National Rail Shakeup

[Dave]

Of course last connection obligations happen a lot in the Exeter area... FGW are involved!!!

I must admit that is one drawback of privatisation - guaranteed connections are required. But then it comes to this: do you p*** off the few passengers who are incoming, or the hundreds that are already onboard?

[Jacko]

Doesn't ever happen when 2 different TOCs are involved, PPM is too important to compromise.

Precisely. Theyre not bothered about consumers and passengers, they want the trains to run to make moneys and avoid fines. This can include:

1.Holding slower trains for faster services (this can cause HUGE Jams at Havant)
2.Skipping the smaller stations to save time, which i have experienced on several occasions.... or just cancelling it altogether
3.Ignoring the connections from other TOC's at major junctions
4.Using old stock and shortened trains, some without toilets, even during rush hours and peak times

#3 annoys me, as (e.g.) Havant - Portchester on a normal weekday/Saturday takes 10 minutes, but the service does not run on Sundays, and the rubbish connnection times means that i have to change, and it takes 50 minutes rather than 10!!. The car in this case takes about 25 minutes

btw this is all from personal experience

[JamieLei]

Japan is interesting as a 'best case' example but it's rather mixed. On the topic of connections it's rather good. Suburban lines run at 10-15 minute frequencies on most lines (that would be for the local and rapid services seperately, with 12tph+ down a 2-track line with passing places at major stations). Connection times are rather low, and people are very willing to change trains countless times when the connections are good (if a cross-platform interchange occurs, it's usually a 0 minute interchange). But the densities allow such frequencies. Compare that to London where waiting more than 10 minutes for your connection anywhere is a rarity.

Provincial Japan, outside of the major conurbations, is perhaps a better comparison with most of Britain. Houses are low-density (they're houses for a start!), cars are plentiful, retail parks have ample free parking and roads are wide and uncongested. Train and bus services alike are crap and apart from travelling to the nearest big city, everyone drives. Progress in attracting people onto public transport and the branch lines is difficult and slow for exactly the same reasons. Barely anyone uses the 1-car 153 equivalents that plod up and down the rural branch lines and take forever to reach destinations. We used one of these Dogbox type trains to get somewhere very rural, and the only travellers were fellow skint Japanese tourists, and a bunch of schoolkids whose parents wouldn't dream of using the service that only ran 6 times a day.

All countries, including best-practice Japan, have problems getting people onto trains outside major cities. It's not because they're underfunded and there's huge latent demand, it's because the population densities simply don't exist to support the frequent journeys that make rail travel attractive and effective as a network. Unless we're going to get authoritarian and demand that driving is banned, rail travel will never be the most attractive choice for the majority of journeys outside large cities.

Alan, please don't predictably come out with "it shouldn't be about profit, should provide good service, for the good of people, blah blah blah". It's clear that you value trains more than anything else. Unfortinately, kids going to school, patients in hospital, the public safe from crime, all disagree and would rather have those things than a 12 tph Pendolino service to Keswick.

[Ameecher]

I'm going to enjoy this.

A few weeks ago I found some online railway timetables from the late 1940s, and worked out how long it'd take me to get from Banchory to St Andrews by railway. It'd involve three separate train journeys and take something like 6 hours. Most of that wasn't down to the trains being slow as such, it was due to the fact I would have had to wait for nearly an hour (sometimes more) for connections. I can, on the other hand, drive between those places now in about one and a half hours, two hours if the traffic is bad. I could even get buses today (3 of them) and it'd take about 3 hours. It'd be nice I'm sure if the Deeside Line was reopened, and if a rail link to St Andrews was built, but I'm not convinced that they could offer a timetable that was both frequent enough to be practical, while also being even just slightly cost-effective.

Let make it 100% clear, the train will not entirely replace the car, but if you want to go from one village /town/city to another and there is a railway that used to do it, then it should be reopened.

Well no, because if there are 100 people in that village they're never going to produce enough traffic for a railway to be viable, there's providing a public service and there's p***ing money up the wall.

bus services, well they are very infrequent and very slow.

Yes and so will the services you propose to have on all these reopened lines you're about to create. They were shut down because no one (in the vast majority of cases) used them.

Also I envision at lest 4tph (which is what they do for the GOBLIN line) on branch lines like the Deeside railway, also the trains would be going (depending on the railways) between 80 to 125 mph, so it will be far quicker than road these days.

Very few lines could justify a 15 minute frequency beyond urban areas. As for branch lines running at up to 80mph, good luck, most branches struggle to top 60!

Sure and I agree completely. Between York and Doncaster it takes only about 24 minutes by train, by car on the A64 and A1/A1(M) more like 45 minutes. But then I can leave when I want in my car and what I can carry is limited only by my boot space. Train is great for many journeys but car better for others.

