TRANSPENNINE TIMETABLES
As the person responsible for TransPennine Express’s long term timetable plan, may I clarify comments regarding our timetable made by Alan Williams in the December issue?
TransPennine has been hugely successful in stimulating and harnessing growth, being among the fastest-growing train operating companies with passenger growth rates in excess of 100% over the last 12 years. In the gestation period, which resulted in the May 2014 timetable change, we considered various options for providing more capacity on the North route over the Pennines, including retaining the previous four trains per hour timetable and just strengthening where most required.
Electrification of our Scottish services gave us eight Class 185 diagrams to play with. Without a timetable change, the most judicious use of the resources available produced only a maximum 17% increase in the capacity available in and out of Manchester and Leeds in the three-hour peaks. The five trains per hour service revision gave almost twice as much additional capacity in those periods – 33% – plus some significantly improved journey times, connectivity and frequencies.
These include an hourly through link between Liverpool and New…
