How should Northern Powerhouse Rail get through Manchester ?

[daodao]

The HS2 tunnel to the airport proposal

I cannot believe that anyone thinks that his white elephant, whose huge expense was one of the key reasons for scrapping phase 2 of HS2, could still be built just for NPR. All that is needed to improve the transpennine service from Liverpool to York is some work (albeit relatively expensive) to create a straighter and faster electrified line from Stalybridge to Marsden, once the TPRU east of Marsden is completed with electrification as far as York, and electrification of the Victoria to Stalybridge line is finished.

 

[HSTEd]

I cannot believe that anyone thinks that his white elephant, whose huge expense was one of the key reasons for scrapping phase 2 of HS2, could still be built just for NPR. All that is needed to improve the transpennine service from Liverpool to York is some work (albeit relatively expensive) to create a straighter and faster electrified line from Stalybridge to Marsden, once the TPRU east of Marsden is completed with electrification as far as York, and electrification of the Victoria to Stalybridge line is finished.

You aren't getting a straighter alignment through that area without putting the whole thing in a tunnel though.

There is housing all over the place, you'd have to destroy whole streets to get a much straighter alignment, unless you resort to a Stalybridge-Marsden base tunnel concept.

If you thought a tunnel was controversial, just wait until you propose mass demolitions of the cores of several towns.
And you will probably need a pile of work at the north end of the tunnel too given the incredibly sharp curve that would render all the speed increases moot.

 

[edwin_m]

Many thanks for your reply. The problem with the proposed NPR route is that much of it is slated to run on the existing track between Lime Street and Ditton, then on upgraded but sharply curving track to Warrington BQ, then through suburban Warrington until shortly before the M6. Soon after that, trains will need to decelerate for the double curve into Manchester Airport, after which they would run in a speed-restricted tunnel (because tunnels are always speed-restricted). It's very possible that an upgraded Chat Moss route might actually enjoy higher average train speeds than the so-called "high speed line". Now, I'm no engineer, so I don't know how easy it would be to upgrade the CM route, but I do know that Network Rail have managed to four-track a section near Huyton within the last decade without causing much inconvenience. Four-tracking enough of the route to allow both fast and slow trains is well within the bounds of possibility, and is of course the situation on most of Britain's main lines. Moreover, the capacity-need isn't infinite: there needs to be enough space for four non-stop services per hour (as opposed to the current two), and that's it. Anything extra would be a bonus. As for "inconvenience": the current NPR proposals would cause a massive amount of inconvenience, and over a very much longer period, as the citizens of Camden and Buckinghamshire can certainly testify. Also, if we were to upgrade the existing routes, the project should remain within the purview of Network Rail, and thereby avoid needing to spend billions on assorted lawyers, consultants, compulsory purchase orders and compensation schemes, none of which would do anything to improve the situation. It is true that the existing proposals would have done much to relieve capacity bottlenecks on the WCML between Crewe and Weaver Junction and on the southern approaches to Manchester Piccadilly, but the curtailing of HS2 removes this advantage. It is also true that the existing proposals would relieve pressure on the Castlefield Corridor, but this needs to be set against the fact that they do little to improve the connectivity of Liverpool, which would gain minimal extra capacity and would remain as distant (timewise) from Manchester and Yorkshire as it is now, and might arguably be worse off because of the need for a reversal at Piccadilly. Frankly, it would be incredible if the country was to spend £12 billion to "improve transport links between Liverpool and Manchester" without significantly reducing travel time between the two cities, especially as very little of the £12 billion would have been spent in Merseyside. Scousers would be outraged, and rightly so. Indeed, if Steve Rotheram went along with it, he would deserve to be replaced by a Tory! And this might prove a crucial consideration, because Liverpool has specifically been included in the "Network North" consultation. It needs to be admitted (although I'd rather not get into this) that HS2 has almost certainly been too Manchester-centric, often to the detriment of other places, which doubtless explains why it has proved consistently unpopular with the British public, and why Sunak (and soon afterwards, Starmer) have felt able to slash it back. Put bluntly, if NPR is to have any chance of long-term survival, it will need to deliver meaningful journey-time improvements along the whole of the M62 corridor, and not simply act as the pretext for an urban regeneration project in South Manchester.

I'm pretty sure TfN would have done the calculations to confirm that despite these disadvantages the NPR route via HS2 would be quicker than existing routes. Slower sections around Manchester airport are less important because all trains would stop there.

I believe the section through Huyton was previous four-tracked so there was space to reinstate this. It would be more difficult on the rest of the route - there may have been four tracks through Eccles at one time but the adjacent motorway will have put paid to that.

Although going via Manchester Airport forces a less direct route, it means that the same train can serve it and continue to Liverpool, removing one disadvantage of the current TPE network as well as linking Liverpool and the airport much better than today. The NPR route would also have provided an independent, though as you say mostly not high speed, route for HS2 trains into Liverpool, so while HS2 might have been Manchester-centred, NPR made it a lot less so.

