and industry approvals
• Stalybridge –Southport
• Glossop – Hadfield – Piccadilly
• Rose Hill – Piccadilly
• Buxton – Piccadilly
• Alderley Edge – Piccadilly

The move would see around one in five local train services integrated into the Bee Network, with a focus on performance and reliability, improved train station accessibility and a pilot of pay-as-you-go fares, similar to Metrolink’s touch-in/touch-out system.

Greater Manchester plans to explore these proposals with the rail industry as part of discussions about longer-term devolution of rail to the city-region, which would see larger parts of the network integrated into the Bee Network by the end of the decade.

Transport Commissioner for Greater Manchester, Vernon Everitt, said: “Today’s announcements on bus franchising and our ambitions for local rail services demonstrate further strong momentum towards delivery of the Bee Network – an integrated London-style transport system.

“We are seeing a strong increase in the number of customers using Metrolink trams and buses, demonstrating high demand for safe, reliable and affordable public transport in our rapidly growing city-region.

“We will progressively make it easier for everyone to use our services with simplified and joined-up fares, ticketing and information provision across bus, tram, rail and cycle hire. We will also continue to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour and support vulnerable people on the network in collaboration with the TravelSafe Partnership.

Local accountability at centre of new bus network as operators appointed to run first franchised services outside of London for almost 40 years

news.tfgm.com

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The services listed would all have to share tracks with other services not included in the TfGM "Bee Network", so not a segregated network like Merseyrail. Considering the timescale, these services would presumably still be worked by existing Northern rolling stock and existing Northern traincrew.

Note: this thread is only for discussion of the implications of the TfGM announcement. Ideas for future changes to GM services, rolling stock or infrastructure should be posted in the Speculative Ideas section.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

This was buried in a TfGM press release about bus franchising today.

Local accountability at centre of new bus network as operators appointed to run first franchised services outside of London for almost 40 years

news.tfgm.com

---

The services listed would all have to share tracks with other services not included in the TfGM "Bee Network", so not a segregated network like Merseyrail. Considering the timescale, these services would presumably still be worked by existing Northern rolling stock and existing Northern traincrew.

Note: this thread is only for discussion of the implications of the TfGM announcement. Ideas for future changes to GM services, rolling stock or infrastructure should be posted in the Speculative Ideas section.

It works in MerseyRail as most of the network is self contained but not sure its a good idea for Manchester would rather see TfN running it for the hole of the North

 

[Randomer]

If it is talking about being brought into an integrated multi-model ticketing system then it would seem to make much more sense than being integrated in terms of a separate operator. I don't see anything in the announcement that talks about doing more than this.

The idea that you could tap in and out of multiple types of transport and only be charged a single integrated fare for a journey within a time limit would certainly seem like an idea to attract more people.

It would make sense to have something like this if TfGM are going for a completely integrated public transport service.

 

[javelin]

If it is talking about being brought into an integrated multi-model ticketing system then it would seem to make much more sense than being integrated in terms of a separate operator. I don't see anything in the announcement that talks about doing more than this.

It isn't entirely clear, but in the announcement it states;

The move would see around one in five local train services integrated into the Bee Network, with a focus on performance and reliability...

Which suggests some kind of local oversight of operations.

It works in MerseyRail as most of the network is self contained but not sure its a good idea for Manchester would rather see TfN running it for the hole of the North

Why would a publicly managed TOC need to be any more self contained than a privately managed one?

 

[Peterthegreat]

It works in MerseyRail as most of the network is self contained but not sure its a good idea for Manchester would rather see TfN running it for the hole of the North

Don't think Mancunians would like their city described in such terms,

 

[Mathew S]

Which suggests some kind of local oversight.

It sounds like subsidising services, with an agreement to introduce integrated (contactless) ticketing.

It works in MerseyRail as most of the network is self contained but not sure its a good idea for Manchester would rather see TfN running it for the hole of the North

Politically, it would probably make more sense for any local specification of (local, as opposed to TPE style long distance) services to remain within the bounds of devolved regions. That way, there's clearer lines of responsibility, from a public-facing perspective, and a real incentive for a Burnham-style mayor to invest in those services lest they suffer at election time.