Really, what I would say is quite perverse is the logical conclusion of Alan's argument; that we should pour lots of money into rail to do things it isn't good at, so that if a person in Lybster wants to go on holiday in Westward Ho! they can get there really quickly because there will be a train every few minutes even on branches to very sparsely populated areas.

The rail network become more useful to more people if more lines were reopened and more money was invested into the rail network overall

Can you not see that you'd be catering for such a small market that really doesn't exist. You'd better to improve car parks at existing stations and not require a second mortgage in order to park there than melt down £1 coins to make some rails.

[JamieLei]

As for Japan, well the Government desided to invest hugely into their railways over many years, it was then that made them profitable (hence why they were sold), along with the fact that roads could not compete. That is why their railways are of a high standard!

If you read what I posted, Japan's railways are good because they have the population densities to support them, just as services are good in Greater London. Provincial services in Japan are pretty poor, just like outside the South East here.

[orudge]

Also I envision at lest 4tph (which is what they do for the GOBLIN line) on branch lines like the Deeside railway, also the trains would be going (depending on the railways) between 80 to 125 mph, so it will be far quicker than road these days.

You're going to need some expensive engineering on some of those old twisty branch lines to get them up to 80-125mph running, I imagine!

As for being cost effective, let me remind you again, Beeching was boss of ICI and was good at running businesses, but even he could not make the railways make money. Remember, the railways should be considered a public service, not a business.

I don't believe the railways should necessarily be profitable - after all, they receive a large amount of subsidy even today. But I'd rather not be throwing money away on services that very, very few people use.

If you wanted to go to St Andrews to Mold, well let me put it this way, if the lines at St Andrews and Mold were reopened and well invested, along with more 140 mph areas on the ECML and WCML main lines, then it would take less than 5 hours overall (it take that long to go between Leuchars to Flint). Also you are not driving for that long!

Just to be clear, theoretically, I can do the trip from Leuchars to Flint quicker by train than by car - EXCEPT for that fact that I usually have to wait 45-50 minutes for a connection at Warrington Bank Quay. That's a long time to be waiting, and makes all the difference in terms of making the car then faster, even if the train is going 125mph and the car less. I can't see how adding more connections at either end is going to improve this. If there were sufficient service frequencies, then that would no doubt be better, but again, if there aren't enough passengers to justify the service, you're just wasting money.

[GurraJG]

I don't believe the railways should necessarily be profitable - after all, they receive a large amount of subsidy even today. But I'd rather not be throwing money away on services that very, very few people use.

Exactly. Realistically speaking, every single service a railway offers are not all going to be profitable, however, there comes a time when just too much money is being spent on a service very few people use. In such cases, it'd be much better to offer a cheaper bus route, for example, and use the rest of the money somewhere else. If there was an unlimited amount of money, then I'd be all for massively expanding the railway network, but money is never unlimited.

[Dave]

Not even buses run to the mantra of "if there's one passenger that wants to travel, we'll run a bus!"

Ridiculous statement.

[GurraJG]

You just do not get it, the railways are not a business, but a public service so it is ok to proivde more services at a lost, if you want a profitable railway, all you would have left are major communter lines and main lines providing a rubbish service

Like it or not, you still need money to pay for a railway, and I don't think the taxpayer would be particularly pleased at having his taxes used to pay for an expensive railway line that almost no one uses; I know I wouldn't.

[orudge]

If the services it good then the passengers will come out of their cars and use the railway, also governments past and present have wasted money on far worse things than this

If the service is good, convenient and the price is appropriate, then yes. For one person travelling from A to B, then if the train is cheaper, and at least roughly the same duration (ideally quicker), then that's fine. But if you have a family of four travelling and it's going to cost 4 times as much as driving, then they're almost certainly going to take their car, unless they have a particular reason to not want to drive.

And you still seem to be ignoring my point about having to ensure connections, as much as possible, are well-timed - which I appreciate isn't necessarily the easiest thing. My not particularly scientific observations would say that occasional, less confident passengers are much happier getting on a train that would take them directly to their destination, rather than having to worry about connections in strange stations, etc. So a combination of higher fares, longer journey times and having to make multiple connections doesn't always make the train more attractive.

[GurraJG]

Yes but the bus services are rubbish or not even there, also there is more than enough money to do this and more

Have you seen the latest business news?

[Chris]

Have you seen the latest business news?

Yes, I have and they say HUNDREDS of BILLIONS is stolen from the taxpayer!

That doesn't mean that you can magically remove all the waste in government and catch tax evaders to pay for all this crap that you want to build. As others have pointed out, there is a line that you need to draw between subsidizing unprofitable railways, and wasting massive amounts of money. It is similar to the NHS insofar that there are some cancer treatment drugs that they do not use as the cost far outweighs the benefit. We could give the NHS 3 times the current budget but it is extremely unlikely that 3 times more lives saved, in fact it would probably only marginally decrease the death rate, and so compared to the cost would be wasteful (gross oversimplification).