 

[HSTEd]

In defence of the HS2 tunnel, it appears that it would have wider uses than just going to Liverpool now that capacity is available from the scrapping of HS2 Phase 2 (for now).
For example, the Airport HS2 station's south end is within a couple of kilometres of the Mid-Cheshire line, and the Northern stopper from Manchester to Chester gets from Ashley to Chester in about 54 minutes, it seems likely that the TfW limited stop service could be routed that way and remain competitive. That gets you a path through Castlefield.

~7-8 minutes Manchester Picc to Manchester Airport, a minute stop, 54 minutes to Chester is about 63 minutes. The absolute fastest Manchester-Chester train seems to be about 54 minutes, but most are over an hour. You'd only have to pick up a handful of minutes from missing the intermediate stops to beat the existing route. It arguably makes the northern stopper competitive!

You could potentially just extend the Metrolink to Hale or Ashley and transfer the Northern stopper too, which would get you a path through Stockport and allow for the second train per hour people on the line always ask for.

So at least one path through Castlefield and one through Stockport.
Beyond that, if theres a bit more money, if you could get track through to the crewe-manchester line, or just upgrade the Mid-Cheshire/Middlewich lines, you could potentially transfer the via Crewe Manchester-London train and the TfW train via Crewe to the via-Airport routing too.

That last part is likely to significantly more expensive, but the journey time from Wilmslow to Piccadilly on Avanti is 17 minutes, and the journey time from the Airport to Piccadilly on the HS2 section is more like 7, so there is margin to play with.

I make it about 9.5km of track to reach the Crewe-Manchester line near Jodrell Bank, can probably lay it out to be suitably fast to be used as part of a revised Crewe-Manchester HSL if and when that becomes a possibility. The balance between that and ~30km of upgrades/electrification on the Mid Cheshire line and Middlewich would probably come down to what kind of performance you can get out of the latter.
But if you could do it you would be able to save a pile of paths through Stockport and even one through Castlefield Corridor, whilst removing the operational headache that is the current Mid-Cheshire line arrangements and giving them the two trains per hour they've wanted for ages.

 

[daodao]

In defence of the HS2 tunnel, it appears that it would have wider uses than just going to Liverpool now that capacity is available from the scrapping of HS2 Phase 2 (for now).
For example, the Airport HS2 station's south end is within a couple of kilometres of the Mid-Cheshire line, and the Northern stopper from Manchester to Chester gets from Ashley to Chester in about 54 minutes, it seems likely that the TfW limited stop service could be routed that way and remain competitive. That gets you a path through Castlefield.

~7-8 minutes Manchester Picc to Manchester Airport, a minute stop, 54 minutes to Chester is about 63 minutes. The absolute fastest Manchester-Chester train seems to be about 54 minutes, but most are over an hour. You'd only have to pick up a handful of minutes from missing the intermediate stops to beat the existing route. It arguably makes the northern stopper competitive!

You could potentially just extend the Metrolink to Hale or Ashley and transfer the Northern stopper too, which would get you a path through Stockport and allow for the second train per hour people on the line always ask for.

So at least one path through Castlefield and one through Stockport.
Beyond that, if theres a bit more money, if you could get track through to the crewe-manchester line, or just upgrade the Mid-Cheshire/Middlewich lines, you could potentially transfer the via Crewe Manchester-London train and the TfW train via Crewe to the via-Airport routing too.

That last part is likely to significantly more expensive, but the journey time from Wilmslow to Piccadilly on Avanti is 17 minutes, and the journey time from the Airport to Piccadilly on the HS2 section is more like 7, so there is margin to play with.

I make it about 9.5km of track to reach the Crewe-Manchester line near Jodrell Bank, can probably lay it out to be suitably fast to be used as part of a revised Crewe-Manchester HSL if and when that becomes a possibility. The balance between that and ~30km of upgrades/electrification on the Mid Cheshire line and Middlewich would probably come down to what kind of performance you can get out of the latter.
But if you could do it you would be able to save a pile of paths through Stockport and even one through Castlefield Corridor, whilst removing the operational headache that is the current Mid-Cheshire line arrangements and giving them the two trains per hour they've wanted for ages.

There is absolutely no need for any of the expensive proposals outlined in your post. Only a little rail expenditure is justified for Greater Manchester, and for NPR this should be confined to an enhancement and full electrification of the existing route from Liverpool Lime Street via Manchester Victoria, Huddersfield and Leeds to York so that a half-hourly express service can be run over this line calling at the above-named stations only. There is no need for any major rail developments in Greater Manchester south of the River Mersey (and east of Stockport the River Goyt), or in Cheshire north of Crewe.

