As an northerner living in London to help sort these southerners out, I am back up north regularly for work (real work southerners, not speculation based betting that damages the real economy). I have been through Manchester travelling to Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Airport, Leeds etc several times over the last couple of months. Every journey has fallen apart in Manchester.
I personally do not understand how anybody thought it was remotely feasible to de-couple the building of the chord and the extra platforms at Piccadilly. Piccadilly platforms 13/14 have been a critical point of failure for the whole northern network for ages. That aside from the overcrowding and exceptionally poor customer information and experience for such heavily used, multi-destination platforms (possibly one of the most diverse set of destinations for one set of platforms in the country?)
I get the purpose of the chord, and I broadly agree with the logic, but not without massive improvement on platforms 13/14 (as in a new platforms 15/16). Even more frustratingly, the land is sitting there ready for new structures - a relatively rare luxury for city-centre projects.
Last week I picked up a 35 minute delay from Leeds between Ashton and the Airport, and my train terminated at platform 13 and so I had to change on to another train. I then watched 5 trains arrive and terminate, some planned and some un-planned, hundreds of people stuffed onto a crap little bit of infrastructure. The crowds grew, people became stressed and then an Airport stopper arrived and not everybody could get on. This is what happens at those platforms, lots of trains, lots of destinations, lots of soaking up of sins on other parts of the network. It is basically an oversoaked sponge for the whole northern network and with 2 platforms it will always, always, act as a critical point of failure, even more so with the chord. Any statistician would be able to work out that there are just too many variables at play for any capacity theory to hold good. Thameslink has spent billions on dealing with a similar but less variable set of circumstances. It has a uniform fleet, 1 (poor) operator, less destinations (even with new additions) expensive station infrastructure, many more platform staff and a state of the art signalling system and a 2 way flow. People also tend to get off and leave the stations - in Manchester, many people change at these platforms. Central Manchester is now a giant railway roundabout, and that has all sorts of implications.
We had a northern and transpennine train dispatcher shouting at each other 'is this one of yours'; 'I don't know - think so' before trains arrived and when I asked if the next train might make it to the airport he called was control they actually said...'how late is it on the board?' - '6 minutes' - 'er, maybe'.
Anybody on here who says 13/14 can cope in any circumstances in living in fantasy land - even before the chord. There is always a point when one has to say theory is lovely but reality and the importance of a particular piece of network mean that you build N+1, maybe even N+2 for such an important bit of the network.
I see this as a massive failing of the whole system. DfT take full responsibility as they commissioned the chord but NR come a close second. TfN should have spotted this one earlier on and should have been banging on the DfT's door for a couple of years now. Also, people need to understand that delay analysis is not likely to throw up the whole picture. There is a real ripple problem here - platforms 13/14 are often not the cause of delays, but they add further delay and spreads them to other services. It is like a cholera laden water pump (as well as a sponge).
Things will get worse very soon. Longer TP trains will mean the notional separation of trains on 13/14 to either end of the respective platform will fall apart, meaning even more crush on the platforms and confusion for people getting off the train as all the platform infrastructure presumes the seperation. The whole thing is a predictable and unforgivable farce that shows the total lack of intelligence never mind experience from all involved in the decision making.
For me, the first 3 projects that should be commissioned on resilience for the northern network are re-signalling the core TP route between Huddersfield (maybe even Leeds - not sure of the capability of that section) and Manchester - the reversal of the bloody stupid re-alignment at Stalybridge which somehow didn't see the chord coming (and docking of NR pay for this one) but most importantly, platforms 15 and 16. I would arrange 13-16 so that you have:
- all airport services on 13 (unless somebody could tell me that there are any express airports that overtake stoppers once they have left Manchester);
- all other eastbound on 14;
- all express westbound on 15;
- all stoppers on 16.
and big screens making this really clear.
There are also some short term fixes that will help:
- big screens along the length of the platform flashing in bold colours things to support more detailed screens like 'Airport train' - 'train terminates here - do not board' - 'next train on this platform is to.....' - 'information change - next train is to x and not x - stay on the platform for x'. I would employ a dedicated person to be on the platform liaising with control and putting these bespoke messages out.
- make sure infrastructure is improved to acknowledge longer trains;
- making it very clear what a train length is a where to stand to reduce dwell times;
- if there is one set of platforms to re-introduce porters on the platform to help people get their luggage off it is this one. Lots of older people, airport passenger etc. This all extends dwell times.
Basically, current 13/14 need to pull every dwell time reduction trick out of the book (except the shouting at fare paying passengers one which the default at the moment) and then the planners need to launch a competition to work out how to build the new infrastructure without needing to close current 13/14 except for a few blockades, not easy but no more complicated than lots that has been done at London Bridge.
