• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

North West Recovery Taskforce

Status
Not open for further replies.

Roast Veg

Established Member
Joined
28 Oct 2016
Messages
2,200
https://www.railbusinessdaily.com/northern-grant-shapps-speech-in-full/

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, in his statement announcing the transfer of the northern franchise to the Operator of Last Resort, also announced a collaboration between Network Rail and the OLR designed to address issues in and around Manchester.

As part of this a newly-created cross-industry North West Recovery Task Force, co-ordinated by Network Rail, will deliver recommendations on how best to boost capacity and performance in the short, medium and longer term.
 
Last edited:
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Mogster

Member
Joined
25 Sep 2018
Messages
902
Lol, yeah let’s pay some people to talk about Pic 15&16 for another 5 years... :lol:
 

DarloRich

Veteran Member
Joined
12 Oct 2010
Messages
29,182
Location
Fenny Stratford
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, in his statement announcing the transfer of the northern franchise to the Operator of Last Resort, also announced a collaboration between Network Rail and the OLR designed to address issues in and around Manchester.

Groundwork for William's review...........
 

WatcherZero

Established Member
Joined
25 Feb 2010
Messages
10,272
Already been a NR project since middle of last year, then later TfTN involvement too, to come up with an infrastructure plan to restablise services through Castlefield.

Arises out of a review to support the assertion by the Minister that digital signalling could negate the need for the extra Piccadilly platforms, review essentially found signalling was a non-starter, and that even the platforms wont be enough and it needs a series of further interventions such as grade separating junctions, adding extra platform capacity to the airport and dealing with the Victoria turnback problem.
 

Shaw S Hunter

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2016
Messages
2,912
Location
Sunny South Lancs
Already been a NR project since middle of last year, then later TfTN involvement too, to come up with an infrastructure plan to restablise services through Castlefield.

Arises out of a review to support the assertion by the Minister that digital signalling could negate the need for the extra Piccadilly platforms, review essentially found signalling was a non-starter, and that even the platforms wont be enough and it needs a series of further interventions such as grade separating junctions, adding extra platform capacity to the airport and dealing with the Victoria turnback problem.

So while Grayling proved to be the Master of Doing Nothing I suspect that Shapps is going to be the King of Soundbites. I sometimes think the DfT would do better without a Minister at all!
 

a_c_skinner

Established Member
Joined
21 Jun 2013
Messages
1,576
You need to watch "Yes Minister". This is how things get ossified and stalled in UK. Approaching the situation in Manchester with civil service equipoise (or an assumption of status quo) isn't correct. We need to approach this with the assumption that the status quo is unacceptable and this is not the normal situation for a transport project, in fact I cannot think of another good example. We simply don't have a mechanism for "change essential", let alone "change urgent"
 

WatcherZero

Established Member
Joined
25 Feb 2010
Messages
10,272
The TWAO application for the extension of Metrolink from the current Airport stop to the new Terminal 2 stop has been sitting on the Ministers desk awaiting approval for two years now. Its only a few hundred metres!

Its alright saying you want shovel ready projects and to invest in infrastructure, but if you don't even process the stuff you already have, which has no outstanding opposition or controversy, nothing will ever get built.
 

js1000

Member
Joined
14 Jun 2014
Messages
1,011
Honestly, don't see the point in resolving Castlefield Corridor through traditional means (i.e. new platforms at Piccadilly and re-configuration of Oxford Road). Clearly the government do not think it is worth ~£1 billion cost for 1tph an hour.

Although this is an incredibly flawed assessment does not include the reliability improvements it would bring. Deteriorating punctuality, falling passenger numbers, increased delay repay claims and ultimately a rocketing subsidy as the service is not dependable. Likewise same can be said of TPE's issues. But then they are based in Whitehall and do not see the everyday impact that X amount of trains on a finite set of lines through Manchester has on the entire timetable then it's understandable that they don't 'get it'.

They'd be better off reviewing and potentially fast-tracking the HS2 portion from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly. Kill birds with one stone is what I'm saying and invest rather than spend.
 

30907

Veteran Member
Joined
30 Sep 2012
Messages
17,866
Location
Airedale
Honestly, don't see the point in resolving Castlefield Corridor through traditional means (i.e. new platforms at Piccadilly and re-configuration of Oxford Road). Clearly the government do not think it is worth ~£1 billion cost for 1tph an hour....

They'd be better off reviewing and potentially fast-tracking the HS2 portion from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly. Kill birds with one stone is what I'm saying and invest rather than spend.

But what on earth would Airport-Piccy do to resolve Castlefield - unless you think cutting all the Airport-Yorkshire services is the solution, in which case you can just run a shuttle on existing lines into the terminal platforms.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top