 

[8A Rail]

Putting it in Victoria will probably cause more problems than it solves, loses a lot of connectivity benefits.

I expect NPR will be quietly killed with HS2, he will make some noises about electrification but nothing will come of it.

Any money that does get saved will be diverted to M62 improvements instead.

You cannot improve that road when there is three / four lanes already and it is choc a block even on a Sunday. Road improvements equals more traffic on the road therefore not road improvements are they, just creating more problems. (yes I am a car user too)!

Many thanks for your reply. ........... It's very possible that an upgraded Chat Moss route might actually enjoy higher average train speeds than the so-called "high speed line". Now, I'm no engineer, so I don't know how easy it would be to upgrade the CM route, but I do know that Network Rail have managed to four-track a section near Huyton within the last decade without causing much inconvenience. Four-tracking enough of the route to allow both fast and slow trains is well within the bounds of possibility, and is of course the situation on most of Britain's main lines. ..........

That was because the four track formation was still in place (with the exception of Broadgreen) from when it was lifted in the late 1970's, so it was easy enough to relay the formation through Roby and Huyton again! As for the rest of the L&M line, not as simple as you think in adding two more lines as in effect you are building a brand new line next to the current one along with all new infrastructures too. And don't forget the planning issues , nimby's and I am sure there be objections from a historical point of view for that line too.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Any money that does get saved will be diverted to M62 improvements instead.

Is there any comparable statistics that show the following:-

1) The daily number of freight movements by both M62 and by rail on the Liverpool to Hull axis.
2) The daily number of passenger movements by M62 vehicle and by rail on the Liverpool to Hull axis.

 

[The Planner]

Is there any comparable statistics that show the following:-

1) The daily number of freight movements by both M62 and by rail on the Liverpool to Hull axis.
2) The daily number of passenger movements by M62 vehicle and by rail on the Liverpool to Hull axis.

Traffic statistics on the M60, Salford, Salford | SD780034

Traffic statistics on the M60, Salford, Salford | SD780034 at Road Traffic Statistics UK.

roadtrafficstats.uk

Suggests that HGV movements at M60 J16 (as a random point chosen) was approx. 19500 per day in 2017. I am not sure what you are trying to compare though as the commodities are different. There is no Intermodal flow across the Pennines for example due to gauge etc.

 

[Moomo]

I'm pretty sure TfN would have done the calculations to confirm that despite these disadvantages the NPR route via HS2 would be quicker than existing routes. Slower sections around Manchester airport are less important because all trains would stop there.

I believe the section through Huyton was previous four-tracked so there was space to reinstate this. It would be more difficult on the rest of the route - there may have been four tracks through Eccles at one time but the adjacent motorway will have put paid to that.

Although going via Manchester Airport forces a less direct route, it means that the same train can serve it and continue to Liverpool, removing one disadvantage of the current TPE network as well as linking Liverpool and the airport much better than today. The NPR route would also have provided an independent, though as you say mostly not high speed, route for HS2 trains into Liverpool, so while HS2 might have been Manchester-centred, NPR made it a lot less so.

You're absolutely right that the NPR route had a lot of advantages when it was linked to HS2, which is obviously why TfN chose it - albeit that it was still a compromise as far as Yorkshire and Liverpool were concerned.

But now that HS2P2 is dead (and I don't believe Labour will reinstate it), the calculation looks very different.

For what it's worth, fast services along the Chat Moss line are doing the Liv/Manc journey in 36 minutes (almost exactly the same as the proposed "high speed line"), but were doing it in 30 minutes before the latest speed restrictions.

There are in fact several sections in which the line could be four-tracked without too much difficulty, not least to the east of Newton-le-Willows.

Too much is made of the problems of crossing Chat Moss. In reality the bog is only 5 miles across at its widest point and has a maximum depth of 30 feet, which is very straightforward for 21st century engineers.

All in all, it should be perfectly possible to achieve a sub-thirty minute journey time, and for a great deal less than £12 billion.

The importance of Manchester Airport is always overstated. It actually accounts for less than 1% of "transPennine journeys"; moreover the proposed "South Manchester Parkway" station is so much further from the terminals than the existing station that any journey-time savings would be offset by the additional time spent crossing the airport.

 

[JamesT]

You're absolutely right that the NPR route had a lot of advantages when it was linked to HS2, which is obviously why TfN chose it - albeit that it was still a compromise as far as Yorkshire and Liverpool were concerned.

But now that HS2P2 is dead (and I don't believe Labour will reinstate it), the calculation looks very different.

For what it's worth, fast services along the Chat Moss line are doing the Liv/Manc journey in 36 minutes (almost exactly the same as the proposed "high speed line"), but were doing it in 30 minutes before the latest speed restrictions.

There are in fact several sections in which the line could be four-tracked without too much difficulty, not least to the east of Newton-le-Willows.