 

[adamedwards]

The London Overground shares Euston and Liverpool St stations with other main line operators, the North London Line with freight and out to Croydon on lines used by Thameslink and Southern. So I see no reason Manchester could not do something similar. I'm old enough to remember Greater Manchester liveried Pacers on many local services. One might imagine a TfGM fleet of DMUS being ordered, which would then cascade others elsewhere in Northern. The 323s would simply get painted back into their original Manchester livery for the electric lines. What must not happen of course is any crazy turning trains back at borders. I don't think Andy Burnham is that daft.

 

[Mathew S]

What must not happen of course is any crazy turning trains back at borders. I don't think Andy Burnham is that daft.

Given he commutes (or at least did when I lived 'up North') by train himself on a regular basis, I'm certain he's not that daft.

 

[daodao]

Three of the 4 services listed below from Piccadilly extend outwith the borders of Greater Manchester into Cheshire/Derbyshire and the ones via Stockport are not really self-contained. I am not convinced that this proposal has been fully thought through.

• Glossop – Hadfield – Piccadilly
• Rose Hill – Piccadilly
• Buxton – Piccadilly
• Alderley Edge – Piccadilly

 

[Greybeard33]

Three of the 4 services listed below from Piccadilly extend outwith the borders of Greater Manchester into Cheshire/Derbyshire and the ones via Stockport are not really self-contained. I am not convinced that this proposal has been fully thought through.

• Glossop – Hadfield – Piccadilly
• Rose Hill – Piccadilly
• Buxton – Piccadilly
• Alderley Edge – Piccadilly

Rose Hill Marple - Piccadilly is entirely within GM. The other three services from Piccadilly only extend a short way into Derbyshire/Cheshire East. Likewise Stalybridge - Southport (presumably including Oxford Road - Southport) is predominantly within GM.

I think it is instructive to list the Northern services out of Manchester that have been omitted from this proposal. They all extend much further into other local authority areas and so a GM takeover would likely be more controversial.

Piccadilly - New Mills Central/Sheffield goes across into S Yorkshire.

Piccadilly - Stoke goes into Staffordshire.

Piccadilly - Crewe goes deep into Cheshire East.

Piccadilly - Chester via Northwich goes into Cheshire West and Chester.

Airport - Liverpool via Chat Moss and Oxford Road - Liverpool via Warrington are both regarded as part of the "Merseyrail City Line" by the Liverpool City Region.

Airport - Barrow/Windermere goes into Cumbria.

Airport - Blackpool,
Rochdale - Blackburn/Clitheroe via Bolton and
Kirkby - Blackburn via Atherton and Burnley all go deep into Lancashire.

Wigan - Leeds via Atherton and Brighouse and
Chester/Victoria - Leeds via Bradford all go across into W Yorkshire.

 

[WatcherZero]

Talks with Dft and Treasury have been ongoing for sometime on these 'Trailblazer Devolution' proposals and are at a pretty advanced stage, mentioned in the last couple of budgets, West Midlands has been in similar talks to take over its local rail network. The deals on offer from the Government include a full local settlement for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands that puts all money into a single pot at the same level of spending autonomy as is given to Welsh and Scottish governments. GM and Birmingham would become Government regions in their own right (which considering these cities have larger economies than Wales and Northern Ireland its only fair to have the same level of autonomy).
Also announced Golborne station design would be unveiled early in the new year.

 

[blackpoolsouth]

If it makes the trains run a d it's better for passengers I support it fully

 

[matt_world2004]

It works in MerseyRail as most of the network is self contained but not sure its a good idea for Manchester would rather see TfN running it for the hole of the North

Given london overground, Caledonian sleeper and the Elizabeth line are devolved rail operations sharing tracks with non devolved rail services why would it need to be self contained

 

[AL1]

An interesting array of services. If you are going to carve out a network controlled and funded by a devolved operator, then identifying a depot and fleet will have to be an early decision.

The 2025 timetable change has some logic for creating a GM business unit as it ties into the proposed major timetable change.

I just wonder whether Stalybridge Southport is correct. AIUI, once the Westhoughton line is electrified, the Stalybridge service becomes a 2tph to Wigan NW via Bolton?

 

[gc4946]

Metrolink's zonal fare system could be a starting point for integrated fares within Greater Manchester

Metrolink fare zones

Metrolink has 4 fare zones. Purchase a ticket for all the zones you will travel through.

tfgm.com

Having a unified tariff for all transport modes would be a major step forward

 

[yorkie]

If anyone would like to speculate on how the above proposals might (or perhaps should) be implemented, please use the following thread:

How could devolution of Greater Manchester rail services be carried out?

