The halved frequency on Sundays while the Ormskirks run to Hunts Cross is probably more of an issue.
Hunts Cross was always half hourly on Sundays. Even in the summer when Southport is boosted to 4tph on Sundays, every other service terminates at Liverpool Central and doesn't run to Hunts Cross.
It's the 15 minute evening frequency on Mon-Sat evenings that has been lost. This was introduced not long after Liverpool South Parkway opened, to give an improved frequency to what supposedly a "flagship" station. It was fairly straightforward to introduce as Southport already had a 15 minute evening frequency and extending the Liverpool terminators to Hunts Cross only needed one extra unit and crew, I believe.
Merseyrail could address the loss of evening services by extending the evening Headbolt Lane services to also continue to Hunts Cross, although I'm not sure if there are sufficient 777/1s to allow for this.
Otherwise if Ormskirk-Hunts X is a better pairing capacity wise why not make it permanent? There never appears to be much traffic across Liverpool, it's just done for operational convenience.
When the line to Garston reopened in 1978 it was Kirkby services that ran through. It was a few years later that the service was adjusted to run to/from Southport, and that pattern has remained ever since, except for a few months during COVID when a Ormskirk-Hunts Cross service ran similar to that which runs at the moment.
I live on the Hunts Cross line and did make use of the cross-Liverpool link to travel up towards Southport. The current Sunday timetable has unsatisfactory waits of up to 20 minutes in Liverpool for connections. The reduction in evening frequency has also been annoying. So for purely selfish reasons I would like to see it revert to Southport. On the other hand, the instances of "semi-fast" services where a late running service runs non-stop from Central to Hunts Cross have been greatly reduced, although that may be thanks to the 777s (when they work) being able to make up time as the services are still timed for 507s.
As an aside, Realtime Trains shows that during the Grand National meeting the temporary service temporarily reverts to Hunts Cross-Southport presumably to allow 8 cars on Ormskirk/Aintree services.
Agreed there.
Off course the solution for the Sunday frequency is Merseyrail running a 4tph on all lines (bar Ellesmere Port) on Sundays, but that will probably cost a bit more money
I think the demand is there for 4tph on Sundays, at least in the "shopping hours" approx 10am-5pm. But that's probably a separate thread.
