Without an affordable through station at Manchester Piccadilly, high speed rail may never come to the North. But there's a cheaper, faster, and better connected option.
This strikes me as an idea based more on looking at maps than familiarity with the area itself (apologies if that isn't the case).
One issue is that the area suggested for the station is largely the subject of recent, ongoing or future planned housing development (the "retail box park" is currently the subject of consultation for a 70+ storey tower, for example - https://regentparkconsultation.co.uk/ - although there is some opposition to this locally, mainly related to the loss of the 'affordable' retail units and the vets).
Connectivity to Piccadilly would also be likely to be an issue assuming that the same issues with having trains stop too frequently in a short distance which have prevented the implementation of local stopping services from Salford Central to Piccadilly and Oxford Road would persist (although presumably the new station wouldn't have the same issues as Salford Central in terms of platform length).
The impact on local commuter services (including trams) would also be significant during construction - and most residents of the region would, I would wager, be more concerned about local connectivity than they would be about shaving half an hour of the time it would take them to get to central London. Resolving the Castlefield Corridor issue would be welcome but building a High Speed line down to the south is a very roundabout way of doing that.
New station would be sited further west (eg on or near the metal recycling plant). Tradeoffs matter - not proposing it but even if we were to spend £1bn to knock down brand new buildings here, you’d still save several £bn more overall.
Frequency of services to Piccadilly shouldn’t be an issue after this scheme is built either. London’s Thameslink manages to run 24tph each way through its core and that’s with 12-car trains on multiple routes with different stopping patterns. With a station and grade separation at Ordsall, you could manage much higher throughput compared to today.
Disruption is a very fair concern, but I think worth it. Investments like Metrolink extensions and more services via Victoria could be frontloaded to mitigate.
Also worth noting (though I left it out of the article), that with high speed services to Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds getting moved onto the new line, all of the existing lines can have more stopping services which would dramatically increase local connectivity.
This strikes me as an idea based more on looking at maps than familiarity with the area itself (apologies if that isn't the case).
One issue is that the area suggested for the station is largely the subject of recent, ongoing or future planned housing development (the "retail box park" is currently the subject of consultation for a 70+ storey tower, for example - https://regentparkconsultation.co.uk/ - although there is some opposition to this locally, mainly related to the loss of the 'affordable' retail units and the vets).
Connectivity to Piccadilly would also be likely to be an issue assuming that the same issues with having trains stop too frequently in a short distance which have prevented the implementation of local stopping services from Salford Central to Piccadilly and Oxford Road would persist (although presumably the new station wouldn't have the same issues as Salford Central in terms of platform length).
The impact on local commuter services (including trams) would also be significant during construction - and most residents of the region would, I would wager, be more concerned about local connectivity than they would be about shaving half an hour of the time it would take them to get to central London. Resolving the Castlefield Corridor issue would be welcome but building a High Speed line down to the south is a very roundabout way of doing that.
New station would be sited further west (eg on or near the metal recycling plant). Tradeoffs matter - not proposing it but even if we were to spend £1bn to knock down brand new buildings here, you’d still save several £bn more overall.
Frequency of services to Piccadilly shouldn’t be an issue after this scheme is built either. London’s Thameslink manages to run 24tph each way through its core and that’s with 12-car trains on multiple routes with different stopping patterns. With a station and grade separation at Ordsall, you could manage much higher throughput compared to today.
Disruption is a very fair concern, but I think worth it. Investments like Metrolink extensions and more services via Victoria could be frontloaded to mitigate.
Also worth noting (though I left it out of the article), that with high speed services to Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds getting moved onto the new line, all of the existing lines can have more stopping services which would dramatically increase local connectivity.