welshdragon wrote:
Yep, I have free travel for England and Wales (English pass expires in 2012)
But I highly doubt your free England travel would get withdrawn
Yes, once my card expres i'm no longer able to get one (as i'm not living in England).
On topic:
'Overcrowding' is a major issue everywhere - there isn't enough stock to cope, there isn't enough infrastructure to improve capacity, There isn't enough space to add capacity.
Not unless you start again from the ground up.
Which nobody will ever do, as it'll bankrupt the country or they'll do a bad job, and then we'll be in the mud again.
They should also forget this 'Multiple Unit' malarkey and design a modern push - pull locomotive and carriage set that meets with all the silly regulations (thanks to Labour). either that or allow Jim to go down to his local station and 'hire' a 67, all to himself,
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What Kevin is describing is precisely the Cumulative Causation or the Core-Periphery model in effect. Rich areas (ie South East) command the most investment because they generate more returns. The poorer areas (ie: Middlesborough!) are starved of investment cause it isn't viable and get poorer as a result. It is completely true that the traffic is simply not there in the North to command 8/12 coach trains on anything but Intercity, and as shown recently with GMPTE funding 5 extra coaches on a local route, Northern simply does not have the cash to provide extra services. I can't say I've been up to the North that much, but every time I've seen a 185 (ie: not in the rush hour), they've been pretty lightly-loaded *remembers John, Dani, Brianetta and Wife getting onto a pretty empty 185 at York*.
Also there's nothing that the government is saying against MUs - they could hire a 67 + Mk3 if they wanted for a local route (actually, WSMR do). Just that the free(er) market of the UK has realised that MUs are far more cost effective than locos, as opposed to state-run railways such as Switzerland and Finland.
Any opinions expressed are purely mine and not that of any employer, past or present.
Quite. Subsidy per head on TPE and Northern is probably much higher than on the tube or any part of the former NSE as it is. If demand conditions were so good, Northern and TPE could go to the markets and fund new stock independently of government.
By the way Jolteon, if you think there being space to sit on the floor means the train is overcrowded, you have clearly never been on a train that is properly overcrowded.
As for the run trains with Class 67s argument, you have to be joking...BR's productivity went through the roof after sprinterisation - and they could run more frequent services than in the old diesel loco days...
Kevo00 wrote:
By the way Jolteon, if you think there being space to sit on the floor means the train is overcrowded, you have clearly never been on a train that is properly overcrowded.
I've been on London rush hour tube* trains before, and i've seen 185s more crowded than some of them
* Victoria Line between Kings Cross & Vauxhall
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Kevo00 wrote:
By the way Jolteon, if you think there being space to sit on the floor means the train is overcrowded, you have clearly never been on a train that is properly overcrowded.
I've been on London rush hour tube* trains before, and i've seen 185s more crowded than some of them
* Victoria Line between Kings Cross & Vauxhall
But I take it you've never been on the Central Line on the day of the Notting Hill Carnival, where we had to pass up 3 trains cause there was simply no room whatsoever to get on?
Any opinions expressed are purely mine and not that of any employer, past or present.
Kevo00 wrote:Quite. Subsidy per head on TPE and Northern is probably much higher than on the tube or any part of the former NSE as it is. If demand conditions were so good, Northern and TPE could go to the markets and fund new stock independently of government.
The difference is that London is a 24hr city, so trains running into and out of the capital have a reasonable load at almost any time. Same for much of the southeast. It's the reason they can run trains every half an hour all night on some routes - trains are full or at least profitably loaded well into the evening and throughout the day. These services can then easily subsidise the early/late/weekend services and still produce a profit.
In the North, Northern/TPE could run very profitably... if they could choose which trains they wanted to run. Peak trains are so full that they're definitely making money. The big difference is that the average loading is far lower, making the service as a whole unprofitable once mornings/evenings and weekends are included... and meaning that the beurocrat looking at the numbers decides that the train size is close enough to the average loads and won't allow the investment.
audigex wrote:
The difference is that London is a 24hr city, so trains running into and out of the capital have a reasonable load at almost any time. Same for much of the southeast. It's the reason they can run trains every half an hour all night on some routes - trains are full or at least profitably loaded well into the evening and throughout the day.
Hmmm I don't really know of any night routes apart from Thameslink (even before the upgrade), and that was only hourly I believe. Not even the airport expresses (bar Thameslink) ran all night. But it was the exception - at one point about 5/6 years ago, it was the only franchise on the network that paid a dividend back to the DfT rather than receiving a subsidy. Northern probably receives the biggest subsidy, because it has no intercity division to cross-subsidise it. I suppose Northern and TPE could be lumped together but then the franchise would be too big.
Any opinions expressed are purely mine and not that of any employer, past or present.
Kevo00 wrote:
By the way Jolteon, if you think there being space to sit on the floor means the train is overcrowded, you have clearly never been on a train that is properly overcrowded.
I've been on London rush hour tube* trains before, and i've seen 185s more crowded than some of them
* Victoria Line between Kings Cross & Vauxhall
But I take it you've never been on the Central Line on the day of the Notting Hill Carnival, where we had to pass up 3 trains cause there was simply no room whatsoever to get on?
I've never been on Central line
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Even without 24 hour routes, you can head out from (quick example) Victoria towards clapham literally every few minutes most of the day, at least every 20 minutes until about 1am and then hourly all night before the regular services kick in again at 6am.