Too much is made of the problems of crossing Chat Moss. In reality the bog is only 5 miles across at its widest point and has a maximum depth of 30 feet, which is very straightforward for 21st century engineers.

All in all, it should be perfectly possible to achieve a sub-thirty minute journey time, and for a great deal less than £12 billion.

The importance of Manchester Airport is always overstated. It actually accounts for less than 1% of "transPennine journeys"; moreover the proposed "South Manchester Parkway" station is so much further from the terminals than the existing station that any journey-time savings would be offset by the additional time spent crossing the airport.

The proposed NPR/HS2 time for Liverpool-Manchester was 26 minutes. 10 minutes faster than current. This includes 5 minutes for the stop at the airport.
Much of the £12 billion is for tunnelling into central Manchester. If you’re not doing that, how are you getting your fast Chat Moss services into an already congested network?

 

[Greybeard33]

Page 19 of the 2021 IRP gave the NPR journey time Manchester - Liverpool as 35 minutes.

Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands

The government’s plan for delivering and sequencing major rail investment in the North and Midlands.

www.gov.uk

In the current timetable, the journey time from Lime Street to Manchester Victoria is 34 minutes with one stop, despite the speed restrictions over the Chat Moss bog and the Astley level crossing.

Realtime Trains | 1K21 1254 Liverpool Lime Street to Hull | 09/10/2023

Real-time train running information for 1K21 1254 departure from Liverpool Lime Street to Hull on 09/10/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

With the additional £12bn cost, transferred from the HS2 budget, the route via Manchester Airport, Warrington Bank Quay and Fiddler's Ferry will offer very poor value for money.

 

[HSTEd]

In the current timetable, the journey time from Lime Street to Manchester Victoria is 34 minutes with one stop, despite the speed restrictions over the Chat Moss bog and the Astley level crossing.

Realtime Trains | 1K21 1254 Liverpool Lime Street to Hull | 09/10/2023

Real-time train running information for 1K21 1254 departure from Liverpool Lime Street to Hull on 09/10/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

And yet the vast majority of Manchester-Liverpool journeys take longer than this. Notably all the trains from the more popular stations (Piccadilly and Oxford Road) take much longer than this.

With the additional £12bn cost, transferred from the HS2 budget, the route via Manchester Airport, Warrington Bank Quay and Fiddler's Ferry will offer very poor value for money.

It offers a major gain in capacity which is simply not possible with an upgrade to the existing alignments.

 

[Chester1]

I am not convinced any major infrastructure project will get majority support in the North. It is just not the nature of the culture (I am a Northerner before anyone thinks this is southerner spite). The only thing that will have majority support is tinkering with the existing network while moaning about London and Birmingham having fancy new railways. As soon as a fancy new railway is proposed for the North it will get shot down because it will cost a lot and won't serve everywhere.

 

[JamesT]

Page 19 of the 2021 IRP gave the NPR journey time Manchester - Liverpool as 35 minutes.

Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands

The government’s plan for delivering and sequencing major rail investment in the North and Midlands.

www.gov.uk

In the current timetable, the journey time from Lime Street to Manchester Victoria is 34 minutes with one stop, despite the speed restrictions over the Chat Moss bog and the Astley level crossing.

Realtime Trains | 1K21 1254 Liverpool Lime Street to Hull | 09/10/2023

Real-time train running information for 1K21 1254 departure from Liverpool Lime Street to Hull on 09/10/2023. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

With the additional £12bn cost, transferred from the HS2 budget, the route via Manchester Airport, Warrington Bank Quay and Fiddler's Ferry will offer very poor value for money.

Fair enough, the times I'd seen quoted were from https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/TFTN_-_NPR_At_a_Glance.pdf
Not entirely clear from a skim of your document what's been downgraded from that plan.

 

[Greybeard33]

And yet the vast majority of Manchester-Liverpool journeys take longer than this.

Not much longer, unless you include the stoppers and semi-fasts. The Hull fast is typically 34 minutes eastbound, 39 minutes westbound. The Newcastle fast is typically 35 minutes both ways.

It offers a major gain in capacity which is simply not possible with an upgrade to the existing alignments.

The current half hourly fasts are only 5- or 6-car length. There is no case for investment in infrastructure capacity until train lengths are maxed out and still unable to meet demand.

Fair enough, the times I'd seen quoted were from https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/TFTN_-_NPR_At_a_Glance.pdf
Not entirely clear from a skim of your document what's been downgraded from that plan.

The TfN NPR "preferred network" had an all new line from Liverpool to Warrington. According to p108 of the IRP, the Government rejected this route option because it would have cost £6bn more for a 3 - 4 minute journey time saving.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Has the matter shown in the title of this thread ever been recently put to members of the bodies responsible for this project and if so, has a reply been forthcoming?

