You'd need to recast the service so the same principles could be applied as Thameslink - basically a massive simplification which would turn the service into something a lot more like Merseyrail or Thameslink than what is there now. It could be done but there would be a *lot* of complaints.
You'd probably have to do something like the following:-
- All services formed of classes 319, 323, 185 or 150 (or ATW CAF stock)
- A significant capacity increase to reduce overcrowding which causes much of the delay - minimum train length to be 69m i.e. 3x23m, peak trains to be a minimum of 80m i.e. 4x20m
- A total ban on classes 14x, 153, 155, 156, 158, 802, the new TPE EMUs and Mk5 LHCS due to slow loading and unloading
- The ATW service to be diverted to Victoria until the doors-at-thirds CAF stock arrives
- TPE Scottish service to run to Victoria once the 350s go
- Use doubled Class 185s on the TPE service which uses Ordsall rather than 800s/LHCS
- A complete rejig of depots and/or the service such that no changes of traincrew occur in Manchester
- Improved PIS so people can see from all points on the platform which train is next, its formation (in relation to platform locations) and any other relevant information.
That might make it just about workable give or take freight.
Presumably this would require removing most / all long-distance services from Castelfields completely. But for every step taken forward in that direction (shifting all Liverpool TPE services to Victoria), another step is taken back (providing the world.and his wife with a via Castlefields service to the airport).
How to sort this mess out ? Once.upon a time, when Victoria carried virtually all east-west services anyway, I suppose it would have involved maintaining that and using Picc-Vic to maintain connections between it, southern-bound.long distance services from Piccadilly, and across the city more generally. Now, I wonder whether it might be time to examine whether an east-west through high speed tunnel would do more for transport capacity across the north than a southbound one terminating at Piccadilly