Given the news in thefollowing thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/greater-manchester-has-ambitions-for-devolution-of-some-local-rail-services-from-2025.241147/ This thread is to enable members to post their own suggestions, predictions or anything else of a speculative nature...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Talks with Dft and Treasury have been ongoing for sometime on these 'Trailblazer Devolution' proposals and are at a pretty advanced stage, mentioned in the last couple of budgets, West Midlands has been in similar talks to take over its local rail network. The deals on offer from the Government include a full local settlement for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands that puts all money into a single pot at the same level of spending autonomy as is given to Welsh and Scottish governments. GM and Birmingham would become Government regions in their own right (which considering these cities have larger economies than Wales and Northern Ireland its only fair to have the same level of autonomy).
Also announced Golborne station design would be unveiled early in the new year.

Presumably WM and GM will end up with their own micro-TOCs on local government terms (like Merseyrail, or indeed Wales and Scotland).
Resources will need to be split, which might not help rail integration as a whole.

While all this has been the aim since the McLoughlin* DfT years, I'm not sure the present Gov/DfT are as keen.
They really want "GBR" up and running first.
And boundary and funding rows are simply going to happen, with Network Rail trying to hold the ring.
There will be losers (counties, probably) as well as winners.

* as Chair of Rail North, I wonder what his present views are on the creation of such a fragmented network

 

[Bantamzen]

I think it is instructive to list the Northern services out of Manchester that have been omitted from this proposal. They all extend much further into other local authority areas and so a GM takeover would likely be more controversial.

It is indeed useful, especially as the GM-run/contracted services will still have to run alongside those operating well beyond the borders of GM. And its also worth noting that most of the regions either already have their own networks, or are aspiring to have something similar. So its really a bit difficult to see how transferring some of the existing routes to council responsibility will deliver any performance improvements. If anything, it might make things more difficult & certainly more complex. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

 

[Greybeard33]

The 2025 timetable change has some logic for creating a GM business unit as it ties into the proposed major timetable change.

I just wonder whether Stalybridge Southport is correct. AIUI, once the Westhoughton line is electrified, the Stalybridge service becomes a 2tph to Wigan NW via Bolton?

I suspect that the TfGM press release referred to the existing cross city service pairing, i.e. Stalybridge to Southport, because they do not want to link the devolution negotiations to a proposed 2025 timetable recast that is not yet finalised.

* as Chair of Rail North, I wonder what his present views are on the creation of such a fragmented network

Patrick McLoughlin is actually Chair of Transport for the North. The Rail North Partnership is a partnership between TfN and DfT, responsible for management of the TPE and Northern franchises.

 

[slipdigby]

Andy Burnham has had quite vocal aspirations towards what Steve Rotherham has got up the road for a while now (at least in terms of the Wirral/Northern lines). The problem, as has been pointed out myriad times is that Greater Manchester's local internal rail network is not in any way operationally self contained and therefore doesn't lend itself to being carved out as a discrete micro-TOC/business unit en masse. What we're likely to end up with is a pragmatic initial ask of devolving a subset of routes to TfGM Rail that fulfil three roles;

a) the political "we are doing x to improve Greater Manchester",
b) benchmarking for a) so as to hold the DfT and other operator's feet over the fire on performance, costs, etc., and
c) serve as an example to justify the further devolution of powers (transport or other) from central government.

Now the massive risk in all this is that it introduces another, potentially outwardly politically challenging interface to the industry in the North of England. It also risks further confusing (if it were possible) the relationships of governance between DfT, GBRTT, RNP, TfN, TfGM, NR, TOCs, etc. It's also another bit of distracting change control to manage alongside the current structural upheaval that is ongoing in fits and starts. And all this whilst also trying to run a semblance of a railway service....

 

[daodao]

Andy Burnham has had quite vocal aspirations towards what Steve Rotherham has got up the road for a while now (at least in terms of the Wirral/Northern lines). The problem, as has been pointed out myriad times is that Greater Manchester's local internal rail network is not in any way operationally self contained and therefore doesn't lend itself to being carved out as a discrete micro-TOC/business unit en masse. What we're likely to end up with is a pragmatic initial ask of devolving a subset of routes to TfGM Rail that fulfil three roles;

a) the political "we are doing x to improve Greater Manchester",
b) benchmarking for a) so as to hold the DfT and other operator's feet over the fire on performance, costs, etc., and
c) serve as an example to justify the further devolution of powers (transport or other) from central government.