 

[Arkeeos]

Has the matter shown in the title of this thread ever been recently put to members of the bodies responsible for this project and if so, has a reply been forthcoming?

No, Sunak and his team seem to have avoided any consultation with this recent announcement from anyone ranging from network rail to regional mayors.

I would suspect that they are frantically writing responses and new plans right now. I’m surprised HS2 hasn’t written a response to defend its self.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

There seems to be a lot of under-informed opinion being expressed here.

Firstly the Chat Moss route gets its name because it traverses what is effectively a peat bog meaning the foundations aren't suitable for genuine high-speed running. To achieve this would almost certainly require the complete digging out of the peat or the sinking of extremely deep piles along the whole affected section, both of which would be hugely expensive and massively disruptive to existing rail traffic as well as being unlikely to be acceptable on environmental grounds. At which point it starts to become as cheap just to put the whole lot in a bored tunnel which doesn't actually have to follow any current route. Once you reach that conclusion then trying to accommodate Warrington in a scheme is a lot more attractive.

Secondly tunnelling under Manchester city centre will come up against the obstacle of the Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange, a cold-war era concrete communications bunker between 100 and 120 feet underground with outlying tunnels going as deep as 200 feet. While the bunkers themselves are largely empty today the whole lot is used for telecom equipment and cable runs which continue to minimise the need to dig up Manchester's central streets for associated works. The proposed Picc-Vic tunnel of the 1970s had a significantly curved route across the city in order to avoid all of this (though the planners of the day were not allowed to explain why): any new tunnel will have to take similar account of the obstacle.

The one opportunity the current debacle provides is to consider better links to/from Liverpool. But there too significant physical obstacles need to be overcome. Lime Street station is already close to capacity and is now quite tightly hemmed in by other developments. An additional surface station will be very difficult to build without a lot of demolition, whatever site is chosen, so an underground station would be more likely. No wonder then that so many references are made to re-using the Wapping and/or Victoria/Waterloo tunnels as a way of reducing the cost. It is noteworthy that the New Station Commission which was meant to find a way forward has seemingly met only once and produced no useful information for public consumption.

Personally I find myself feeling very gloomy about anything realistic being done to improve any regional links across the north of England during the rest of my life. A Sunak-inspired Conservative Party is likely to become ever more anti-rail as times goes on and Labour has done relatively little beyond establishing the concept of public control in 1948. Perhaps we should all be voting Green in future but the wider public isn't going to change its voting habits just because some rail nerds on the internet say so!

 

[HSTEd]

There seems to be a lot of under-informed opinion being expressed here.

Firstly the Chat Moss route gets its name because it traverses what is effectively a peat bog meaning the foundations aren't suitable for genuine high-speed running. To achieve this would almost certainly require the complete digging out of the peat or the sinking of extremely deep piles along the whole affected section, both of which would be hugely expensive and massively disruptive to existing rail traffic as well as being unlikely to be acceptable on environmental grounds. At which point it starts to become as cheap just to put the whole lot in a bored tunnel which doesn't actually have to follow any current route. Once you reach that conclusion then trying to accommodate Warrington in a scheme is a lot more attractive.

And importantly, all speeding it up will do is get the train stuck behind the stopper even faster.

Not much longer, unless you include the stoppers and semi-fasts. The Hull fast is typically 34 minutes eastbound, 39 minutes westbound. The Newcastle fast is typically 35 minutes both ways.

Trains which universally serve Manchester Victoria.
Trains from Victoria might be preferable if you live right next to it, but getting to it from huge swathes of Manchester is substantially slower/harder than Piccadilly.
As well as people from the wider region.

Which is why the trains via Piccadilly are very heavily used despite being slower. The 50 minute journey time listed in the above document is for trains from Piccadilly/Oxford Road,. because those are the ones that carry a lot of the passengers.

EDIT:
The passenger numbers for the Oxford Road/Piccadilly complex dwarf those of Victoria in 19/20 it was ~38 out of ~49 million.
EDIT #2:
Dug up the figures for 21/22, Victoria manages 19.1% of the passengers from the Manchester stations group, everything else goes to Piccadilly/Oxford Road/Deansgate.

So the technical existance of fast trains from Victoria is less important than it might appear because thats not where all the passenger traffic is. And the long walk to Victoria (or the wait for the tram) would destroy the time advantage.

 

[Moomo]

The proposed NPR/HS2 time for Liverpool-Manchester was 26 minutes. 10 minutes faster than current. This includes 5 minutes for the stop at the airport.
Much of the £12 billion is for tunnelling into central Manchester. If you’re not doing that, how are you getting your fast Chat Moss services into an already congested network?