Compare that to most of the north where you can't get a train that departs after midnight from virtually any station, and most services are down to every 2/3 hours from about 6pm.
The point being that the northern areas can't support the late night services, so can't keep it proitable when half your trains are sat still in the late evening... as such they can't afford the investment, even though the busy times desperately need it.
Kevo00 is being unusually Londoncentric here, I feel.
TPEx/NT crowding is, at times, worse than I've seen in peak hours on the Tube during the summer - I've been turned away from five and six consecutive trains at Manchester Piccadilly to Bolton/Liverpool/Southport/Wigan/Preston etc, etc, etc. Bolton's 30 minutes out of Manchester and is a horrible ride after 4pm - you're not going to get a seat if you're not at the front.
TPEx on the other side of Manchester (to Hudds/Leeds, etc) are in an arguably worse state, and that's with the added Vic-Stalybridge-Huddersfield stoppers. All rammed after 4pm and all going to Huddersfield, half an hour out of Manchester, half an hour out of Leeds.
It's all well questioning NT's subsidy, for example, but when you find that the company is running at pretty much a loss on every route (Kirkby-Wigan, Preston-Ormskirk, Lancaster-Morecambe, Bolton-Clitheroe, EVERY service up the S&C, most of the services across the Cumbrian Coast ... Basically any service that isn't going to Manchester or peak times to a population centre then) then you understand.
Northern Rail has done a fantastic job with no money - any new stock in the last 5 years? No - except for 3 whole new 180s and other transferred stock. They're not even getting new stock for the electrification of the Liv-Man line, instead getting ex-Thameslink 319s. TransPennine have no benefits except for running non-stop between Liverpool and Manchester and non-stop between Manchester and Huddersfield and Leeds... Mostly they replicate Northern's patterns, and once we've got to Preston and Leeds they're being outshone by Virgin, XC and EC.
In terms of overcrowding, the DfT are the biggest idiots here, supplying no help to either TOCs. Both are holding their own as much as they can in this horrible environment. No money, no stock, no way of improving services, and yet they're not the worst performing by miles.
Kevo00 wrote:
By the way Jolteon, if you think there being space to sit on the floor means the train is overcrowded, you have clearly never been on a train that is properly overcrowded.
I've been on London rush hour tube* trains before, and i've seen 185s more crowded than some of them
* Victoria Line between Kings Cross & Vauxhall
But I take it you've never been on the Central Line on the day of the Notting Hill Carnival, where we had to pass up 3 trains cause there was simply no room whatsoever to get on?
Or on the Victoria Line after a day when Tottenham, Arsenal, Fulham and Chelsea all have home matches!!! (that kicked off at 3pm on a saturday)
I've often had to wait for 2 or 3 tube trains to pass at Bethnal Green on the Central Line on ordinary working days...as for the Victoria Line, it doesn't tend to be quite as busy as some of the others...I suggest you explore a little more widely. Like I say, if you can see the floor, a train isn't overcrowded. The situation Dave describes, of passengers actually being turned away, is more like overcrowding, and I agree that its clear that more trains are required there. And Jamie is right - none of the tube is 24 hour, and I know of no 24 hour services...
I am being very London-centric, but then so is our rail system. 80% of rail journeys begin or end in London and the Tube carries more passengers daily than the whole of National Rail. Almost as many passengers travel by tube every day as by National Rail too. Remember a new carriage these days can cost £3m...its best that that public money goes where returns that benefit more of society can be found.
Kevo00 wrote:Remember a new carriage these days can cost £3m...its best that that public money goes where returns that benefit more of society can be found.
That much? I'm sure it's A LOT closer to the £1-1.5million mark, which is what the Class 172s are costing. Perhaps some like the Pendos cost more due to the advanced technology (Andel could tell you all about it).
Actually audigex is right - London Victoria to Three Bridges does run hourly throughout the night. I didn't realise there were routes apart from Thameslink that did that. Then I suddenly realised that TPE run hourly throughout the night aswell, so that argument that the North can't justify it goes out the window!
Any opinions expressed are purely mine and not that of any employer, past or present.
Victoria-Clapham Junction were literally the first two stations I entered: I'd be very surprised if I happend to stumble accross the second of two routes in the south east that have such a service. And I wasnt just pointing out the 1am-6am time slot - TPE is nowhere near every 10 minutes 8-12pm, unlike that service out of Victoria.
Dave's very right, NR and TPE do an exceptionally good job with what they have. NR gets the worst of everything and I still find their service to be consistently better than Virgin/Whoever's running the East Coast at any given time. No mean feat given that most of their stock is 20-25 years old, they get vectored behind any other TOC, and they're expected to run trains to the back of beyond.
The southeast could no doubt do with some extra carriages too, but when you're already getting trains every 3-4 minutes, how much more do you want? I've nothing against development in the southeast too, but all it does down there is encourage more onto the trains, which then requires more stock, in an all-consuming cycle. The north, however, it's more about matching capacity to need, which there's been virtually no attempt by the DfT to do.
FGW is continually turning more and more into the new NR. The youngest train in the FGW fleet is the 166 which is 16 at the youngest (57s dont count as new trains). We also have HSTs which are nearly 35 years old, as well as a large number of 142s, 143s, 150s, 153s, 158s, 165s and 166s
Unless there's a 4/5 hour gap, you can probably consider it 24hour. There's plenty of services that are only 2-hourly at the best of times, so if they're every 2/3 hourly or less it's still pretty regular.