Now the massive risk in all this is that it introduces another, potentially outwardly politically challenging interface to the industry in the North of England. It also risks further confusing (if it were possible) the relationships of governance between DfT, GBRTT, RNP, TfN, TfGM, NR, TOCs, etc. It's also another bit of distracting change control to manage alongside the current structural upheaval that is ongoing in fits and starts. And all this whilst also trying to run a semblance of a railway service....

Yes - it adds an additional layer of complication. TfGM has previously proposed the removal of certain routes from Network Rail entirely (or almost entirely), with conversion to Metrolink to run using trams or tram-trains, e.g. the line to Rose Hill via Brinnington. Most of the remaining suburban rail services in the Greater Manchester area and its fringes run on heavy rail lines that are also used extensively for longer distance passenger trains and freight, so need to remain under overall Network Rail control.

 

[childwallblues]

I still cannot get my head round Burnhams proposed station at Golbourne. What is going to stop there? There is a perfectly good station at Newton-le-Willows which has just had a rebuild and a large car park and has four trains an hour to Manchester, two to Liverpool and two to Chester. It seems to me a vanity project.

 

[PTR 444]

I still cannot get my head round Burnhams proposed station at Golbourne. What is going to stop there? There is a perfectly good station at Newton-le-Willows which has just had a rebuild and a large car park and has four trains an hour to Manchester, two to Liverpool and two to Chester. It seems to me a vanity project.

Golborne IMO would be better served by an extension of the Leigh busway, which should form part of the ‘Bee Network’.

 

[Greybeard33]

I still cannot get my head round Burnhams proposed station at Golbourne. What is going to stop there? There is a perfectly good station at Newton-le-Willows which has just had a rebuild and a large car park and has four trains an hour to Manchester, two to Liverpool and two to Chester. It seems to me a vanity project.

The new peak-only Wigan North Western to Victoria service, introduced in the December 2022 timetable, runs via Golborne. Reportedly Andy Burnham lives closer to Golborne than to Newton-le-Willows....

 

[WatcherZero]

It was the only proposed Leigh station that Network Rail approved of, they rejected the other options of Kenyon Hall, Culcheth, Glazebury Hall and a Spur into Leigh all on the Chat Moss line as proposed by Halcrow.

 

[norbitonflyer]

If this is about integrated fares, London has had that on its National Rail network since the 1990s, with the Travelcard and Oyster (albeit zonal fares on NR lines south of the River are generally higher). There was also the short lived "Overground Network" branding on some NR lines (not to be confused with the later "London Overground")

 

[507020]

It was the only proposed Leigh station that Network Rail approved of, they rejected the other options of Kenyon Hall, Culcheth, Glazebury Hall and a Spur into Leigh all on the Chat Moss line as proposed by Halcrow.

The issue is a Parkside, Kenyon Junction or other Chat Moss station can be provided easily, but a Golborne WCML station needs quadrupling, an equivalent at Coppull and a HS2 to be remotely workable, whether Andy Burnham lives there or not. Starting a fresh air carrying Wigan - Victoria shuttle occupying platforms at both ends to justify a station that doesn’t exist yet is just lunacy.

 

[Parjon]

The mess that's been created by indulging greater Manchester's infantile empire building on transit, in particular the negative impact on its neighbouring major city, I think this is a really bad idea. If they know what they want and how it will work out, that's bad enough. But I don't think they even do.

 

[slipdigby]

Care to elaborate? I'm not immediately aware of any negative impacts on Salford?

 

[Greybeard33]

The issue is a Parkside, Kenyon Junction or other Chat Moss station can be provided easily, but a Golborne WCML station needs quadrupling, an equivalent at Coppull and a HS2 to be remotely workable, whether Andy Burnham lives there or not. Starting a fresh air carrying Wigan - Victoria shuttle occupying platforms at both ends to justify a station that doesn’t exist yet is just lunacy.

Golborne station will be on the site of the former Golborne South station, just south of the Church Street overbridge. The platforms will be on the Slow lines - the WCML is already quadruple here.

Disused Stations: Golborne South Station

This has nothing to do with the (cancelled) HS2 Golborne spur.

The Wigan - Victoria service is a partial replacement for the Cumbria - Airport services, which used to be routed via Wigan but now use the Bolton line. It is much faster than the Wigan - Manchester services via Bolton or Atherton, so I imagine it will be well loaded by Wigan - Manchester commuters, who will no doubt outnumber those from Golborne and Eccles (it skips Patricroft).