The "26 minute journey-time" is pie in the sky. Right now it takes 22 minutes to travel from Lime Street to Runcorn, which is almost exactly the same distance along much the same track as the proposed NPR high-speed line to Warrington BQ. I very much doubt you could get from WBQ to Manchester Piccadilly in 4 minutes, even without the airport stop; and with the airport stop you'd need a time machine. On the other hand, the 30 minute journey-time via Chat Moss was real and could be done by a clapped-out 319. The fast Chat Moss services would go to Victoria, as now (which has plenty of "through" platform faces), and then on across the Pennines, exactly as they have done since the days of the L&YR. There is in fact no structural reason why through services to Sheffield couldn't run via Victoria as well. It is also worth noting that Network Rail and freight operators have already developed plans for moving rail-freight by reopening disused routes in South Manchester, so the Castlefield Corridor might be somewhat less of a bottleneck than is sometimes suggested. Indeed, the congestion problem has largely arisen thanks to the decision to focus future developments at Piccadilly, which is in fact operationally unnecessary, and driven (I suspect) by vested commercial interests.

 

[HSTEd]

The "26 minute journey-time" is pie in the sky. Right now it takes 22 minutes to travel from Lime Street to Runcorn, which is almost exactly the same distance along much the same track as the proposed NPR high-speed line to Warrington BQ. I very much doubt you could get from WBQ to Manchester Piccadilly in 4 minutes, even without the airport stop; and with the airport stop you'd need a time machine.

The all new line would obviously be built to a rather higher standard, and along a fundamentally different alignment, than the slow drag through Runcorn.
There is no 100mph running between Lime Street and Runcorn.

Most of it is 70 or 80mph.

A modern line would leave it in the dust.
22 minutes would put the train approaching Manchester Airport after its Warrington stop (or having left Manchester Airport if it didn't stop at Warrington).

It is also worth noting that Network Rail and freight operators have already developed plans for moving rail-freight by reopening disused routes in South Manchester, so the Castlefield Corridor might be somewhat less of a bottleneck than is sometimes suggested.

All of which have comically large price tags and fail miserably when they try to develop businesses cases.
A freight diversion will never build a remotely defendable business case.

Indeed, the congestion problem has largely arisen thanks to the decision to focus future developments at Piccadilly, which is in fact operationally unnecessary, and driven (I suspect) by vested commercial interests.

You mean, interests who want the railway to actually serve the needs of customers/passengers rather than doing what is operationally convenient?#
The railway has to grow the farebox, and serve passenger's needs, or all is lost.

EDIT:
In the Down Direction, assuming instantaneous acceleration and deceleration, it would take ~12.1 minutes to complete Lime Street to Runcorn. That's an average speed of around 60mph.
The typical train does it in about 18 minutes, for around 40mph.

On 20km jumps, modern high speed trains (like those in Japan) can manage average speeds, in actual service, of around 80mph! (Kyushu Shinkansen, with a top speed of only 260kph, does the 22km from Shin-Tamana to Kumamoto in 9 minuites!)

 

[Moomo]

No, Sunak and his team seem to have avoided any consultation with this recent announcement from anyone ranging from network rail to regional mayors.

I would suspect that they are frantically writing responses and new plans right now. I’m surprised HS2 hasn’t written a response to defend its self.

Starmer and Reeves have been very quick to infer that they wouldn't resurrect Phase 2. They can read the opinion polls; they know that HS2 isn't popular with voters; and, anyway, they're desperate to find cash for all their other pledges, and £100,000,000,000 is an awful lot of dosh.

The line would obviously be built to a rather higher standard than the slow drag through Runcorn.
There is no 100mph running between Lime Street and Runcorn.

Most of it is 70 or 80mph.

A modern line would leave it in the dust.



All of which have comically large price tags and fail miserably when they try to develop businesses cases.
A freight diversion will never build a remotely defendable business case.

You mean, interests who want the railway to actually serve the needs of customers rather than doing what is operationally convenient?

Might I suggest that you open Google Maps and study the route from Lime Street to WBQ. There is no way on earth that trains could get to 100 mph for more than a few minutes at most, and even that might be optimistic. If you've ever travelled the route, you will know, for example, that there is a 30mph speed-restricted curve to the east of Edge Hill (plus flat crossings), which is unavoidable because the line turns through almost 90 degrees at that point. There is another significant speed-restricted curve just east of "South Parkway"' which is again unavoidable unless you want to end up in the Mersey. Worst of all, there is a series of incredibly tight bends on the final approach to WBQ, which cannot be removed without major engineering works, double-crossing the River Mersey and the demolition of a substantial number of properties. The "slow drag through Runcorn" is of course the main WCML route into Merseyside, which HS2 previously deemed wholly acceptable for Liverpool's services. But, yes. I agree that an upgraded line would probably be somewhat faster than the existing "WCML"; it just wouldn't be fast enough to make much difference - and I haven't included the time lost to the Warrington stop. As for the freight routes: yup, they'd cost a lot, but it wouldn't be even one percent of 12 billion. We both agree that we want a railway which best serves the needs of it's customers, but that does of course include customers who live in Merseyside and Yorkshire. As I've noted before: to spend £12 billion, yet not deliver any meaningful improvement to transPennine journey-times would be an astonishing waste of money.

