The Northern and TransPennine Express franchises were let by the Department of Transport on the basis that diverting North TransPennine Express services via the Ordsall Chord (built at a cost of £100m) and Manchester Victoria would free up paths in to Manchester Piccadilly from the southeastern direction. The Northern franchise specification required the operator to introduce additional services between Manchester Piccadilly and New Mills Newton, Greenbank and Macclesfield by December 2017. The additional Greenbank service would provide a half-hourly service at Knutsford station, which in 2017/2018 ORR usage figures had over 500,000 journeys in a 12 month period - only a few stations in the entire country with an hourly service manage to get that many passengers.

As of May 2018 only the New Mills Newton service was introduced with Network Rail now claiming the Greenbank and Macclesfield services can't be accommodated due to pathing constraints. As the number of new services introduced which go in to Piccadilly from the southeast is significantly lower than the number of services which have been re-routed away from these lines, this explanation from Network Rail doesn't appear to be a valid one. Therefore we call on the Department of Transport, Network Rail and Northern to work together to get the missing services introduced in the paths which have been freed up by the diversion of other services.