[orudge]

Yes, but since there will be road charging, the rail company will put them high enough to price them out of the road and into the train (when the road route competes with the railway)

Increasing the price of roads so that they're as unaffordable as the railways will simply mean people can't afford to travel full stop.

I find it strange how some people seem to think the solution to Thing X being expensive is to artificially inflate the price of Cheaper Thing Y so that Thing X is suddenly cheaper, rather than improving Thing X itself.

[Ameecher]

Also, If you are a suffering from cancer, its outragious that the NHS cannot provide cancer drugs that can help you, you can't put a price on life can you?

Also for TAXPAYERS who live in areas outside the rail network and still fund the railway, it would get they moneys worth!

All I care about is a decent rail system and a decent health system

I'd rather people had better healthcare than some old codger up in Skye being able to catch the train to Glasgow without having to drive to Kyle of Lochalsh first. If people who live beyond the reaches of the railway network were that desperate for a decent rail service I'm sure they'd have moved ages ago.

As for road pricing... You propose shoving high charges on car usage to fund rail improvements, what are you going to do in the mean time? Rail projects take a long time to implement, in the interim period you'll just have lots of poor people refusing to travel full stop. Greater Manchester voted against a congestion charge scheme for this very reason, they'd be taxed for years without any improvement to begin with.
If you're having to financially force people to use something by artificially making it cheaper (and in this case relatively cheaper rather than actually cheaper) there is a serious flaw in your product.

[Chris]

you can't put a price on life can you?

Yes. Yes, you can, and yes you do. If there wasn't a price on life then all government departments apart from the NHS should be shut down, and all tax directed towards the NHS, with none of it going on the railways.

So you are proposing massive investment in the railways whilst also opposing any government spending which isn't on healthcare.

by the way, we are getting nether

Please enlighten us as to what this 'nether' that we are getting is.

Why can't we have a bigger and better rail network and a better health service?

Because the government doesn't have an unlimited supply of money.

As for why I am I suggesting driving people off the road, well we are all too used to the car and that needs to end, also have you got any better ideas on having a decent railway?

Why? The car is incredibly useful and much cheaper for many people. Ultimately what you want to do is increase inefficiency, and at a massive cost.

[Chris]

I am adovcating more money in all parts of the public sector!

What do you think is the price of life?

No, no you're not. If you think that a price can't be put on a life, then by extension all available money must go on healthcare, which then means that no money is available for the rest of the public sector, because each pound you spend elsewhere is a pound which can't be spent saving someone's life.

[MjD]

I hate to say this but I must agree with Alan Fry, you can't really put a price on life (although this is often done).

But, in terms of the NHS, its a huge organisation that has a limited budget and as such they cannot spend money on everyone, there needs to be some sort of decision making on where its funds do go to. In an ideal world anyone needing treatment could get it but we don't live in an ideal world.

I am adovcating more money in all parts of the public sector!

I wonder where you suggest we get this money from? In case you haven't realised the Government has a limited budget and is in a tremendous amount of debt so there is no way to logically get all this extra money to ensure we get gold plated bed-pans in the NHS and 140mph trains running 10 trains per hour between major cities. Unless you raise personal taxes to a silly level, which would only hurt the economy as people would have no money to spend.

Why can we have a bigger and better rail network and a better health service? (by the way, we are getting nether)
<snip>

In terms of investing in a better rail network look at Scotland for example, Re-opening lines, electrification is planned, extra services have all been done in the last few years.

MjD

[Dave]

MjD! Great to see you still around!

[orudge]

I really should stop replying to this...

The Car is becoming increasingly expensive, also it is not as cheap as the railways, even with higher fare rises

Driving petroleum-powered vehicles is becoming more expensive, yes, due, to higher fuel prices, and increased tax rates. There's no reason electric cars should be so expensive though. Work needs to be done to improve their range/battery life, of course, but they have the potential to be cheap to run and relatively environmentally friendly (albeit expensive to purchase at present).

Even with the high cost of driving as it is, it's still cheaper for almost all journeys (with some notable exceptions) for people to drive rather than take a train, particularly if more than one person is in the car.

Also, as it stands, taxes from fuel duty and vehicle excise duty far exceed the amounts spent on building and maintaining roads in this country, so is actually "profitable" for the country!

[Pilot]

In terms of investing in a better rail network look at Scotland for example, Re-opening lines, electrification is planned, extra services have all been done in the last few years.

Shame we can't have here in England!

Hello? What do you call the Liverpool-York Transpennine route and GWML electricfication. Also, what do you call CrossRail (London) , the Ordsall Chord (Manchester), East - West Rail Link (Oxford - Cambridge) and HS2 (London - Birmingham and onwards)? Last time I checked these are all Major Rail Projects within ENGLAND!!!