 

[HSTEd]

Might I suggest that you open Google Maps and study the route from Lime Street to WBQ. There is no way on earth that trains could get to 100 mph for more than a few minutes at most, and even that might be optimistic. If you've ever travelled the route, you will know, for example, that there is a 30mph speed-restricted curve to the east of Edge Hill (plus flat crossings), which is unavoidable because the line turns through almost 90 degrees at that point. There is another significant speed-restricted curve just east of "South Parkway"' which is again unavoidable unless you want to end up in the Mersey. Worst of all, there is a series of incredibly tight bends on the final approach to WBQ, which cannot be removed without major engineering works, double-crossing the River Mersey and the demolition of a substantial number of properties

The 26 minute journey time was for an all new railway line, which is what NPR wanted originally.

The attempt to force the trains onto the existing route came later. When DfT got into their head that a route on the existing track through Warrington BQ Low Level would be cheap, somehow. (You'd think they'd learn after so many failed modernisations)

That resulted in a journey time several minutes longer, the all new line concept likely involves a tunnel out of lime Street and emerging near the M62 for the Run to Warrington.

. The "slow drag through Runcorn" is of course the main WCML route into Merseyside, which HS2 previously deemed wholly acceptable for Liverpool's services.

Those two things can be true at the same time.
The line through Runcorn can't be meaningfully improved, it is woefully substandard but the only way to improve it is wholesale replacement.

Victorian infrastructure is a terrible basis for a modern railway, we must modernise or die.

As for the freight routes: yup, they'd cost a lot, but it wouldn't be even one percent of 12 billion.

£120m (1% of £12bn) gets you almost nothing, these days.
@Bald Rick tried to price those proposals once somewhere on the forum and came up with a price more like £1bn.
You have to bridge the ship canal amongst other things, and a lot of the alignments are in very bad shape.

An this obviously does nothing but save a couple of paths through castlefield.

OTHERWISE:
Does anyone know why the speeds in the trench on approach to Lime Street are so painfully slow? 2 miles at 30mph is quite something.

Is it lack of safe access routes for staff or something?

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

OTHERWISE:
Does anyone know why the speeds in the trench on approach to Lime Street are so painfully slow? 2 miles at 30mph is quite something.

Is it lack of safe access routes for staff or something?

Is it not the speed required for Lime Street (approach) Control to work within safety margins?

 

[Moomo]

The 26 minute journey time was for an all new railway line, which is what NPR wanted originally.

The attempt to force the trains onto the existing route came later. When DfT got into their head that a route on the existing track through Warrington BQ Low Level would be cheap, somehow. (You'd think they'd learn after so many failed modernisations)

That resulted in a journey time several minutes longer, the all new line concept likely involves a tunnel out of lime Street and emerging near the M62 for the Run to Warrington.



Those two things can be true at the same time.
The line through Runcorn can't be meaningfully improved, it is woefully substandard but the only way to improve it is wholesale replacement.

Victorian infrastructure is a terrible basis for a modern railway, we must modernise or die.



£120m (1% of £12bn) gets you almost nothing, these days.
@Bald Rick tried to price those proposals once somewhere on the forum and came up with a price more like £1bn.
You have to bridge the ship canal amongst other things, and a lot of the alignments are in very bad shape.

An this obviously does nothing but save a couple of paths through castlefield.

OTHERWISE:
Does anyone know why the speeds in the trench on approach to Lime Street are so painfully slow? 2 miles at 30mph is quite something.

Is it lack of safe access routes for staff or something?

I agree with most of what you've said, albeit that the freight proposals are quite recent and a lot simpler than you've implied. The NPR timings are instructive: "26 minutes" was just an initial ambition; "29.5 minutes" was TfN's first estimate, and was predicated upon a new line into Lime Street; and "35 minutes" is the estimated time from the NIC's Integrated Rail Plan, and is the timing upon which the £12 billion envelope is based. So it's 35 minutes for £12 billion (i.e. slower than now) or comfortably north of £15 billion for a thirty second time saving along the NPR route. I agree that Man Vic is suboptimal in terms of local connectivity (albeit better than Lime Street, Curzon Street or Euston), but it is very well placed for eastbound journeys across the Pennines, which is, of course, why it was built there in the first place.

 

[The Planner]

Im not sure the proposals for reopening freight lines around Manchester are NR led you know...

 

[edwin_m]

Starmer and Reeves have been very quick to infer that they wouldn't resurrect Phase 2. They can read the opinion polls; they know that HS2 isn't popular with voters; and, anyway, they're desperate to find cash for all their other pledges, and £100,000,000,000 is an awful lot of dosh.

£100bn is one figure for the whole scheme, not for Phase 2. And Sunak has effectively ensured that Labour can't resurrect the scheme by moving to sell off the land, thus removing the political quandary that Starmer might have been in on whether to do so or not.

 

[Halifaxlad]

The cash saved (and there would be a lot of it) could be diverted towards the building of a "trans-Pennine tunnel",

It offers a major gain in capacity which is simply not possible with an upgrade to the existing alignments.

Yes but that doesn't necessarily mean this new line has to go Southwards just to go past (somewhere near to) Manchester Airport!

An additional surface station will be very difficult to build without a lot of demolition, whatever site is chosen, so an underground station would be more likely.

It depends how you approach Liverpool. Not so long since it was entirely possible to construct a new surface station without any demolition upon the old Liverpool Exchange site however that would involve curving around and approaching Liverpool from the North, which sounds silly but is exact opposite of how this HS2 was supposed to leave Manchester.

Exchange also offers the opportunity for 400m HS2 services (yes now to run on existing lines above Birmingham) although I would shorten them to 300m as suggested elsewhere on this forum which would also suit the Exchange site more.

But then you get the trade off with not being in location some want in the same way people are insistent on using Picadilly in Manchester for everything. It's no suprise capacity around that is now full, if Victoria was used then Manchester City centre could easily expand more so than if everything was centred around Picadilly.

 

[domcoop7]

£100bn is one figure for the whole scheme, not for Phase 2. And Sunak has effectively ensured that Labour can't resurrect the scheme by moving to sell off the land, thus removing the political quandary that Starmer might have been in on whether to do so or not.

Sir Keith was never going to build it.

In fact the only leader who would have done is Johnson, because he didn't mind being profligate with public spending for glitzy projects (whether than be wobbly bridges, cable cars, etc.)

The Northern Mayors were calling for NPR that had a brand new sub-surface station in Liverpool (not needed, but had to be built because "reasons" as if not built it meant that "Liverpool was getting left out") and a sub-surface through station in Manchester (at a cost which would make HS2 Euston look like pocket change from the petty cash tin). This was - obviously - never going to happen ever, but politically how could they justify HS2 Phase 2 without NPR? So both Labour and Tory would have to do what the last plan was, which is combine NPR with HS2 Phase 2.

But as soon as you do that, you reach the conclusions set out in this thread, namely that you spend billions and billions and either increase peoples' journey times or knock a few minutes off. If any of the Liverpool to Yorkshire links had the capacity constraints of the southern WCML, that may make sense, but they objectively don't. There simply aren't 12 car crush-loaded peak time commuter trains on the routes, and wouldn't be even if you ran them.

The problems - which do exist - are Castlefield Corridor, Stalybridge to Huddersfield and Ravensthorpe to Leeds. The latter two sections are being upgraded anyway.

So realistically you get almost as much bang for a lot less buck if you just sort out Castlefield than if you follow the HS2 plans (assuming the tunnelled NPR under Manchester doesn't happen and I can't see how anyone could possibly justify that level of expenditure - and yes no doubt some obscure German railway with an unpronounceable name did the Greatbigbahngeselschaftextremetaktprojekt, but good for them, I'd rather spend £50bn on something useful rather than flattering a Metro Mayor's ego).

Of course sorting out Castlefield is an endless saga in itself and won't properly happen because of competing requirements and forthcoming "devolution" of local rail to the local network meaning effectively it will have to stay a local track for local people. Which makes me tend to agree with what others have said upthread that the answer is simple - Victoria. What works against Victoria is that it doesn't have trains to London / Birmingham or Scotland, but most travellers to / from key towns and cities on any NPR route wouldn't need to interchange in Manchester anyway would they? The few that do, can.

 

[GJMarshy]

I think the endless “Without that link from Manchester Airport to Piccadilly, there’s no way of getting NPR through Manchester” has got stuck in a lot of people’s heads as the only solution.

You can quite easily at a fraction of the cost, tunnel from Salford to Ardwick via Piccadilly (2.5mi) and almost completely relieve Castlefield of intercity/long-distance services.

Alright from that alone you’re not going to drastically reduce journey time, but you do make both the local and long-distance networks more reliable, and can radically increase the frequencies of stopper trains through Castlefield & Victoria.

Add in an interchange station near the Windsor link, and it’s then possible to route some services in the existing network through Vic rather than Pic, and not hit connectivity, since direct access to east-west intercity services there, means you don’t have to funnel as much as possible through Castlefield to feed Piccadilly.

There’s always a way, it’s just a question of the level of pragmatism leaders are able to accept, especially on substituting direct services to the airport with high frequencies of local services to connect Piccadilly.